When Chris Rose of Caveman Custom Cycles bought this 1998 Dyna Low Rider back in 2006, his original intention was to clean up the bike, make some mild modifications, repaint it and put it up for sale at his shop in Warwick, Rhode Island. Continue Reading →
The Indian Chief was produced from the 1920’s up until the Springfield factory ceased production in 1953. It is undoubtedly a motorcycle that well represents the type of design that was popular in America at the time, and you could say to some degree it has a philosophy that has continued to this day, with America’s love of bigger is better! Continue Reading →
We received an email inquiring about a bike build from an European woman who has a apartment in New York City. She wanted something reliable, comfortable and able to handle the rigors of New York traffic. Continue Reading →
I had an idea to put the word out that I would be looking for custom bikes to shoot while I was in Florida for Daytona’s Biketoberfest. By far the best place to further this goal in 2009, was to inform Cyril Huze, so that the plea could go out on the industries number one blog. It turned out to be one of my better inspirations, and threw up some stunning gems like this Buell Bobber. Continue Reading →
George, owner of Chaops Cycles relates: customer came in with donor bike and was looking to build a bike for as cheap as possible, not much of a story to it….
We built him a bike that has decent power to weight ratio for little money with more details than a high dollar billet barge
Many people are surprised when they discover that this speed icon Suzuki Hayabusa street bike, has been built by legendary American custom bike builder and painter Dave Perewitz; but they really shouldn’t be, as it only shows that Dave has his finger on the pulse of what is new and happening in today’s custom bike world. Plus, in such dire economic times, who would be dumb enough to turn away work just because it didn’t come with a Milwaukee built V-Twin engine? Continue Reading →
To your knees dogs, the king is coming! Blown away, does not really come close to the feelings evoked when I first set eyes on this, Warren Lane, hand crafted motorcycle. And hand crafted it is, from the heavily modified early 1934 VLD Harley-Davidson springer front end, through the ‘one-of-a-kind,’ twisted stainless steel frame, yes! Stainless steel!!! to the trick tail light, and super short fender at the rear. But there are so many more one-off, and hand-fabricated parts on this bike it will be hard to mention them all. Continue Reading →
How and where do you draw the line on a custom build? Does one go all out and ‘reinvent the wheel’ so to speak? Do you take a perfectly good running bike, strip it to the core and rearrange it? Continue Reading →
Jake Smith is something of an anomaly, a guy who most certainly deviates from ones expectations. For a start, he is a Jewish skinhead, which in itself is unusual. He is also heavily tattooed, but loves to make artistic items of pottery, strange! The bottom line is, he doesn’t look like your typical biker, and certainly not what you would expect your custom bike builder to look like, but he is a biker through and through, and one hell of a talent with the spanners, lathe and welding torch. Continue Reading →
Yes indeed, I am going to break the traditional bike feature mold whilst telling this story. In this missive, I will briefly introduce you to not only three great machines, but also the man who built them and his shop – Rollin’ Bones, located in Binghamton NY. By the way, please notice, we spared no expense recreating the winter scene for our photo shoot in what is turning into a balmy April. We don’t fool around – obviously – we take our fun seriously and making snow in April is just par for the course.
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A No Win Situation!
With just ten days to build a ground up, jaw dropping, custom bike, I was more than a little surprised that there was not much activity the morning of the first day; instead of Russell Mitchell and his Exile team getting stuck into the project, the Discovery film crew eroded most of the available time setting up their lights and completing other ancillary tasks. 
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Now here’s a contributor for you folks – Paul Holdsworth. Holdsworth is a longtime fixture in the VTwin industry and older bike scene. He grew up in a manger that had been Cosmoline’d. The guy leaks oil if he stands in a place for too long (well, not wholly true). I’ve road tripped with Holdsworth by bike and by car and I can say without a doubt, the man has stories, tons of stories…. 45dgree has been lucky enough to tap this great font of tall tales and here forth, he shall appear every now and then. – stephen berner
With all the biker build off promotion crossing our desks, not to mention new model news from the Motor Company, and the it seems like almost weekly a new ‘custom motorcycle manufacturer’ and also the amateur builder we here from who has built a bike ‘just like that BIG NAME BIKE BUILDER!! 
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Jeff Tiedeken is one half of Metal Morphosis Cycles, in the past, I have shot a number of bikes that have been built by Jeff and his older brother Jason, but this was to be the first solo construction by the young buck. 
