Around the world in 600cc – Robert Edison Fulton Jr and the Douglas T6

Robert Edison Fulton Jr: 40,000 miles on a Douglas T6

Setting off for a globe-trotting trip on a motorcycle is pretty old-hat nowadays – revolutionaries enlarge their aura, celebs get TV shows off the back of it and the rest hope for a tiny flame of recognition to illuminate a sense of personal achievment, but probably just get moaned at by the wife when they return home (it's largely a male phenomenon).

If you can be arsed to look, there's a Wiki page devoted to long-distance bikers here

The celebs go with a back-up truck and crew, the rest do it unsupported but on modern machines more than capable of the journey (notable exceptions include Ted Simon on a Meriden Triumph and Nick Sanders who covered 38,000miles on a 1990 Royal Enfield Bullet) but it's to the pioneers we must give the greatest praise, wobbling off on machines that'd be hard-pushed to get you across town, piled high with crappy or else makeshift camping equipment and dressed in big shorts and pith helmets, saying fuck to safety and trusting to an innate sense of superiority and a high-handed manner with the natives.

One of the first – and definitely the first and only one mounted on a Douglas twin – to circumnavigate the globe was Robert Edison Fulton Jr, an American who, aged 23, was on the verge of returning home after a year's post-grad studying in Europe but decided instead to set off around the world on a motorcycle, recording the trip on 4000ft of 35mm motion picture stock and writing a book on his return, the somewhat obscurely titled One Man Caravan (Harcourt, Brace & Co, New York, 1937).

Fulton's account places him at a dinner party in London in 1932 during which, when asked what he planned to do now his studies were at an end, responded completely out of the blue: "Go around the world on a motorcycle!"  surprising himself as much as the other diners. If we can credit it, also at the party there happened to be a man who had recently taken over the failing Douglas motorcycle company of Hanham Road, Kingswood. A bike was promptly offered and accepted and with just a brief period of practise riding, Robert rode off into the sunset and the start of 40,000 miles – London to New York. Hmm…

Fulton astride the Douglas with his own annotations

It could be true, but there's that uncomfortable coincidence which sets the brake on belief. Certainly, Jeff Clew's The Douglas Motorcycle, The Best Twin (2nd Ed, Foulis, 1981) dismisses Fulton with little more than a paragraph on p121 citing the would-be world traveller's petitioning Harley-Davidson's London HQ for a machine and being turned away with a flea in his ear before approaching Douglas. There, Eddie Withers offered the young man a machine. What's more Clew reveals Fulton's 600cc T6 began the trip as a combination (with Withers as ballast until Douglas put down its collective foot) but the chair was abandoned following an accident in Belgium and it continued as a solo – none of which is mentioned in Fulton's book.

Fiction then? Well there's certainly a gloss of self-promoting hyperbole throughout but I think otherwise the book is a true account at least as Fulton saw it. Alongside, Fulton released a movie documentary of the trip entitled Twice Upon a Caravan which is narrated by the author, widely available on DVD and genuinely enjoyable.

The movie of the book of the ride…

1930s mobile phone (actually a clockwork cine camera)

With  a little help from his friends… the T6 as a combination

Fulton's attitude to those he met was in fact, quite enlightened

The very latest in protective motorcycling leisurewear (for 1932)

Fulton takes a toss… one of many

Signed edition

My copy of the book is a signed first edition published in 1937 and despite some misgivings over at least some of the 'amusing' anecdotes contained therein (at best apocryphal, at worst fiction) it is nonetheless a thoroughly enjoyable read, stuffed with photographs (many, I think, stills from the movie), delightful woodcut maps and pen-and-ink sketches, drawn by the author.

What it isn't, is a book about Douglas, the T6 flat twin, or even motorcycling, and those looking for a bike book to while away the dark evenings until the season begins again will be disappointed. As Fulton says, the bike exists only to carry the man and to enable him to get closer to the action. For him, it has no intrinsic value or attraction.

No 1930s journey would be complete without a naughty monkey

But if the prospect of derring-do astride 6hp, with white knees flapping in the wind and a Smith and Wesson .32 revolver stashed between the crankcase and bashplate is your idea of high adventure seek out a copy. It has gone through several contemporary reprintings.

Incidentally, Robert Fulton had illustrious antecedents (his father was the president of Mack Trucks) and a productive life beyond this journey – Google him for further info.

The author and Douglas still together in his late 80s

The Black Rider – all aboard for derring-do in deepest Dorset!

It's 1953 and America is thrilling to, and not a little disgusted by, the gloriously anarchic, devil-may-care outlaw bikers as depicted in The Wild One, all dusty open roads, Perfecto black leather, hep jive talk and road captain hats worn at dangerously rakish angles.

Banned in Britain of course. Our roads are damp or frosty even in summer, leather is largely for the patched shoulders of roadmenders' donkey jackets, road captain hats are for bus conductors and we don't like 'slang' at any price, especially not the transatlantic variety, and those who try it come off as agonisingly awkward and uncomfortable (presaging British porn of 50 years or so later).

What we do have in common is a love of motorcycles and especially, but not exclusively, the Triumph variety. So fast forward a year to 1954 and here's the Brit answer to biker movies: The Black Rider, a pale and sickly cousin if ever there was one, featuring a sprinkling of c-list contract players of the day (with Lionel Jeffries and Kenneth Connor in early roles the exceptions), a thin plot about spies and miniature atom bombs guarded by a ghostly monk astride a BSA Bantam and a 'handsome' leading couple mounted on a lovely Triumph twin.

"I say Jerry, that's a damn fine mount", "Thanks old boy,
and the bike's none too shabby either!"

