This is going to be good. Building one of these desks is like spring shop-cleaning. So maybe I can steam-wash the cobwebs of my mind in the process.
I built the first Panhead desk almost 20 years ago, while I was editing books at Paisano Publications. The offices were drab and we needed spirit around creative folks who pounded out inspirational pages weekly. It's interesting how enthused some folks can be daily. Imagine for one minute thrust into Jay Leno's shoes, producing a show daily.
The odd aspect of the business, television or publishing, is the boss. He can be as dry as a popcorn fart and have little or no creative soul, yet make millions off those who do. I always hope that the number crunchers at least respect and relish the artistic minds. So I built my first Panhead desk in '88 and drug it into the Easyriders offices, along with a conference table built outta an 1800s cell door.
The conference table was surrounded by Drag Specialties-modified barstools. Ron Paugh at Paughco always supported my desks, with frames and springer front ends, and he's usually the man who steps up first.
I'll explain that comment. I can build a bike every year, but building a desk takes extra time. I've had this frame for over seven years, but finding a wrecked drive train is not easy. I discovered this burnt-up Panhead engine and 4-speed trans over two years ago at the El Camino Vintage Swap Meet.
The engine and trans sat on the concrete proudly in front of the Bud's Motorcycle Shop booth, all the way from Austin, Texas. If you're looking for deals on vintage parts, Bud is like Tim from Negotiable in L.A. These guys travel the country buying and selling H-D parts. Of course, that weekend, I was broke. He wanted $400 for the engine and trans. Interesting. As motorcycle parts, they weren't worth squat. In fact, Bud should have given me the pair so he wouldn't be forced to haul them back to the Texas Hill Country.
I was intrigued because this was my fourth desk effort, and of course, I was looking for something different. Besides, this was an extremely one-off pair. A month later, I scrapped the coin together and bought the engine from Bud at the Long Beach Swap Meet, but he didn't have the trans. It had been misplaced. For two years, I called month after month for the matching trans. I considered burning one and so did Bud's staff after a dozen calls. The problem was the crusty original matched perfectly. They fit, were the right vintage and the trans was burnt just enough and not too much. They kept looking.
Finally, I called one day and the elated staffer announced. “We've been waiting your call,” he said. “We'll ship it tomorrow.”
“You found it?” I queried.
“No, but we now have a burnt-up Softail.”
I just said, “Okay,” gave them my info for the tenth time and hung up. You'll see what arrived in the mail. Not exactly a matching piece, but time had run out, or did it? There really wasn't any urgency, except that it was a dust-catching project that needed to hit the fruition mark. I needed to cross this bastard off my list of projects.
Speaking of timing, it's a strange melancholy element in life. Timing is everything. Timing can mean missed opportunities; bad stock buys, or the wrong or right time to buy a house. There's that killer time to walk into a shop looking for a missing part or to find a job, just as another employee quits.
So I could have stumbled into a bar night after night and drank my mind into oblivion or got started on this puppy right away. I had the Paughco test frame. Caleb came across with an overseas wide glide and an old oil bag he had lying around. For another couple of years, the pile of tarnished and rusting parts collected dust in a forgotten corner of the Bikernet Headquarters.
So back to timing. Right now and throughout 2009, my project list is harried. I'm supposed to be retired, but the poor economy is kicking my ass and life is ticking along at a bristling pace. I needed to publish my first Chance book, and our sport was taking a hit from noise freaks and the EPA. I had some notions that might help. The Bikernet Staff went to work on our noise study, then we reached out to a couple of colleges to hopefully develop an environmental study that would demonstrate how much money the government was throwing away trying to regulate the motorcycle aftermarket industry, when they should be regulating the big picture items. Then a film effort surfaced to prove that freedom through motorcycling is a damn important aspect of our society.
Keep in mind that these projects will not generate any income for this gang of starving artists, but if they will keep our sport free, it means everything to me. So, goddamnit, a man's gotta do what he's gotta do. In fact, to make all these efforts come to fruition with full impact, it's going to take a lot of us to get involved and stay involved to the bitter end. For instance, Tom Zimeroff recently attacked noise freaks in a most articulate manner. Wyoming bikers went to bat against new noise ordinances being enacted at their state capitol. They beat them back. We need to get involved and stay in tune with the issues.
We are so fortunate in this country to have a massive, very active, knowledgeable and involved motorcycle rights community. Every state (I believe) has an MRO that devotes time and efforts daily to keep us free. These people know their governors and state representatives by first name. But we are up against a new onslaught of legislation, and in each case, we need to fine-tune our arguments, dial in our pitch, seek the needed research and go to battle armed to the teeth.
So there you have it, timing. This shit needs to be finished and delivered to the proper hands in 2009. Our noise study is already working. We need to find resources for the EPA effort and if you know anyone, or a school that can make it a class project, don't hesitate to drop me a note (bandit@bikernet.com). If needed and money will be involved Bikernet will reach out into the industry and see if we can raise the funds.
That brings up another project. For the first time in a couple of decades, the aftermarket stepped up and started the V-Twin committee within the MIC. They've been successful in restraining some regulations and opening some doors for builders. Unfortunately, the MIC represents the manufacturers and not the aftermarket. Again, an opportunity surfaced to create an aftermarket council within the Hot Rod aftermarket organization of SEMA. Between Bikernet and Senator John Brueggeman of Montana, who works for SEMA and is a bike builder, we are trying to bring more clout to our industry and more support for the motorcycle rights community. Another project and timing element. Could we make it happen in 2009?
Okay, so the fuckin' desk had to be finished and operational and off the project list. Don't get me wrong. I love projects. My artistic soul has a difficult time turning down almost any creative endeavor. Hell, Mike Lichter called me three weeks before Sturgis in July and said, “Hey, Bandit! You're good with a torch, make me a sculpture for my art exhibit at Thunder Road.” I couldn't resist.
