Almost exactly 52 years ago, then 17-year-old Vancouver-born Bruce Bensmiller was trying to raise $25 to buy a worn out 1940 Dodge sedan. When he couldn’t scrape the cash together, his father suggested he make a trade. Bensmiller offered the car owner a record player and the deal was sealed.
That transaction set the course for Bensmiller to restore the 1940 Dodge and many other cars over the years. And it also set in motion Bensmiller’s ongoing contribution to the car restoration hobby. Bensmiller is the glitter man.
You see it right away when you lift the hood of the suburban Langley resident’s 1948 Chevrolet street rod. This isn’t the original ‘Blue Flame’ six cylinder engine residing there. Power comes from a high performance 383 cubic inch Chevrolet V8 motor that just drips in chrome and polished aluminum. The customized engine compartment reflects Bensmiller’s passion for straightening and polishing aluminum and stainless steel automotive components.
Modern vehicles don’t use stainless steel the way it adorned the cars of the fifties and beyond. For example, Bensmiller’s 50-year-old Chevy was delivered new with stainless steel grille bars, stone guards on the rear fenders and rocker panel moldings along the lower edge of the car.
Typically, stainless steel trim on a car this old is banged up, creased and possibly twisted. Bensmiller painstakingly straightens all the pieces. Then he gets to work picking and filing the dents and creases. What follows is smoothing the surfaces with a grinder and varying grades of sandpaper before final polishing with a buffing wheel.
Many of the pieces Bensmiller works on for classic car and streetrod enthusiasts are difficult to replace or impossible to find. This includes side moldings, grille pieces, interior moldings and wheel discs that have been damaged when errant drivers have hit curbs. The results of his work are stunning: Stainless steel that glitters and shines and looks brand new.
Bensmiller turned his hobby of straightening and polishing metal into a home business a number of years ago. His expertise is known far and wide resulting in custom work coming to him from as far away as the southern United States.
Stainless steel is defined as an iron-carbon alloy with more than 10 per cent chromium content. As the name implies, it doesn’t stain, corrode or rust as easily as ordinary steel. In short, it ages well. And Bruce Bensmiller knows how to make it look like new - an artistry that started with the restoration of the 1940 Dodge 50 years ago.
Back then, Bensmiller had a weekend job in a body shop and learned how to work with metal. He applied that to the restoration of his first car with a lot of help from his father who was head mechanic for forest giant MacMillan Bloedel.
When it came to the restoration of the stainless steel components of the old car, young Bensmiller applied the same techniques he had learned in the body shop: Hammer out the dents. Then grind and sand the stainless steel until it is smooth. Polishing is the final step to gleaming stainless steel car ornamentation.
He has polished everything from wheel opening moldings to a kitchen sink. The kitchen sink was a stainless steel model from a vintage Chris Craft boat.
Bensmiller also applies his polishing skills to aluminum to make it shine like chrome -- the same as the stainless steel he works on. He has done entire automatic transmission cases, engine heads, intake manifolds, exhaust headers and carburetors.
The polishing under the hood of his vintage Chevy is a moving billboard for his work.
--Alyn Edwards