Donnie Smith

The coming of summer means the end of another school year, including the school year at Kennedy High School in Bloomington, MN, home to the Build a Chopper Class with everyone’s favorite teacher, Kevin Baas. Before bidding all the students a nice summer, Kevin held his annual open house, which is a great opportunity for supporters and parents to view all the projects in the shop. The Open house also creates a chance for Kevin to give a little speech, thanking both the students for their good work and persistence, and the many supporters for their monetary and moral support.

The event turns into a mini bike show of sorts, as anyone who can, rides their bike. The bikes themselves tend to be a little out of the ordinary. This year the sidewalk display included a whole raft of Knuckles (hard to believe given Kevin’s fondness for Knuckleheads) including the ’39 his wife Amy rides, as well as his personal ride complete with side hack. Of course Matt Olsen, of Carl’s Cycle Supply Fame, showed up with one of his Knuckles, I think this particular bike is a veteran of at least two cross country rides.

The annual Kevin Baas Open House at Kennedy High School always turns into a very eclectic bike show – every thing from Knuckles and Pans to Donnie Smith customs.

The cast of motorcycle luminaries and guests included Donnie Smith, the man who Kevin thanked profusely for the phone calls that Donnie made ten years ago when the class was just beginning. By calling everyone in the industry Donnie not only helped Kevin obtain a bunch of parts for building motorcycles. He gave Kevin instant credibility.

The rainy day kept a few scooters at home, but did nothing to diminish the turnout for Kevin’s open house.

After the speeches the event turned into a good, old-fashioned BS session…. “they left me in the campground with a broken leg and rode to the bar for a quick beer. Well, an hour later I had to figure out how to start someone else’s Triumph with my hand, cause my right leg was the broken one. They were pretty surprised when I showed up on the Triumph with my crutches strapped to the handle bars, they all wanted to know, ‘how’d you start that thing.’”

Sometimes if you want to figure out how someone did something, you just have to get down on your hands and knees and have a good look.

The open house gave the students a chance to explain exactly what they did and why.

As Donnie Smith demonstrates, we can tell stories without alcohol, but we can’t do it without our hands.

The Tom Rad Rumble on the Deck bike show (mentioned in the last blog) came off without a hitch on the evening of July 8th. As always (with rare exception) Tom was able to call up a perfect evening from the weather gods. It’s hard to argue with 80 degree temperatures, clear skies, free food and a lively blues band.

If there was one downer to the evening, it was the fact that the trophy girl, Ma Rad, could not attend this year – Ma made it to 14 Rumbles and the age of 90-something before checking out for the big bike show in the sky.

This is why we live in Minnesota – because on nights like this, there is no place better to be.

Tom was forced to rely on the shapely and beautiful Rumble Girls to hand out the trophies, for classes that ranged from Big Twin and Radical Big Twin, to Antique and People’s Choice.

The nice thing about a local show is the fact that it’s local. You can complain that not all the bikes are new or radical, but then on the other hand you also get to see a whole raft of your old biker buddies. There is nothing like telling and re-telling a few lies while sucking down a cool one and gazing at a long row of gleaming two wheeled hardware.

Rumble Girl Anna waits patiently while Lenni from Krazy Kolors and Tom Rad ham it up for the camera. Maybe it was the free Schlitz beer?

Old Bikers like Donnie Smith (sorry Donnie) were in attendance, along with fresh faces like that of local high school teacher Kevin Baas and his lovely wife. Donnie rolled out a nifty digger/Shovel from back in the day, and Kevin brought one of his trademark Knuckles.

If you check the calendar, you will notice that July 8th is a Thursday, which means that by 10:30 PM the decks at the Freight House Saloon in Stillwater were empty and all the bikers were headed off to the next whiskey bar.

Celebrities everywhere you look, including Donnie Smith, and Kevin Baas and his wife.

Production
The Classic Triumph calendars for 2011 are in stock and ready to ship. The cover bike is a TT bike photographed in Nevada. Also from Nevada is the Tiger 100 and T100C, though the TR6 seen in October was photographed in Iowa. There’s also a Blackbird and a Speed Twin from the balmy state of Florida. It’s a nice variety of bikes this year and the calendars are sure to go fast, so order your Classic Triumph Calendar today.

Don’t wait to order your calendar, we actually ran out last year.

Sheet Metal Bible

Part of our fall lineup of new books, Sheet Metal Bible is off to the printer. A full 176 pages of sheet metal how to projects, this new book will look good sitting on that small cluttered book shelf in the shop, right along side the magazines your wife won’t let you bring in the house.

