It probably started around year 11 at High School, I enrolled in metal class and quickly became exposed to the possibilities of steel and the craft of working with it.
Its not about being the perfect welder, the perfect sheetmetal shaper, the lathe artist or having the newest CNC mill on the market, its about using your creativity to create whatever you want. I wouldn’t call myself an industry leader at anything I do, I dont have amazing machinery, infact I have very little in the way of machinery but somehow I make do with what I have and use my creativity to allow me to create the things I really want.
I think I get a bit of this from my late grandfather that passed away a few years ago, when we were cleaning out his garage we found a set of carburettors that he used on his Holden 6 powered race boat and I knew exactly what I wanted to do with them. I had the idea floating around in my brain for a while and I slowly compiled the parts to make the lamps. With fathers day approaching I wanted to give my Dad a lamp, so I spent a day in the garage creating these three lamps out of steel offcuts and random bits I had lying around.
I have also been getting ready for WTAC in a month, as you may know I print all my own merch and I needed a better way to dry the ink after screening the Tees and jumpers, I looked around at was available and came up with this little design.
In typical me fashion I just got right into making it, no drawings, no idea of what it would turn out like I knew the fundamental outcome I was chasing and just let it grow as I went along. it runs perfectly and it set me back a day in the garage and less than a few hundred dollars. Now I can print the tees, dry them and then print the reverse straight away, it will speed up the process and make life much easier leading up to WTAC.
In other news around the garage I have been working on the two wheeled projects I have in my life, the KTM project is progressing slowly, why? Well motorcycle design is the hardest thing to get right, the right look is not something you just stumble apon, I had the wheels, the engine, the forks and the rest I had to come up with, I settled on this shape and am now making it all work, I will hopefully have it all welded up and rolling by next month.
But its classic motorcycles I cant get enough of, with my Harley Davidson still in LA and an event called CHOPPED fast approaching I had to do something, so the poor little donated TS185 went under the knife again. Nice and dirty still from Celia riding it in the bush, I already had it looking pretty good as a beach cruiser, equipped with board racks I made.
I should have just bought another early two stroke, but I couldnt find anything decent for the little amount of money I had, so this is what I came up with. Its going to look pretty neat, ill add a sissy bar, a nice king queen foam seat, some radical unmuffled pipes that will belch 2 stroke smoke nice and high in the air, Im actually pretty excited on it.
Its extremely satisfying seeing that end product, wether it be something as simple as the lamp, or as complicated as a car, working with steel allows your dreams to grow before your eyes, the quest to do something better, make it look nicer and achieve something thats been rolling around in your brain is extremely satisfying, there are no limits, there will always be a budget, there will always be a lack of time but that just means those dreams will take a little longer to come to fruition, I dont think I will ever run out of ideas, I want to be creating forever, I dont really want to have to go back to work after this fingers healed but Argon isnt cheap and both my bottles are low, oh well.
