NATIVE SUN

Another installment of “Straight From The Owner” brings us the tale of father and son team, Craig and Corey Shornak, of South Chesterfield, Virginia. We met up with them at the Southeastern Truck Nationals in Tennessee last July to snap some photos and get the lowdown on their fantastic ‘58 Apache – which happened to win the Best of Show trophy at the event! Here’s what Craig has to say about it the build…

“Corey and I have been building cars together since he was 13 years old (2008). In 2015 I purchased an old convenience store and we turned it into our hot rod hobby shop – the hot rod hangout. It has attracted a lot of good friends who love cars, just like we do. Corey built the Metal Doctor Fab shop truck, and that’s when the Metal Doctor branding started (MDF). When it says “Custom fab by MDF, it’s either one of us or both. I own an industrial machine shop (Master Machine and Engineering Co., Inc. in Richmond, Virginia) and that helps with the tools to do all this crazy fabrication. Every build we do seems to be getting more intense and detailed and we love it!

I purchased this truck in September of 2017. It was listed for sale on Craigslist in Clayton. NC. The previous owner of the truck had it transported to NC in the 90’s from Texas. The truck had 78,000 original miles on it. The floors and inner steps are all original. It’s been repainted at one point in its life with the original color. The bed wasn’t prepped very well and has lost a lot of the repaint. The paint was very chalky, but the Wizard compound brought the patina back to life!

After 2-1/2 years building the truck, my wife and I drove it 350 miles to a show in Myrtle Beach. Oh what a feeling! We absolutely love this truck.

Big thanks to Corey Shornak, Dayn Kahn, Matt Grosso, George Martin, and Brian Wohnig for their help.”