Brandon chrisman is using a rag to polish his 1956 f100 Ford truck,
even though the paintwork—"Ferrari blue"— could hardly shine brighter.
The fifties resonate with Mr Chrisman.
When he throws open the doors to his nearby factory,
the patina of history is even more dazzling than the car.
Inside are squat machines with cranks, gearsticks, shafts and handles that date back to 1958
when his grandfather started the firm.
With his buzz-cut, rust-coloured hair and square jaw, Mr Chrisman looks like he was forged there.
His firm, HydraWedge, is in El Segundo, a beachside city near Los Angeles International Airport (lax),
known by industrial metal-heads as "Gundo".
From before the second world war until the 1990s, it bristled with machine shops that cast,
milled and ground metal for the defence and aerospace industries—once the lifeblood of la's blue-collar workforce.
Then China drew away some of the metalworking and the machining industry hollowed out.
Once Mr Chrisman had about 20 employees.
Now he works alone.
And yet he is remarkably chipper.
In fact he is more hopeful for the future of American manufacturing than ever.
That is thanks to a bevy of startups springing up around him that share an animating principle:
they want to wrench industrial supremacy back from China.
They are surfing on a rising tide of venture capital.