So we started throwing motorcycle table parts on the shop lift, the Paughco frame, the Cro's Customs wide glide, the Bud's Burnt Panhead engine, a Paughco tranny plate (they manufacture an entire line for tranny plates), the oil bag, 30- year-old oil lines, old copper oil lines, a busted Bendix carb and lots of chunks of Samson warranty exhaust pipes. I even dug up a rusting English Peanut tank and Jeremiah tossed in an old Bates solo seat. I scrapped through my lighting locker and found an old stainless steel spotlight off a boat.
This was a chance to dig through boxes and get rid of old shit in a sorta productive manner, if you call this bastard a positive endeavor. I had a stack of Red Wing Boot kickstand plates, so I used one on one side of the oil bag and a Victory H-D accessory plate on the other side. I also decided to silicon bronze braze everything together, although my acetylene and oxygen tanks were running low. Hell, my MIG tank was also tipping on empty and the bank account wasn't supporting a re-supply.
I had plenty of bronze rod and I stole a chunk of 3/8-inch brass rod, 10 feet long, from a building project and went to work making brackets, mounting the oil bag, making a headlight bracket, etc. If you ever plan to take on something as crazy as this, there's a couple of notions you need to consider. It's not going down the road, so some elements can be designed more with art in mind than structure, but I was about to mount a ½-inch chunk of acrylic plate on top. Hence, surface structure was important and it had to carry some weight. In the past, the front end has always stuck up through the glass, or in this case, clear acrylic. So I built the pipes and frame bracket with that in mind.
Then Nyla began the tabletop research on a minimal budget, and she daily slips onto a FREE site to check out the scores. This site offers anything someone wants to lose quick, old refrigerators, furniture, and a guy in downtown LA who wanted to unload a chunk of ½-inch beveled glass, quick. There’s that timing thing again. This puppy was 3.5-feet wide and 7 feet long, and we immediately made a glass run to the old section of downtown. A piece of glass that size runs almost $500 to have custom cut.
For the first time, I was force to run the front end under the glass. I had already built a cross beam and didn't want to remove it. I made three 2-inch stands, and then I discovered another strange coincidence. I was also making my dear old mom a railing from her back door to her patio. She just turned 86 and doesn't bounce around the house like she once did. I purchased a bunch of 1-inch square tubing and decide to steal from mom's stash and build a platform.
I made a center bar off the seat bracket I built to Jeremiah's Bates seat. Since the burnt engine set the tone, I burnt a couple of other pieces and let the shop dogs have the seat for a night. I should have instructed them on the chewing location, but they wouldn't pay attention anyway.
A trick was mounting the handlebars under the top trees. As it turned out, I had a set of drag bars with the risers welded in place, but we had cut half the risers off for another project. I drilled and tapped the studs and shortened the bars on either side about three inches. They fit upside down.
The key to a functioning shop is having the tools and being able to find shit when the mission calls. It's a trip. I started on this project and knew that somewhere in the shop I had a 6-inch fender chunk. The frame already had fender tabs and I went on the time-consuming hunt for the fender tip. I was right, but my locating senses were off by a few degrees. I found the bastard, it was the perfect width, and I drilled it for mounting.
The front end from Caleb of Cro's Custom Cycles turned into a trick. It was sorta gutted with no springs and part of the dampening system still in place. I messed with extending the cast aluminum lower legs as far as they would go, then measured and fitted the inside with a tube that would hold them taught and extended. I decided against the look of an extended front end and built a bracket to hold it at nearly stock length. Then I cut tubes and discovered that a dampening tube was still stuck in the bottom of the slider. Ultimately, I had to make a special metric tool to reach and pull the slider free. They were actually upside down in the legs.
The new burnt Softail transmission was a far cry from the 4-speed appearance with a ratchet top and just a portion of the case burnt away and enough case for mounting to the plate. In fact, I think that burnt 4-speed still had the plate attached. This Softail job came with a fuckin' belt pulley and the case was 90 percent melted away. No way I could bolt it to the plate. I was forced to MIG weld a bracket to one of the gears and bolt it to the plate so the tranny wouldn't flop around.
One more trick to table construction. The damn thing needed to sit level and even. At first, I shot for a particular height. Tables and desks range from 28 to 31 inches tall. With the gas tank in place and the front end protruding through the glass, I could hold her to 31, but with our scored ½-inch chunk of glass without the goddamn hole, I was looking at 33 inches, a tall table, but what the hell. I'll jack up the chairs. I used obscure methods to line up the 1-inch square tubing and tack brackets in place, but ultimately, it all worked. I spend most of the time in the Bikernet shop by myself, so I grapple with not having three arms and another set of eyes.
I cleaned, brushed and sanded all the parts. I cleared the brass components and gave the rest hammered-black coats from Rustoleum.
There you have it, another project off the list, a classic one-off patio table and a handful of relaxing hours, away from the computer, blowing sparks and grinding dust around the shop.
Now the priority list calls for writing a movie treatment around my first Chance Hogan book. You'll see it first.
Copy editor's note:
I changed “panhandle” to “Texas Hill Country,” because that's where Austin is, and it's a helluva long way from the Panhandle.
Speaking of which, if you're ever in the Texas Panhandle, you've gotta take in the Palo Duro Canyon, which was carved by the Prairie Dog Fork of the Red River. It's a state park, but used to be a Commanche stronghold where Quannah Parker and his old man, Peta Nocona, used to hang their scalps. It's second in size to the Grand Canyon, but pretty damned awesome nonetheless.
And that concludes tonight's geography lesson.
–Bruce
