bobber

Not everyone is a book person. And for all those individuals who would rather learn in a TV format than the traditional book, we offer you our first DVD: How to Build a New School Bobber. As mentioned in an earlier Blog, this DVD includes nearly three hours of material covering the construction of a Bobber kit at Redneck Engineering, and the conversion of a late-model Softail into a believable Bobber at the Brian Klock facility.

Both are new-school bobbers with modern drivetrains and modern dependability. Producing a DVD turns out to be more work than building a motorcycle. First you pay the videographer and sound-person, then you pay a company to convert the material from analog to digital, next, you throw away most of what you paid people to photograph. With the wonders of modern computer software, we've been able to do most of the initial editing in-house. Still to come is the work being done by an outside vendor who promises to take all the herky-jerky out of our transitions from one sequence to the next. By the time this Blog hits the website we should be only days away from finished DVDs.

Be sure to order one of our new DVDs because: A: They're really very good, and B: I've got this stack of bills from various production companies and photographers that would choke a horse. You can order the DVD now and the item will ship as soon as it comes in. With combination orders, in-stock items ship immediately, while anything that's not in stock will ship as soon as possible, with no extra shipping cost.

Off the Press
We are making progress on the spring rush of new products. The Spanish-language book is finished and ready to ship. As is the How To Wire Your Hot Rod book by Dennis Overholser.

Not Quite Off the Press
Still in the works is Vince Goodeve's Pro Airbrush Techniques, due to ship May 22nd. How To Build an Old Skool Bobber and Advanced Custom Motorcycle Assembly and Fabrication will ship early in June. Bear with us. We're making the transition from a very small publishing company to a somewhat larger publication company. And even small steps take time.

Projects
The weather is warming here in Minnesooota (how natives pronounce the word) which means I can leave the shop door open and go back to painting the new floor in the Henry J. And there's an engine in need of an oil pan and a list with a thousand other to-do items. The warm weather means I can ride the Bagger down to the Joint Bar or Whiskey Junction, legendary Twin-Cities waterin holes, and hang out with other two-wheeled enthusiasts.

New Products:
One of the books responsible for making Wolfgang Publications a success is Ultimate V-Twin Motorcycle. Part catalog and part assembly manual, the book I published in 1995 is still selling in modest numbers more than ten years later--with three or four revisions along the way.

We are currently planning to bring out a totally overhauled version of the Ultimate V-Twin book titled: Advanced Custom Motorcycle ASSEMBLY & FABRICATION. Like the earlier book, this one is part catalog and part assembly manual; and like that earlier book this one is all about helping people build a bike of their own from scratch. Unlike that earlier book, which follows and explains the assembly of bikes that seem conservative today, the new ASSEMBLY & FABRICATION book documents the assembly of very modern bikes. Bikes like the long, hand-fabricated 300 tire custom from the Donnie Smith shop and the Bobber from the shop of Dave Perewitz. Not only does the bike document the assembly, in the case of the Donnie Smith bike the book also shows each step in the fabrication of the one-off gas tank created by master tin-man Rob-Roehl.

The early chapters of the new book discuss topics like Motorcycle Design, Frames, Suspension Components, Sheet Metal and Wiring. The front of the book is meant to help builders make good decisions from the vast array of parts available from the V-Twin aftermarket. The back of the book, containing the assembly chapters, is meant to help those same builders assemble that huge pile of parts into a very cool custom motorcycle.

Road Trip
As noted in an earlier blog, I attended the V-Twin Show in Cincinnati in early February. Though it doesn't make much sense to drive to Cincinnati, Ohio from Stillwater, Minnesota, I did it that way because of two planned stops in Iowa. On Monday preceding the show I stopped to see John Parham of J&P Cycles in Anamosa, Iowa, which is near Cedar Rapids. If you haven't seen the J&P retail store, and more important, the motorcycle museum housed in a building in downtown Anamosa, you need to stop by. Though most of us think of J&P as a mail order company, their retail store is big, well lit and stocked with an amazing variety of parts. Variety is likewise the best word I can use to describe the bikes in the museum. Other adjectives might include amazing, high quality and awesome. Occupying two floors, the bikes include Harleys from 1908 and board track racers by Indian, Harley and Merkel from the teens. The bikes range from very early Harleys, Indians and Hendersons to the board track racers already mentioned, to European bikes like Vincent (three examples when I was there), Brough Superior and Moto Guzzi. For those of us who grew up on Japanese bikes there's a full compliment of Hondas, Kawis and Yamahas starting in the 1960s.

In addition to the bikes there's a huge display of memorabilia, toys and artwork. Sculptures in Bronze put the board track racers in another perspective, while the toy collections makes me wish I'd kept some of those old tin toys from days gone by. Of course, the walls are filled with fine art paintings and a big collection of posters. There's a sign advertising a desert race on one wall and another announcing a certain very important movie from the late 1960s.

I know it's a cliche but if you don't find a whole lot of machines in John's museum that put a huge smile on your face you've got no business riding on two wheels.