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David Covington comes to the fore with this truly stunning modern high tech incarnation of a chopper. He has learned his metal craft well from father Jerry, at Covington’s Cycle City of Woodward Oklahoma. Continue Reading →
Owner: Joey S
city/state; Mastic NY
Year; 2011 Continue Reading →
Owner: Joey S
city/state; Mastic NY
Year; 2011
Model; lot lizard Continue Reading →
Steve Carr, Rick Bonin, Vicki and Mollie Griswold make up West Coast Florida’s Lightning Rod Motorcycles. Mollie is the cutie you see modelling with Retro Racer, but she is a whole lot more than just a curvaceous body and pretty face! Mollie is a certified bridge inspector and President of her own company, Bolt Underwater Services. Continue Reading →
We started when a one time employee (Joey S) came in and said he wanted a bike built, that he had a motor and wanted to build around it. Well said motor was literally in buckets. Apparently it was his fathers for most of its life and and was the heart of his 1965 panhead drag bike. Continue Reading →
Through my friend Roger Chouinard, owner of Sinners & Saints Tattoo in Wareham, Massachusetts – I came to meet Jamie Dykman, proprietor of Black Frame Cycle Projects, on the “Cape”. Roger owns two of Jamie’s machines and arranged us to meet, being that he held his skills in high regard.
I came to learn you’ll not meet a nicer, more unassuming guy than Jamie, and in his small workspace; he puts together machines that have a distinctive handcrafted style. Spending the day with Jamie on a rainy Fall afternoon, shooting his bikes, I came to have a greater appreciation of the effort it takes to build reliable stylish machines on the cheap. Machines that a workingman can afford are what Jamie shoots for and by all measures –he delivers successfully. – stephen berner Continue Reading →
Another Arthur bike. He picked up a set of 1950 pan cases with papers for cheap and we were planning to build a bike around a small motor and run the bike in the 1200cc class at the salt flats. The original cases turned out to be cracked everywhere, so Arthur opted for a small engine build by the guru Andrew Rosa. Continue Reading →
Check out what our friends from Thunderbike have been up to!
….continued
Like the pennies, copper details used throughout this bike are no accident, like I’ve already mentioned, it has, over time, become Mike’s signature style to use copper; check out the risers, and oil tank for such examples of the man’s work. Continue Reading →
I overheard some bikers talking in a Daytona bar, they were discussing some wild, crazy and insane customs that they had seen out near Rossmeyer’s Destination Daytona Harley-Davidson dealership, at an area known as The Battlegrounds. Continue Reading →
Roxanna’s 1995 Panhead started life as a Harley-Davidson Heritage Nostalgia. And that started out as a dream fifteen or so years earlier, when in her twenties, she began to hanker after a vintage bike. Continue Reading →
Being able to create the coolest looking choppers with your bare hands is a real talent, but in Billy Lane’s case, it was a talent that he learned through hard graft, blood sweat and tears. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, custom bike builder extraordinaire, Billy Lane, holds an Associate of Science Degree from Florida State University, and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Florida International University. Continue Reading →
Michael Barragan, Evil Spirit’s driving force has one hell of a convoluted past. If you enter his name into just about any Internet search engine you will be confronted with a Wikipedia encyclopedia page informing you about the 1990s rock band ‘Plexi.’ Continue Reading →
What a little sensation this Bling inspired chopper is, but what really attracted my attention to this back to basics, style of rigid, was the fact that Andy Bergin and his girlfriend never seemed to be off it. Continue Reading →
If you haven’t heard of Thunderbike – you should have…. top shelf work & design
Martin sends this to us: H-D Rocker “Ego Shooter” with TB Lowrider wheels, TB Funride exhaust, Pulley-Break, Wide-Tyre mod (Swingarm + Rearfender), customized TB Open Mind aircleaner, TB base-alu forward controls, TB sidemount licenseplate kit (short edition with inside plate) Continue Reading →
The oldest of ten children, Thomas Henderson was born 1872, in Glasgow, Scotland. The Henderson family emigrated to America, first living in New York in 1879 before moving to Cleveland Ohio in 1881. Continue Reading →
ULA Super-6.Pt2 by Steve Kelly Photography
….continued…. Continue Reading →
Roberto Rossi of Mantova is a friend of 45dgree and a talented bike stylist who lives in rural Italy…..
Take a look at his his latest project….
