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| These 50 spoke RW Wheels and Super Eagle tires are growing into Sean of Da vinci Steel Tattoo's black and white chopper. I'm using a Kawasaki KZ1000 and making an arched dropped goose necked dropseat frame. |
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click here to
see photo
shoot with Bob
Feather Photo
model: Emili Joi
see photo
shoot with Bob
Feather Photo
model: Emili Joi
The bells on the door jangle and Duke sounds the alarm and charges the door, still a bit asleep but sounding as ferocious as he can while out of the customers sight. The unwitting intruder, otherwise known as a customer turn and run or shriek, it’s game on,
the high point of a canine customer service rep.’s day. The disappointment of another chase gone bad was quickly replaced with a wiff of the chicken finger Sean was waving at him as a peace offering.
Sean had driven down to my shop from the county seat, Pryor Oklahoma where he’s a tattoo artist. After a few minutes it was clear we both had similar interests in music, art and motorcycles and this meeting was just the first step in the journey that would
become the motorcycle you see here . He had done his homework, knew what he liked, and asked some good questions about designing a custom bike. He then pointed at ‘Bo, my turbo-charged KZ custom sitting in the parking lot and said, I want
something like that. I knew right then we were gonna get along.
"Bo?" Sean asks. I explain that each machine I build has so much time, energy and life in it, it earns a name, just like any other part of someones life. Turning away and lifting my shirt I show him the script across the span of my back reading "Life in All
Things". They all grow their own unique identity almost to a point that they no longer bear the core resemblance to the bikes and parts they were culled from.
After a few minutes of conversation we find a few common touch points in music and art when he tells me he’s the tattoo artist in our county seat Pryor, OK. He had done his homework as to what he liked and asked some good questions about designing a
bike inspired by mine, but fit to his style. Where so many bikes powered with vintage metric motors come to fruition because of coin constraints, this one came into being because Sean wanted to ride something radically different from the standard fare
found rolling down the road. When these opportunities present themselves, I will offer up something from my vault-o-vintage-goodies, in this case a ’73 vintage Kawasaki Z1 dragster carrying a hotrod ’77 mill that I had been hoarding for a decade. Although
about half of my work, truly some of my best, is based around the venerable Harley Davidson drive-train, I love, and ride, metric motorcycles.
A few things that Sean had asked for first was a very low seat height, vintage style white wall tires and a springer front suspension. I suggested wheels I had used once before in a different color combination on a bobbed evo and they had proven themselves
bulletproof under the Samsonite Gorilla of a rider for a few years and countless cross country trips. I had an old Trumpy o.i.f frame on the counter that I am making a swing-arm for that caught his eye, this led the conversation to trying to get the neck dropped
from the maximum chassis height of an arched back bone. Now this is starting to sound really good to me. A unique frame will demand a free formed fuel tank as well as a ton of one-off parts to showcase some of my fab chops. While our talk continued he
was thumbing through a Roadbike that featured Slightly Blue, a custom I built that uses the ARSE credit card ignition, add that to the list and we have the ingredients of one great motorcycle being poured into my imagination.
After it was settled to make the entire scoot black and white as possible with some chrome accents, I contacted Ride Wright wheels and got the wheels on the way. As the wheels were being made I reached out to DNA for one of their budget priced
springers in a custom shortened length. When it arrived, it was accompanied by their handlebar controls, risers, drive sprocket / four piston brake and matching front brake set-up, all of the DNA parts I bought have been really trouble free and of solid quality.
It’s one thing to have a vision in your head, entirely another to introduce it to your hands. When I make a frame, it’s a very analytical process. Ride height and neck angle are only the beginning. To get the eye-line flowing through the machine in my head, it
has to dictate everything from a simple, single line. If a parts shape or placement is outside the line, it must be designed and refined for this one singular machine. Where the rider sits and where the wheels are in relation to this. When in motion, the location
of the riders feet in relation to the hands and rotation of the riders hips. All of this and so much more dictate the work to come. Something that I notice is discounted by many in the Bar-n-Shield faithful crowd is that when you start with a H-D based drive-
train, you have a lot of the measurements already done for you through the efforts of a century of motorcycle engineers and hacks alike.
