Blog

We drew these jig plans up based on other jigs we’ve seen and on our own experience about what works in the shop. This jig was used on Ron Covell’s “Build a Chopper Chassis” video.

You may not sell these, host them on your own site or re-distribute them in any way.

click here to download plans

Read more... | Published: 11/09/07

The Ugly Bike Cometh

Didja ever get the crazy idea to buy a bike you don’t really need? To start a new project when you’ve already got three or four already cooking? I’m probably the only one that ends up in these situations.

It was a nice spring day, and I’d spotted a bargain Ironhead Sportster on CraigsList. Damn computers. I went over and looked at it with my buddy Brian. We got it started (MAN it was hard to start, I had a whopper bruise on the inside of my leg that night!) I rode it around, convinced myself

Read more... | Published: 11/12/07

Metal Shaping Videos with Fay Butler

About 15 or 20 years ago I was visiting a friend in MA who told me about a “really good metalworker” he knew. Fresh from a 3 day course with Scott Knight I was eager to go meet this guy – but skeptical that he was in the same league as Scott.

It turned out we were visiting Fay Butler. This was before he started doing his seminars. He stopped what he was doing and spent half a day with us, talking about how to shape metal, make patterns, run a power hammer and

Read more... | Published: 11/13/07

The Beginnings

The rear fender on “The Ugly Ironhead” was just the stock fender that had been cut down. In fact, the previous owner held it up to a wide belt sander and flattened the entire lower edge. It’s a little square, and not too interesting to my eye.

Now, really, I’d prefer to hardtail this bike and have a nice fender mounted tight to the tire. I don’t have time, and I want to ride NOW, so we’re going to do the best we can with this fender.

From the rear it’s not terrible…

Read more... | Published: 11/15/07

One of the things we did on the “Memento Mori” ironhead was to split the rockers. This isn’t a new thing, but the Ironhead rocker covers are different from Shovel rocker covers. They are shaped differently, with one side coming to a square corner and the other having a curved corner. They also have fewer bolts, so if you eliminate the middle bolt you only have three bolts holding each rocker half, not four like a shovel.

The way we modified these came from Weyland at Solutions Machining. He nailed it, modifying Ironhead rockers really requires getting the two

Read more... | Published: 11/17/07