Chica’s Pearl @ ULA Super-6. Pt1 by Steve Kelly Photography
The attack on Pearl Harbour Naval Base in Hawaii on the morning of Sunday December 7th 1941 came as a surprise to the United States. Continue Reading →
Roquechop Design (RCD) is a small workshop located in the city of Brownsburg-Chatham (Quebec, Canada) which is focused singularly on building quality handcrafted bikes and parts. It’s a shop that keeps an open mind, but clearly won’t compromise. Continue Reading →
Looking at a machine as clean as this 1991 vintage H-D FXR, fondly named Kwiksilver, a super-sano clean as a whistle, hyper-customized machine from Brian Klock and his team at Klock Werks, it’s hard to believe that it had such a down and dirty beginning. Really, I am serious when I say “dirty”, because as it turns out, this bike was borne out of the chaos and wreckage of a flood that damn near made it impossible for Team Klock to keep on doing business, forget about going forward with a plan that ended with this bike being shown at Michael Lichter’s Eternal Combustion show held during 2010’s Sturgis festivities. Continue Reading →
I came across Nelson Citta’s 1938 Knucklehead chopper at the Eustis Antique Motorcycle Show in Florida that is held the first weekend of Daytona Bike Week each year. It is very unusual to find custom bikes at this show, or any antique motorcycle show for that matter, as most of the bikers who own vintage motorcycles or attend such events are fanatical purists who believe that bikes of a certain age should be left as the factory produced them, rather than seeing them cut up and turned into custom bikes of one description or another. Nelson however, is quite rightly very proud of the bike that he has built, so took it along anyway. Continue Reading →
Telling a friends story is a funny thing to try and do – especially when there are three Steve’s involved and you’re one of them. It‘s about as tough to do as to hold onto a bike like this 1958 Pan for more than 37 years, staying the course to bring it back to stock, resisting the urge to hack it up and follow the circuitous route of trendiness. A total rat bike when he got it at the ripe age of 15, a bad bondo’d chopper with a grasshopper springer, no front brake and a host of OSHA, non-compliant behaviors, this machine was a real far cry from the stock appearing mild performance sweet heart you see here. Continue Reading →
My god, where do I start to tell you about French Melanie? She is the sort of girl that makes you think, what the hell have I been doing with my life? When she starts to tell you about all the places that she has lived, and all of the things that she has done. Straight off the top of my head, I can tell you that she has lived in four of the liveliest cities in the world: Paris, London, New York and Los Angeles. She has always been heavily into the biker/Rocker world. She started riding motorcycles in the UK before she even learnt to drive, I guess at the age of about nineteen. Continue Reading →
There are many different stories regarding how cafe racers came into being, but cafe racers are indisputably one of the first widely customised style of motorcycle. Rockers modified their British iron to reflect their individual style, but more importantly to build themselves a motorcycle that was as agile and as aerodynamic as possible, so that they could flash along twisting leafy country lanes and the newly built arterial motorways at the coveted average speed of 100mph. A Dave Degens’ Dresda Triton is arguably the world’s first super bike. Continue Reading →
Checkit – the latest work from our friends at ThreeTwo Choppers.
Men of few words, when asked for some of the factoids around this tidy aggressive looking machine, this what I was served by Brother JC… Continue Reading →
Richie Rey’s FXR came to my attention if for only a minute when I was standing at the gate of the Independent Toys for Tots Run in Queens NYC, this past November. There I was, standing off to the side, stalking riders with my camera and this bike blows through my viewfinder and poof, it was gone. All I had was a blurry image and a burning curiosity about what had just passed me. Continue Reading →
We’ll run the complete feature and shoot on April 9th, but here is a tease that will have to satisfy until then…
A hearty congrats to Jamie who just had this bike featured again in Cycle Source magazine…we can’t wait to see how the machine looks and are thrilled that he is getting the coverage!!
When Harley-Davidson’s first Sportster debuted back in 1957, it portrayed a tough and rebellious image that was refreshing to many who were turned-off by the factories bloated FL big-twins. Continue Reading →
Don Hotop titled this machine as a 2009. But with an engine swap, it could as easily be recognized as a late 80’s model, given whose hands have crafted it. The machines that Don has been building, consistently, over the course of years in his simple shop are clean, well done, detailed and timeless in their purposeful, muscular simplicity. There I said it.. purposeful muscular simplicity. Chew on that. Under “clean machine” in the Pictionary, you’ll see Don Hotop’s likeness. Continue Reading →
Claes Lindblom left his barn unlocked so that we could come and shoot his Panhead chopper. A more confident owner is hard to find. When we were in Varberg last summer, we paid a visit to the “mopedclub” Lyftdon MC. There someone tipped us off about an excellent Panhead chopper owned by Claes Lindblom. Unfortunately Claes was away somewhere to pick up a -53 DeSoto station wagon which had been used as an ambulance. He and his girlfriend were going to share it. I called him and he thought that I could go to his place and shoot the bike. It wasn’t locked anyway … Continue Reading →
Pupkin called me first thing this AM (who the hell is calling me NOW?) to let me know that our friend Wally had passed on last night. This is not a surprise, but it is a heavy blow to the heart, nonetheless.