To get the arched back bone and the dropped height in the steering head, I had to first make a pattern to make it actually work for a motorcycle, not a simple sculpture. Plywood was cut to shape and clamped to my frame table. Copious amounts of heat was
applied by Sean as I worked it around the buck. The goose-neck was another challenge entirely. You may notice that when perusing custom choppers, goose neck frames are usually at an angle sloping towards the ground. This was the Fortune Cookie
inspiration, a near 90 degree down tube to a radius backbone give me the look of and fortune cookie. I filled a piece of 1.5” D.O.M. tubing with sand and made myself a buck to form it over, after three failed attempts, each ending in a flattened bend, I got
one that sit exactly where I needed it to. Now I have the major design pieces of the frame made, I can start using my tubing bender and dies to make the 1 1/8” D.O.M. rails of the frame as I normally do. While I make the frame, some parts have to be
designed in, like the tail lights and the hidden fork stops.
Keeping the lines of the bike clean required making my own brake lines and running them through the frame and handle bars, joining the front and rear brakes to a central proportioning valve. With it, the other controllers and standard variety of electrical
components are squeezed into the box sitting on the lower frame rails. It took more than twenty access holes and tabs to get everything hidden and functional from the tail/ turn lights frenched into the rear of the frame beneath the hidden axle plates that were
engraved for my by Otto Carter in TX up to the simple headlight on a custom mount.
The next check box on Sean’s list was a jockey shifter. I’m not a big fan of the foot clutched, jockey shifted chopper. To keep it a bit more user friendly, I used a regular hand clutch and fabbed a slick shift linkage and bent some stainless tubing to lay in the
lines of the fuel tank. Topping it off is a large dice with “Atlantic City New Jersey” embossed on it that I picked up at a garage sale in New Jersey about 15 years ago, another gem from my goodie pile.
Now that the controls were all worked out, the CV carburetors that I have modified to fit the old KZ motor, the Sportster style hand controls and the sprocket cover / clutch pusher assembly is rushed out to Motion Pro for them to make the cables to connect
the respective parts. I made the cables on my chopper, but they were a giant p.i.t.a. For the surprisingly low cost of a custom black cable, the decision to have Preston in their custom cables department is the smart way to get it done right.
While the cables are being made, I get started on the rear fender and sissy bar. Sean wanted a small sissy bar and passenger accommodations. I really liked the backbone of the frame and went with a ribbed steel fender. I’ve only seen one advertised in
the wider size and steel, so I bought it. I’m not gonna lie, I have had cheap import parts come up and bite me in the butt, the rib was terribly crooked, forcing me to cut it out half of the rib and re-shape most of it. Next I added copious amounts of heat to some
rod and grew the fender support / sissy bar to my taste and offer support and a grab rail for a passenger.
With the motor in its place in the frame now, I started cutting some poster paper to build the fuel tank. I love sexy, natural lines. A strong back and tapered waist is what this machine was asking from me. After way too many hours at the english wheel and
hammer with sheet steel, I ended at a fuel tank that sits beneath the back bone, tapering and yielding to the demands of my hand, the rider and frame.
Starting with a white base, crushed pearl and black were added until I had painted every part one or the other if they weren’t chrome already. After I tore the motor down, our shop hand Travis, or Puller as he’s know here, detailed and painted all of the parts
that I didn’t coat with white as I painted the rest of the bike. Buie, our rat Triumph riding friend who does great leather work, stopped in and took the antennae for the pass card switch and the seat pans to cover them in laced black leather. Another in the
team effort here was Brandon and Puller duplicating the first side of the exhaust that I made and installing the baffles before painting them black as well.
