Anyone who has built an automotive scale model has seen the plastic sprues with the various parts attached to them. Then, you have to carefully cut out the pieces with nippers, get rid of the remaining nubs, and glue together the components. At his auto restoration workshop, Richard Hammond is using real parts from a classic Mini to make sprues and displaying them as the building's safety rails.
Hammond is especially proud of these rails because he's the person making them. An engineer at the shop provides the outer frames, tubes for the interior pieces, and the metal cones that attach to the actual Mini components. The Hamster lays out everything and welds the pieces into place. The car parts came from a Mini that the shop was restoring.
Here's What Hammond Is Doing:
The rails then go through blasting and powder coating. With this first section done, Hammond plans to continue this process for the rest of the safety rails around the building's mezzanine. When the project is complete, it's going to look like you could assemble a whole car by putting together all of the parts.
Hammond made a small error with his first length of safety rail. On the lower right, he welded a spring onto the sprue. He realized that it wouldn't have taken the heat during the powder coating process and removed the component. The piece could have detonated and that would have screwed up everything.
If you want to see more of Hammond, he, Clarkson, and May are returning for The Grand Tour Presents: Carnage A Trois on December 17. The guys are abusing a bunch of French cars this time. The trailer shows that there's also some rallycross racing. Plus, Clarkson and Hammond take a ride in a Citroën SM and seem to love it, despite the vehicle's significant quirks.
Source: DriveTribe via Grand Tour Nation