I had the chance to shoot Wal’s Ironhead this past summer. The bike has been “around” forever and no one was in a rush to so anything about getting it shot and a story written, so I harassed Richie, caretaker of Wal’s machine to finally make it happen and it did… the shoot below came from a great afternoon spent at Richie’s with Wally’s best and closest friends and family, watching me shoot the bike and give both the man & machine the respect they were due…. it was a great opportunity, a wonderful day and a memorable chapter… Continue Reading →
The Motobe came into my life through my friendship with Roger Miret (The lead singer of Agnostic Front; he is also the Rumblers president…just in case you do not know the guy). I think it was 1989 or 90 when he dragged the sporty in milk grates into my shop in Long Island City. He picked it up in Miami. Soon enough he found himself a shovel project and sold the mildewed parts to my friend, the artist Arthur Sordillo. His wife needed a bike to tool around on, so he asked me to make it pretty. Continue Reading →
One of my last friends still in New York until recently, Eric had a lot of parts for this bike on a shelf for a long time, and never got to putting the bike together. He’s my friend; I buttoned it up for him and he just last week loaded it in his van, strapped between surf boards and tool boxes, and headed for the West Coast. End of story. -Walt Siegl Continue Reading →
The owner wanted a bike for the city that was light and nimble. These were his only wishes. A small group of us built inner- city bikes throughout the 80s and 90s, so it was an easy task for me. Our bikes were completely purposefull with no frills attached: Narrow bars on tall risers to white line and clear the car mirrors. Fold up foot pegs mounted as close as possible to avoid car tire contact. Exhausts tucked in and empty so drivers could hear us scream up. Small stroker motors with torquey cams to jump from light to light. Continue Reading →
I wanted to build a bike with the parts Harley Davidson became so famous for: The springer fork, the four speed frame with its low seat height, tall tires on black rims, knuckle head exhaust, and big primary hanging out. To exaggerate all those visually important components, I kept the tank and fender as small as possible. -Walt Siegl
images: stephen berner Continue Reading →
A bike that can dress for all occasions….
Taking a gander at the machines of those who have mechanical, hands-on experience with our favored marquee is always elucidating and entertaining. Chances are these folks have their pick of the litter, big, small, fat or thin and what they select in the end, reflects mightily upon their personal values and what they like most and demand from a two-wheeler. They ride what they want and they like what they ride. Most often these bikes have some unusual touches, be they performance or aesthetic – sometimes both, as in the case of Daddio’s Red Hot Road King. Continue Reading →
The Bonneville Salt Flats of the western Great Salt Lake Desert were formed through the evaporation of the Pleistocene-era Lake Bonneville. The salt flats are actually the bed of that once massive lake which rivalled in size to the present Lake Michigan. The flats are composed mainly of potash salts ranging in thickness from less than one inch to around six feet, (1.8m) and cover one hundred and fifty nine square miles (412 square kilometres) extending some nine miles along US Highways 40 and 50 and the Western Pacific Railroad. Each rainfall erases tyre marks and re-flattens the densely packed salt. Continue Reading →
The Bonneville Salt Flats of the western Great Salt Lake Desert were formed through the evaporation of the Pleistocene-era Lake Bonneville. The salt flats are actually the bed of that once massive lake which rivalled in size to the present Lake Michigan. The flats are composed mainly of potash salts ranging in thickness from less than one inch to around six feet, (1.8m) and cover one hundred and fifty nine square miles (412 square kilometres) extending some nine miles along US Highways 40 and 50 and the Western Pacific Railroad. Each rainfall erases tyre marks and re-flattens the densely packed salt. Continue Reading →
Walt Siegl is the real deal.
He is a builder, stylist , fabricator – and a talented one at that. Continue Reading →
Some machines demand to tell their stories in their own way, and so it is the case with Memphis, a special chopper built by Laura Klock and the friends and crew of Klock Werks, a small shop located in Mitchell, SD. Perhaps you’ve heard of them. Continue Reading →
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