Rusted and… Rebar

While looking at rat rods on Pinterest, we found this rusty old truck with a visor made out of license plates. We were extremely inspired by this idea, and decided that we could do something similar, but add a unique twist to it. We devised a plan to create a frame for the visor using rebar, which is a type of steel reinforcement bar that is often used in construction for reinforcing concrete. We would then fill in the frame with smaller fragments of rebar, and stitch pieces of license plates to fit over the frame.

The rebar was extremely difficult to cut and work with. Steel is pretty solid. Especially thermo-mechanically treated steel with a tempered core.  The rebar ate through several grinding wheels before we even finished making the outer frame. Luckily, the thickness of the rebar makes it excellent for welding.

We used a straight piece of steel for the center, which would act as the main support, as well as a mounting point for our acrylic cow skull. The two side brackets were designed to sit above the side window tracks, using the spider webs to support the sides of visor.

Once the outer frame was complete, it was time to fill in the gaps. Since these structural pieces would be visible from inside the car, we decided that we should make them somewhat uniform.

The sparks from the grinder burned a lot of holes in the workbench, which can be seen slowly deteriorating throughout this progression of photos.

Once the frame was complete, we started filling in the gaps with license plates. Most of the plates we used are from the 1930s and 1940s because these license plates are made of a much thicker gauge steel than modern license plates, which makes them more suitable for welding.

After getting the visor welded to the car and sprayed down with our Secret Rust Solution, we fastened on our cow skull and sealed the surface with clear coat to stop the rust from venturing any further.