About Us
The fifty year journey begins with a young Cal Davis, the untimely love for the automobile started with a Henry J. Just the thought of simple body work, custom colors, engine and chassis tuning started a life long appreciation for custom fabrication. The early sixties saw Davis and family entering into the body shop business. The shop located in central Florida that dealt with the plague of early 60’s, rust, etc… but Cal was surrounded by one of the best body fabricators in the area, James Rice. Rice was not intimidated by any project, clipping cars, fabricating patch panels, filling with lead, and metal finishing; all began to exercise the imagination of Cal Davis.
Young Davis at the time was a field engineer for Daniels Construction Company building multi-story buildings and strengthening his experience in standard methodology, a discipline in design analysis, engineering procedures and most of all finishing projects. The technique and procedures introduced to Cal, along with his love of the automobile, would launch Davis into the motorsports industry with the passion to build a competitive performance vehicle. Entering into the relatively young racing arena, Cal and young son Mark Davis, 12 at the time, started to build a 1956 Chevy. Cal’s background in engineering instilled a thirst for information, a reason and purpose for everything. The pair realized that information dealing with motorsports was slim. Articles in Hot Rod Magazine, a new publication called Stock Car Magazine, and a young man in Southern California named Steve Smith were the only sources of any technical media available. The team purchased every book, magazine, periodical, researched automotive design books and engineering hand-books, anything that shed a light on the subject at hand. Davis’ quest for information made it obvious that any information learned was a valuable possession.
In 1969 Davis ventured into the auto body business for the second time: This time with a different objective, to purchase equipment and support the racing program. From 1970 to 1982 Cal’s Body Shop specialized in structural wreck repair throughout North Florida and South Georgia, while successfully racing on the short tracks in the same area. In 1976 Cal ventured into the training arena teaching Auto Body classes at the local high school. The experience opened the door for Cal to expand his background in engineering and auto body fabrication to a professional vocational instructor, a passion that till this day he considers the most satisfying of his vocations.
In 1977 a 17 year old Mark Davis started driving, winning two main events and a Rookie of the Year award. In 1978 the 18 year old won 7 main events and the track championship. In 1979 the young Davis entered into a relationship that would lead him, in 1984, to the Winston Cup Circuit and a career as a body fabricator. For the next three years Cal and Mark would both fine-tune their skills. In 1987 Cal would leave North Florida school system to join Marks business, Motorsports Fabrication, which specialized in the fabrication of NASCAR touring series metal bodies. The duo both continued to expand their focus. Mark joined the GM Tech Team, a group of support technicians that worked with GM subsidized teams with everything from aero dynamics to thermal dynamics. Cal expanded his knowledge in panel development. His search for information lead him to a book published by Ron Fournier with an address for a set of plans for a virtually forgotten about machine called an English Wheel. The plans had been around since 1972 developed by an English sheet metal fabricator name John Glover, a concept engineer for General Motors. Cal contacted John and an 18 year relationship was formed.
Cal purchased a set of plans for the Glover version of the English Wheel and built a unit to use for shaping the exterior panels used by Motorsports Fabrication. In 1988 Robert Yates visited the shop and wanted an English Wheel. With the encouragement of wife Joyce, Cal built the first Metalcraft Tools English Wheel. Metalcraft Tools started production of the EW40 and quickly saturated the professional motorsports teams. The only problem was the team had limited personnel that could use the English Wheel. With suggestions from John Glover the Davis’s started the Motorsports Training Center; a dedicated training center for the Motorsports industry. Fabricators world wide visited the training center for the three day training program.
In 1997 Mark expanded the program too a new level adding classes to include Chassis Construction, Chassis Dynamics, Track Tech, Welding, Assembly, Fabrication, Race Team Management, Refinishing, Graphics and a race team called Team Concept. The Team Concept program took technicians to the next level. Students built, maintained, and raced in professional motorsports events 30 times a year. In 2001 Mark introduced a model for a Motorsports Center of Excellence to the North Carolina Community College system. The concept would incorporate all the motorsports based programs into one center. This concept was not received into the community college system because of the over 2,000 technicians trained by the Davis’ 90% were from out side the state of North Carolina.
As Mark expanded the training for the motorsports industry, Cal in 1990, headed to Michigan with a video camera and a motor home to film the first of the John Glover videos. Cal’s vision would allow novice metal shapers a first hand introduction to metal shaping with a master metal shaper orchestrating a series of projects that everybody could relate to. The videos turned out to be a lot of work but very popular. In 1992 with the English Wheel a solid seller Cal started to expand his interest to the power hammer. Videos from Sunchaser Tools and Scott Knight with exposure to the power hammers at coach craft started the wheels in motion to design and produce a power hammer that is affordable and available. The first generation of the power hammer was sold in kit form. By the late 1990’s the Metalcraft Tools power hammer was in the training lab and metal shaping technicians were starting to experience the 900 blow per minute 50 pound hammer.
In 2004, after 20 years of professional motorsports, Mark received an offer to sell the racing part of the school. At the same time Metalcraft Tools had to make some choices. Mark and Cal still wanted to create a fabrication skill center and information network that could expand into online training. Their passion led them to Crossville, Tennessee, a new training and manufacturing facility. The new 10,000 sq. foot skill center has a 3,500 square foot dedicated metal shaping, powder coating, welding, a video studio, live streaming video server and editing suite. The foot facility houses a tool showroom, a CNC machine shop and a new 2,500 square foot fabrication shop. The Davis family is looking forward to their 20 year anniversary in 2007 of Metalcraft Tools celebrating with a new, broader, information network.
Mark W. Davis, Executive Director
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