10

Pretty self explanatory 

Aneal  the metal 

Smash the metal over a log with a dish cut into it.

Beat on the metal until it does what you ask it to do.

Wheel out the dents

Hammer and wheel until it fits the buck proper. After proper fit trim down the extra metal. 

Test fit panel on the bike to see if you won. 

9

Here you see the rough template for the fairing. 

After adapting the template to a piece of plywood I made ribs indicating the contours i would like to gain.

Smash, pound, jam, shrink, stretch, wheel, planish, bend, beat the metal until it lays over the buck.

8

I started building the exhaust using a box of 1.5 in tubing. I am not convinced that these bike need 1.75 in tubing when running muffler less. Could be wrong but i am gonna give it a shot. 

Here are some tips i put together.

Mounted up to the motor.

7

I am putting together a panhead as well right now and needed to spray the frame. It made more sense  to do two at once so I rushed to get all the rest of the tabs on the BF4 frame. 

Dave let me take up some space in his paint booth for the night. I haven't sprayed in a booth for a while i had forgotten how great it is. 

Here it is mounted in the frame. i usually build everything on the bike and then blow it apart and give it the respective coatings. This time since its all coming out of my pocket i am breaking it up a bit and doing it as i go. hopefully i won't regret it. 

6

Put together these bars for the bike. they are Biltwell trackers that i cut up and welded some bosses into so they wouldn't need risers anymore. 

Here is a shot with the roughed in seat foam and dave was over and bored again so I put him to work on the pan for the pillion pad / tail light mnt.  the tail light is an old Dietz Light from the 50's

Here is the start of my shift lever. I hate sloppy levers so i added some stock sized brass bushings from McMaster so that a few years down the road you can just toss in new bushings. Also like metals don't slide on each other very well so offsetting the material will allow for a nice smooth operation.

5

Here is a little battery box that I came up with along with this switch plate. 

Beginnings of the exhaust hanger and the oil tank. This is an Ironhead oil tank that is in the process of shrinking a couple inches on each side. In hind sight i should have just hammered out my own shape from new metal, this was a pain in the ass. 

Here you can see how much smaller the new tank is. 

Backside of the tank to make up for the lost capacity.

Sitting in the frame with the cap in place.  You can also see the adjustable fender mount so you can slide the fender back a bit when the chain stretches. (nobody notices but if you are a detail weirdo its good to know you can)

tank sitting in place waiting for fittings.  I left the drain plug in it from the old tank so that will be handy down the road. 

4

Danny hooked me up with this 80's roadster tank to cut up. I like the look of this tank but it has way too much meat in the middle so i am going to narrow and pinch it. This tank seems like it could use some extra style as well so i am going to actually run it as split tanks to pay homage to the split tanks that have come on Harley Big Twins for decades. 

After drawing the centerline (hardest part of the job) run the tank down the band saw.

Remove the filler cap stamping, since the tank is shrinking you can give your self some extra material on the stamping so that you can hammer and dolly the joint after welding the stamping back in.

Here the tank is split down the middle sans cap stamping.

Took out 2in up front and 3.5 in the rear. Some people prefer to cut the tank in half in two cuts so that when you are done cutting the narrowing and pinching are already done. I generally tend to cut it down the middle and then hold the tank halves together at different angles so that I can see what my eye likes best.

Wire wheel the paint off, burn off the lead, hammer out all dents, trim a bunch of times until they fit together nicely..... then weld stuff.

3

 I sold my DRZ a while back so i had a little extra cash, i knew i wanted something reliable and powerful for this bike so i ended up snagging this rebuilt 92 dyna motor.

 Here is the Evo shoe horned into the shovel frame. After read a bunch about doing this online i was assured it would fit with very little modifications....... not true at all. i had to do quite a bit of cutting, heating, bending, smashing to squeeze this motor in the frame. but its in now and bolted down.

Whipped up this little fender support bracket for the iron head fender that  riding on back.

2

This blog is going to be dedicated to the building of my Born Free entry. Some times i will post long descriptions of what i am thinking / doing, some times it will just be photos. feel free to let me know if you love it, hate it, think i have gone mad etc. l love your input. here we go!!!

I have had this shovel head roller kicking around for a bit so I decided i wanted to put it to use. here it is with some random parts tossed on to kinda start getting a vision.

After some closer inspection i found some pretty awesome cracks in the frame. Its no wonder why this thing had a gnarly shimmy.

I picked up these alloy wheels from my friend sean at grim cycle salvage. Dave was over the other night and was bored so i had him hack off the back of the frame and tack on this tail section.

1

They just released the Names for this years builders series and I am proud to be on the list. There are some amazing guys building bikes this year and I am proud to say that quite a few are people I call my friends. It makes it so much more fun when you are competing against guys that you are friends with.  For those of you that aren't familiar with the Born Free Builders Series they invite a select number of builders each year to build bikes for the show and then people vote on what bike they like best. Here is a photo of the triumph speedmaster I built for last years show.

CLICK HERE FOR THE BF4 SITE