About

My love for cars came at a very young age. I feel like I was born with the passion of cool cars in my blood. The 66 Chevelle you see in my pictures was my very first car that I drove all through high school, into my Naval Career, and still to this day. I started welding in High school and I think that is where I got the itch to learn how to weld and build things with metal. Over my 23 years of Naval service I was an aircraft structural mechanic. This is where I first started to learn the fine tuning and detail work that can be achieved with metal. During my time in the Navy I started restoring My Chevelle into the car you see today. It took me 12 years to complete. It had many setbacks, seemed like the more I dug into it in the beginning the more issues I discovered. I also started my family at the same time, so the car had to slow down because Family will always come first. But through determination and steady work over the years, many deployments, I was finally able to complete the car and build something to be proud of.

Then in the last 3 years of my Naval service, I decided that I really wanted to start pursuing my passion for cars and metal so I started taking automotive metal shaping classes. I had already been teaching myself how to tig weld and use a bead roller, so I felt like taking classes was the next logical step. My very first class was from Wray Schelin at Pro Shaper Work shop in Charlton, MA. It was in this class where I was finally able to use a professional English wheel. From there I took a class in Southern CA from Jake Krotje, The Flying Dutchman. In this class I was first introduced to power hammers, pullmax machines, and plannishing hammers. Another fun class. Then the next class was with Travis Sylvester from Sylvester’s Customs in Nuevo, CA where I learned body work. From there I went to Ken Sakamoto to learn the technique of metal finishing using hammer & dolly and the shrinking disc to bring my metal finishing to the highest level possible. After Ken’s class I felt like I really wanted to more shaping classes so I called up Travis Sylvester and convinced him to take Lazze’s Metal Shaping classes with me in Pismo Beach, CA. This was the most fun class I have ever had! We learned a lot about metal theory, cause and effect, and more on using the English wheel, Bead Rollers, Shrinker/Stretchers. In the step 2 class with Lazze we built almost an entire body for a 33 Roadster in 5 days with 3 students and Lazze, like I said one of the most fun classes I’ve attended. My last class just in November of 2025 was with Mike Wagner form Cornfield Customs in Ohio. Another great class! In this class we really dove into the issues that we have been struggling with on shaping our panels for our projects, trying to figure out the minor tweaks to our techniques that make all the difference. We also really dove into how to properly use a power hammer for shaping sheet metal. We went over making wooden bucks, paper patterns and gathering all the required information from our paper patterns to finally shape our panels, using all the tools we have at our disposal.

If you’ve read this far, THANK YOU! Hope you enjoyed reading about me and my journey into this amazing world of custom cars and trucks!