In fact, the movie's not half bad and anyone nostalgic for a lost era of helmetless ’50s outings will certainly spend an enjoyable 90 minutes in the company of cub reporter (and erstwhile army dispatch rider) Jerry Marsh as he foils the unpleasant plans of a lot of beastly foreigners bent on mischief with remotely-triggered atom bombs.

Set in the fictional Swanhaven, the locations are actually Swanage, Purbeck and Corfe Castle in Dorset and there's plenty of biking action including classic 1950s club trials and gymkhanas and a lovely insight into the 'compete sunday, ride to work monday' ethos of the day, when the luxury of two bikes was an impossible dream and you simply used your road-going machine with an entrant number stuck over the headlamp. Oh, for a return to what our American cousins cheerfully call: 'run what you brung'!

The glorious English countryside…

…and motorcycles, what could be better?

"Spotted any bleeding-heart tree-huggers Bert?" "Not this morning Sid,
I'd give it about another 50 years..."

"I'm afraid I've run over a few dozen small animals and decimated the
wild flower population Sid…" "Don't you worry about that Fred,
it's all good clean fun!"

The movie features a range of bikes including an Enfield Meteor, various Triumphs, BSAs, AJSs and Ariels, an Excelsior Villiers 250cc twin, and two scooters which I'm guessing are Douglas-built Vespas.

Douglas Vespa and Excelsior twin side by side

Egg & spoon race ’cycle style

There are some interesting registrations to be seen too including a brace of Warwickshire WDs on consecutively-numbered machines PWD17 (Jerry's Triumph) and PWD18, and a sprinkling of Birmingham OCs and OKs.

Jerry and his MC club chums prepare to foil Johnny Foreigner's wicked ways

Watch it here

NB Thanks to the forum members at Enfield parts supplier Hitchcock's for locating the source of the movie.

Bath-time for Burnerd

It's a well-made small lathe the Grayson, 3.5inch swing over a gap bed, backgeared and screwcutting, solid, dependable, from an age when a thing well-made – even to a price – gave pleasure to maker and consumer alike. And it's a description that might easily be applied to the lathe's erstwhile owner – solid and dependable. Erstwhile because, in his 80s, he shuffled off after a lifetime in engineering, leaving his beloved little Grayson behind in his shed.
 

Grayson in its original setting

I first met him at his retirement do, the plus-one of his daughter and my future wife. He was chief designer at Westinghouse, based on the top floor of the famous Douglas building in Hanham Road, Kingswood. The shed is just a few minutes walk from that office and forms a triangle with the house he had built to his own design in 1960. The greater part of half a century going from home to office, office to home, home to shed. You can easily imagine a similar existence for the great Lawrence Sparey.

Now the Grayson lives in my workshop (read 'garage'), shoehorned in alongside my bikes and replacing an elderly Myford ML7 and a Chinese-built minilathe before that (surprisingly useful once fettled).

ML7 replaced by humble Grayson

Grayson with home-made stand and chip tray

The Grayson is better than the minilathe and not quite as good as the Myford but when you're short on space yet big on fondness and respect you'll happily swap out the ML7 and instate the Grayson in its stead. I would. I did. Now it makes chips for me and while I'm not big on the notion of the hereafter, I sincerely hope that if he's 'up there' somewhere, wandering about in a stores coat and poring over tolerances with a mic, he's somehow aware of how much the Grayson is loved in its new home.

Loved, that is, with an exception: the Burnerd three-jaw chuck that came with it. Having rested for a few years unloved in a shed, it's become a hellish wrestling match to use. A tight scroll and jaws means using it is almost a two-handed affair. In short, if you're the type of bloke who looks like Mac before he gambled a stamp, turning the scroll in this beast is hard work. Time for a CLA…

First step, remove the chuck from the lathe. Graysons have a threaded spindle compatible with Myford and so unless it's stuck, removing the chuck is a simple matter of engaging back gear to lock the spindle and giving the chuck a smart tug. Be sure to have a  bed board in place then unscrew in the conventional way.

First step: remove the chuck and wind out the jaws

Stripping varies from model to model but once it's on the bench the process is broadly similar: remove the jaws by winding them out of the chuck. Look for a register mark spanning the backplate and chuck and if there isn't one, mark it with a Sharpie, engineer's blue, chalk, scribe or whatever. Loosen the three bolts (or set screws) holding the backplate to the chuck and remove it.

Undo the bolts holding the backplate to the chuck

Inside there are three further set screws holding the scroll gear cover. Undo the screws and persuade the cover to come out – don't pry it and don't drop it when it comes out unexpectedly.

Jaws, backplate, gear cover and associated screws

Undo the threaded pins located alongside each chuck key gear, remove them and their respective gears. Now you can remove the scroll. Insert a brass drift through the front face of the chuck and give the scroll several smart raps – you might have to work at it to shift it.

Use a brass drift…

…to remove the scroll

With the scroll removed the chuck is reduced to its constituent parts. Give everything a wash and brush up in a bath of paraffin, brake cleaner or some other suitable thinner.

Paraffin bath for Burnerd

Allow it to dry (you can help using paper towels), oil sparingly (some prefer grease – your choice) and reassemble being sure to line up any register marks, replace the chuck key gears in their numbered housings etc.

Be sure to correctly reinstall numbered parts

Reinstate the chuck on the lathe. Now you'll have a chuck that is free and a pleasure to use.

Spruce chuck back in place

Incidentally, always store a chuck jaws down (that is, standing on its opened jaws). It's counter-intuitive but there's less chance of upsetting the backplate register and reduced opportunity for foreign matter to find its way into the scroll.

Coming soon: the Royal Enfield 500 Twin my father-in-law owned and loved as a young man (yes, despite a background in engineering!)