He buys pieces of particular metals from scrap dealers in the Twin Cities in Minnesota.
"Scrap dealers have short pieces off the ends of bars that manufacturers don't want," he says, "or scrap iron or whatever."
But Dave says he doesn't haunt the scrap places too often.
He has occasionally had to order some pieces, like 5/8 x 1/8 inch flatiron for making his Lake Breeze fan.
One-of-a-Kind?
Though Dave doesn't think any of his models are especially rare or unusual, because he's seen them around, one in particular -his "6-Cycle Oddball" engine - is the only one of its kind he's ever seen. He got the plans from a book, and he says it's the engine most people comment on.
"With the other ones, people will say, 'I like that one', or 'That one sure has a lot of detail on it', especially that IHC Famous, but with the 6-cycle oddball, people always ask how it works. It's associated with a four-cycle car engine, basically, which involves two revolutions a crank (of the crankshaft.) I don't know if they really believe you can make a small engine like that. I have to explain it all the time - the crankshaft goes three revolutions to every one revolution of the cam, which is unusual. People are always trying to figure it out. Others just look at me like they don't believe it. That's the only engine like that that I've seen around. I've seen pictures of them that are made a little differently, though."
Dave doesn't keep track of how long it takes him to make one, but in general terms, each model takes about a month of his free time.
"I started keeping track of the hours a couple of times, but then I forgot to mark the time down, and kind of lost it all," he chuckles.
He's got the castings and plans on hand to make about ten engines yet.