Vindikta

Start the New Year out right by hitting up the Easy Rider Show on January 7th, 2012! Located at the Anaheim Convention Center, there are hundreds of bikes and builders! We will be there with our booth and a bike in the show, so look for Vindikta and say hello!

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At the request of many of the people I’ve been talking to at the various events, in the next few weeks all of the bars are going to have the option of being dimpled.  I am also offering the “sweeper” style bars in a 14 inch height in addition to the 12 inch and both sizes will not only be available dimpled, but they will also be offered in a wider measurement to accept the Springer front ends.

I also just completed a set of bars for a customer that were a reproduction of an old Flanders style set of bars that he is putting on a 1940’s restoration project. I’ll put a pic up of those when they get back from chrome. Another customer had an old flyer from Stellings and Hellings and I reproduced one of the bars with a slight modification. I think that they came out really good and I had several requests for them, so I will get a pic up by next week and probably offer a few for sale later this month.

I was having some work done in my shop the other day and when it was done, the guys that were doing the work asked if they could hang out for a bit and look at some of the equipment and handlebars that were being bent up. I gave them a cold soda and we talked about bikes and welding and I let them use some scrap steel and make some passes in the english wheel. They only hung out for about 20 minutes before they had to get to their next assignment but when they left they were appreciative for the sodas and for letting them try the wheel and hanging out to take a quick break in their day. I thought back to the “master builder” that tried to sell me $250 pieces of crap and if he would have let me hang out in his shop just to look around and talk about bikes and welding, even if I didn’t ride, or would he have charged me for that? I enjoyed sharing what I do with these guys, regardless if they would ever have purchased anything from me. It was nice to see someone get excited about welding and seeing how a tube bender works. They had some good questions about learning to metal shape and weld and hopefully I pointed them in the right direction. It would be great if they took some welding classes, bought a book or video on metal shaping, or even just got a piece of scrap metal and started banging on it and try and shape it to the vision in their head.

I hope that quick break in their day at a random location gave them the inspiration to try something different.