Friday, August 20, 2010

rippin off

Or inspiration, whatever. We all borrow ideas and mix them in our brains to come up with everything from bikes, songs, a snappy shirt, a haircut, anything creative.
after adding the knuckle back section to my shovel frame and looking at the $20 stainless spoked, star hubbed, 19-inch wheel from the swap and figuring out how the bike wanted to go back together i had to flush all the other ideas i had becasue it was taking a turn on it's own.


after many, many hours of staring at the bike and mocking stuff up, squinting eyes, etc, i finally was getting back on track, from that and borrowing a few things.

The bike always had a shaved early glide on it which i planned to narrow, but glad i never did. i liked the too broad for todays cool choppers frontend, esspecially the extended one on this panhead from easyriders cira early '70s.



That and Big Armond's (RIP) second version of his knuckle with the shovel top end (above left). whoa, of course the bike is legend, so i decided to rip off the paint, well, not totally, but close. I had been thinking about painting my '72 Chevy truck hugger orange for some time and those thoughts leaked into the plans for the shovel almost subconciously. then stumbling onto this feature of Armond's that i hadn't seen before (only seen the knuckle version at that point). Simple "oakland orange" was it, that and a little black pinstripe...i was too big of a woose to do the frame orange too like the other bike here.







Then while toying with simple yet a little different sissy bar ideas i found this little panhead feature thta had a small safety pin style sissy bar. Bingo! So i ripped it off to my liking. While i have ome original stuff in my bike it probably wouldn't have happened if i was set in motion by these things



4 comments:

  1. Seems as though the red pan was from a hot rod magazine, and not a bike mag., if I recall correctly? I love that bike.

    Not that it needs to be said, but there's surely nothing wrong with taking inspiration from others, past and present. Everyone does it subconsciously, but those who give credit where it's due...

    They're cool.

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  2. i think you are right Jughead, except the pic i took makes it look red when it's really more orange. Harpoon found that mag in his stash when i was getting my bike ready for him to do the easiest paint job he's done in a long time!

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  3. Everything's been done before...the best thing to do is just combine things that you like and make something you're own.

    Sounds like a good start, Grant.

    By the way, Seth said he talked to you about the pics I took of his bike. Email me if you want to talk more.

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