I could not be more proud now that I can see this scoot roll down the street, freed from my imagination. To see how neutral the steering is and how light it feels in your hands, how it leans against the grain when parked to clear space in a roadside line-up,
how it is brought to life with a trick modern pass card and flies with a bullet that is three decades old, how it is truly a unique custom motorcycle and there is not another one like it, and how I’m going to make the next one.
the high point of a canine customer service rep.’s day. The disappointment of another chase gone bad was quickly replaced with a wiff of the chicken finger Sean was waving at him as a peace offering.
Sean had driven down to my shop from the county seat, Pryor Oklahoma where he’s a tattoo artist. After a few minutes it was clear we both had similar interests in music, art and motorcycles and this meeting was just the first step in the journey that would
become the motorcycle you see here . He had done his homework, knew what he liked, and asked some good questions about designing a custom bike. He then pointed at ‘Bo, my turbo-charged KZ custom sitting in the parking lot and said, I want
something like that. I knew right then we were gonna get along.
"Bo?" Sean asks. I explain that each machine I build has so much time, energy and life in it, it earns a name, just like any other part of someones life. Turning away and lifting my shirt I show him the script across the span of my back reading "Life in All
Things". They all grow their own unique identity almost to a point that they no longer bear the core resemblance to the bikes and parts they were culled from.
After a few minutes of conversation we find a few common touch points in music and art when he tells me he’s the tattoo artist in our county seat Pryor, OK. He had done his homework as to what he liked and asked some good questions about designing a
bike inspired by mine, but fit to his style. Where so many bikes powered with vintage metric motors come to fruition because of coin constraints, this one came into being because Sean wanted to ride something radically different from the standard fare
found rolling down the road. When these opportunities present themselves, I will offer up something from my vault-o-vintage-goodies, in this case a ’73 vintage Kawasaki Z1 dragster carrying a hotrod ’77 mill that I had been hoarding for a decade. Although
about half of my work, truly some of my best, is based around the venerable Harley Davidson drive-train, I love, and ride, metric motorcycles.
A few things that Sean had asked for first was a very low seat height, vintage style white wall tires and a springer front suspension. I suggested wheels I had used once before in a different color combination on a bobbed evo and they had proven themselves
bulletproof under the Samsonite Gorilla of a rider for a few years and countless cross country trips. I had an old Trumpy o.i.f frame on the counter that I am making a swing-arm for that caught his eye, this led the conversation to trying to get the neck dropped
from the maximum chassis height of an arched back bone. Now this is starting to sound really good to me. A unique frame will demand a free formed fuel tank as well as a ton of one-off parts to showcase some of my fab chops. While our talk continued he
was thumbing through a Roadbike that featured Slightly Blue, a custom I built that uses the ARSE credit card ignition, add that to the list and we have the ingredients of one great motorcycle being poured into my imagination.
After it was settled to make the entire scoot black and white as possible with some chrome accents, I contacted Ride Wright wheels and got the wheels on the way. As the wheels were being made I reached out to DNA for one of their budget priced
springers in a custom shortened length. When it arrived, it was accompanied by their handlebar controls, risers, drive sprocket / four piston brake and matching front brake set-up, all of the DNA parts I bought have been really trouble free and of solid quality.
It’s one thing to have a vision in your head, entirely another to introduce it to your hands. When I make a frame, it’s a very analytical process. Ride height and neck angle are only the beginning. To get the eye-line flowing through the machine in my head, it
has to dictate everything from a simple, single line. If a parts shape or placement is outside the line, it must be designed and refined for this one singular machine. Where the rider sits and where the wheels are in relation to this. When in motion, the location
of the riders feet in relation to the hands and rotation of the riders hips. All of this and so much more dictate the work to come. Something that I notice is discounted by many in the Bar-n-Shield faithful crowd is that when you start with a H-D based drive-
train, you have a lot of the measurements already done for you through the efforts of a century of motorcycle engineers and hacks alike.
