Spending my evenings and weekends pounding steel to bring forth another creation out of my friends and my mind......
What we've chosen for this is a 1973 Honda cb750.... A bike torn to pieces and a motor that had not run in several years. Covered in dirt oil and a thick layer of god knows what..... Not even knowing if it would ever run. We started putting pieces together. Day by day over the months we've scraped and saved. For more and more tools for our lil makeshift shop.
Making up for what we lack in expensive tools with ingenuity. Shaping steel with a hammer alone. Rather than a mandrel bender or a plannishing hammer. Our craft was being honed by our will alone. This bike belongs to my good friend James whom is one of the three parts of our shop.... James, Mike and Casey........
The three of us all have different skills in a variety of areas all of which are important to the final outcome of what you see here. And all are needed for the final outcome.
Pounding a piece of flat steel into a functioning piece of machinery is a form of meditation for me. I absolutely hate working on my trucks. (its' like a death sentence to even change my oil in my truck) But for some reason when it comes to bikes. I feel at peace inside. And will pass up many other things on a weekend just to spend a few more hours making something out of nothing. It's a feeling of total accomplishment to take something 30 plus years old. Covered in rust and mashed to pieces. And bring it back to life. Through nothing more than shear determination and will power.
We built almost every part of this bike by hand from pieces of flat steel. The gas tank came from eBay. That's one piece I do need some more tools to accomplish with the curvature of the steel and a lot nicer and much more expensive welder than we currently have.. The main frame rails were tigwelded by tigman. On the east coast. (a very sought after master craftsman in his own right, this man is a god with steel)
But those two things are the only things on this bike that we did not make. The oil tank, forward controls, all tabs and mounting, sissy bar, fender, brakes brackets and mounting, kickstand, pipes, seat pan and leather work, shaved controls. Every lil piece. Each one taking a complete day or sometimes many more to make from scratch. A labor of love you could say. As my hammer strikes the steel and brings forth the desired shape. A smile comes across my face. And I feel like I'm doing what I was meant to do. Then Casey takes that rough hammered steel that you might think by the naked eye when bare was perfectly smooth. And show's you how rough it actually is when he started blocking it off in paint prep. Hours upon hours of hand filling and sanding each piece of steel to bring it to a nice smooth form. Ready for the paint to poor across each curve.
Well after months of many set backs and lots of work here it is. Another resurrected Honda chopper. Ready for many more years of biker stories to be made upon it's saddle. To be passed down to yet another chopper head someday.
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