In stock shortly after you read this, Sheet Metal Bible is a compendium of sheet metal projects.

At Wolfgang, we've expanded our book offerings over the years. What was a little company publishing two or three books a year about either V-Twin (and Chopper) motorcycle assembly, or custom painting, is now a slightly larger company publishing 10 to 12 books per year on topics that run the gamut from airbrushing, to pin-up painting, to tattoos.

Among our newest products is this very cool Tattoo Girls calendar.

Our forth tattoo book, Tattoo Bible, is a great collection of flash art collected by Superior Tattoo in Phoenix, AZ. One of the world's largest supplier of tattoo tools and equipment, Superior has added a very nice Tattoo Girls calendar to their long list of products. Produced entirely in-house in a vertical format, this is new calendar measures a full 34 inches tall when opened up. The pictures, and the girls, are just sexy and naughty enough to make this a very interesting collection of images.

So if you like tattoos, and you like girls, this just might be the perfect calendar.

A finished Yamaha

We recently presented some construction and paint photos of a Yamaha Road Star under construction at Donnie Smith's shop. This is the V-Twin magazine give-away bike built by Donnie and crew with parts from Dennis Kirk.

Well, the bike is finally finished. Deb Shade visited Donnie's shop recently to witness the final assembly, and to take a few finished pictures. Donnie and Rob set out to build a "High-bar FL bike" and the customized Yamaha does indeed look a lot like a short, stubby FL, complete with Rob's fabricated tail-dragger rear fender. Other goodies include the PM wheels, H of K paint and a host of chrome candy from the Dennis Kirk catalog.

The new profile owes a lot to the high bars, and the tail-dragger rear fender. To create the fender, fabricator Rob used part of a RWD fender blank grafted onto the stock fender.

As I've said many times before, it's amazing what you can accomplish with a bit of creativity, and some careful planning. All without cutting the frame or doing anything really wild. Take a close look at this stubby chopper, it sure doesn't look like any Yamaha you've ever seen.

Another big part of the look is the RC Components wheels wrapped in Avon rubber. The front tire measures 120X21, while the rear is an 180X18.

Lenni from Krazy Kolors
Whether it’s a long Chopper or just a more conservative custom V-Twin, building a custom bike involves a lot of work by a lot of talented artists. In the case of the Yamaha Road Star being built by Donnie Smith Custom Cycles, mentioned in last week’s blog, the sheet metal is now lime time pearl from House of Kolor, applied by Brain at Paint Works. Before being bolted back on the bike however, there are a few more steps.

The first of those two steps is the creation of some graphics, applied on top of the green by local legend Lenni the Pinstriper.

The heart and soul of Krazy Kolors Painting, Lenni the Pinstriper.

The last thing Brian did when he painted the parts, was to apply a clearcoat, and Lenni started his part of the job by scuffing the clearcoat, and then masking out the designs.

After masking off the graphics, Lenni applies the gold mixture.

The designs are done in two colors, black and a lighter gold pearl, with materials from House of Kolor. As Lenni explained, “Donnie wanted an old-skool look, so I used some black to tie the sheet metal in with the frame, which is black, and then I created the sweeping shapes with a mixture of pagan gold kandy koncentrate, and zenith gold. I used an airbrush to darken the edges of the gold with more pagan gold mixed with blue-to-green kameleon paint.”

After the gold comes the darker gold, applied with an airbrush.

When we arrived at Lenni’s shop this morning (Deb Shade is helping with the writing and photographing of this project) he had the tank almost ready for the application of the gold. Once we quit distracting Lenni with questions, the process went pretty quickly. First came the masking followed by the special gold mixture. Next, the airbrushing of the darker gold, along the edges of the graphic. Then there’s application of the pinstripes, all of it done freehand with one of those crazy too-long pinstriping brushes.

The tank ready for pinstripes.

After almost thirty years in the business, Lennis makes it all look easy, from the design to the tape, and from the spraying to the pinstriping.

The pinstripe colors are all custom mixed using urethane striping paint from House of Kolor.

From Lenni’s shop the tank and fenders will make their way back to Brian’s shop for multiple coats of clear, with sanding between to elminate any “bump” caused by the pinstripe underneath. Then the buffing and the final assembly.

Some of the pinstripe colors contrast sharply with the paint they surround, while other colors are more subtle.

The final pinstripe color is green, used both to outline some of the black, and to create some freehand stripes in the open areas on the tank.

The finished tank, ready for multiple clearcoats.