To get the arched back bone and the dropped height in the steering head, I had to first make a pattern to make it actually work for a motorcycle, not a simple sculpture. Plywood was cut to shape and clamped to my frame table. Copious amounts of heat was
applied by Sean as I worked it around the buck. The goose-neck was another challenge entirely. You may notice that when perusing custom choppers, goose neck frames are usually at an angle sloping towards the ground. This was the Fortune Cookie
inspiration, a near 90 degree down tube to a radius backbone give me the look of and fortune cookie. I filled a piece of 1.5” D.O.M. tubing with sand and made myself a buck to form it over, after three failed attempts, each ending in a flattened bend, I got
one that sit exactly where I needed it to. Now I have the major design pieces of the frame made, I can start using my tubing bender and dies to make the 1 1/8” D.O.M. rails of the frame as I normally do. While I make the frame, some parts have to be
designed in, like the tail lights and the hidden fork stops.
Keeping the lines of the bike clean required making my own brake lines and running them through the frame and handle bars, joining the front and rear brakes to a central proportioning valve. With it, the other controllers and standard variety of electrical
components are squeezed into the box sitting on the lower frame rails. It took more than twenty access holes and tabs to get everything hidden and functional from the tail/ turn lights frenched into the rear of the frame beneath the hidden axle plates that were
engraved for my by Otto Carter in TX up to the simple headlight on a custom mount.
The next check box on Sean’s list was a jockey shifter. I’m not a big fan of the foot clutched, jockey shifted chopper. To keep it a bit more user friendly, I used a regular hand clutch and fabbed a slick shift linkage and bent some stainless tubing to lay in the
lines of the fuel tank. Topping it off is a large dice with “Atlantic City New Jersey” embossed on it that I picked up at a garage sale in New Jersey about 15 years ago, another gem from my goodie pile.
Now that the controls were all worked out, the CV carburetors that I have modified to fit the old KZ motor, the Sportster style hand controls and the sprocket cover / clutch pusher assembly is rushed out to Motion Pro for them to make the cables to connect
the respective parts. I made the cables on my chopper, but they were a giant p.i.t.a. For the surprisingly low cost of a custom black cable, the decision to have Preston in their custom cables department is the smart way to get it done right.
While the cables are being made, I get started on the rear fender and sissy bar. Sean wanted a small sissy bar and passenger accommodations. I really liked the backbone of the frame and went with a ribbed steel fender. I’ve only seen one advertised in
the wider size and steel, so I bought it. I’m not gonna lie, I have had cheap import parts come up and bite me in the butt, the rib was terribly crooked, forcing me to cut it out half of the rib and re-shape most of it. Next I added copious amounts of heat to some
rod and grew the fender support / sissy bar to my taste and offer support and a grab rail for a passenger.
With the motor in its place in the frame now, I started cutting some poster paper to build the fuel tank. I love sexy, natural lines. A strong back and tapered waist is what this machine was asking from me. After way too many hours at the english wheel and
hammer with sheet steel, I ended at a fuel tank that sits beneath the back bone, tapering and yielding to the demands of my hand, the rider and frame.
Starting with a white base, crushed pearl and black were added until I had painted every part one or the other if they weren’t chrome already. After I tore the motor down, our shop hand Travis, or Puller as he’s know here, detailed and painted all of the parts
that I didn’t coat with white as I painted the rest of the bike. Buie, our rat Triumph riding friend who does great leather work, stopped in and took the antennae for the pass card switch and the seat pans to cover them in laced black leather. Another in the
team effort here was Brandon and Puller duplicating the first side of the exhaust that I made and installing the baffles before painting them black as well.
I could not be more proud now that I can see this scoot roll down the street, freed from my imagination. To see how neutral the steering is and how light it feels in your hands, how it leans against the grain when parked to clear space in a roadside line-up,
how it is brought to life with a trick modern pass card and flies with a bullet that is three decades old, how it is truly a unique custom motorcycle and there is not another one like it, and how I’m going to make the next one.