HAND-BUILT: Motorcycle Bodywork, Part 3 of 5

Hand-formed aluminum has been one of my life’s greatest inspirations. Bodywork on the coolest motorcycles and finest cars were all built by beating life into flat sheets of pure aluminum alloy, otherwise known as 1100.

It still is.

The first time I picked up a Martin high-crown hammer and egg dolly (my two favorite tools from my favorite maker) was 16 years ago. I'd taken a few workshops with legendary bike and car fabricator Ron Covell (covell.biz), who still travels around the country every year spreading the metal-forming gospel. He armed me with the basics, and I started fixing fenders and doing other small projects. As I did these, I found I needed more tools and added a teardrop-shaped mallet, a leather sandbag, and finally a bench-top English wheel.

The fluidity of steel and aluminum shocked me. Every hammer blow carries meaning. I’d gotten lucky the first few times I’d fixed dents and rejoined tears in gas tanks and car fenders, and then I got really unlucky and wrecked a few pieces. I also decided that any sane person chooses to hand work 1100 (or 3003 H14) aluminum, which is butter soft. Steel is both harder to form fresh off the rack and, like aluminum, work hardens with every blow. But aluminum allows the reset button to be hit by annealing the piece (heating it to about 700 degrees with the gas torch you’ll need for welding too). Even so, as I considered annealing (again) the mangled remains of what I’d hoped would be a fender, I instead turned to weeping into the comfort of a cool brown ale.

That's when I cold-called Evan Wilcox, a humble, giving genius who's been working custom aluminum magic for all kinds of motorcycles for decades. Wilcox's inspiring work had graced our Dreer Norton VR880 cover bike and all my vintage bike friends aspired to own a piece of his work. He also teaches at The Crucible, an Oakland-based industrial arts school, so he's familiar with the wide-eyed optimism of people with two hands, big dreams, and flat sheet metal.

“The point of the class is to unlock that scary mystery and show the basics,” he says. “I’ll take two people’s seat tails that we make and put one in back of the other and show them that they can make anything: We can add pieces together once we can shape and weld. Once they can see it in their head and how it comes together, there is no stopping them.”

Well, until they’re ready to weep at some future point. It will happen.

"The wanting to is what carries us," Wilcox says of the inbuilt desire of creation. "It's so hard to do and so frustrating, and people quit. There are plenty of used English wheels out there…"

Wilcox cited the classic text, Sheet Metal Handbook by Ron and Sue Fournier, which I have and refer to, and I also recently met Bryan Fuller of Fuller Moto (look up his amazing work), who sent me the book he co-authored with Mark Prosser, Full Bore Sheet Metal, which offers a lot of clear, practical information.

This is all to say, there are many great resources to help you select tools, torches, and materials and build a foundation of understanding. But there is no substitute for deciding to do something, then starting the job.

“I try to get people over the fear of total destruction,” Wilcox says. “But it never ends! It’s perpetually humiliating work. My scrap can is full; I’m pulling my hair out. I have to get past what I think the project is to what it really is. I lay the pattern out and it looks so different than what you think.”

The “pattern” is what the curved part looks like when traced on a flat sheet. Cardboard and manila folders work well; taped-on welding rod can help hold shapes. I used my "Religion" folder from college once. It seemed appropriate.

The challenge of cutting, forming, and welding sheet metal is large, but these skills carry into fabrication of all types. Want to fab up your own exhaust? You’ll be able to. If your first pipe comes out bad, there’s always pipe wrap…and the vow to do a better job next time. Which you will.

Just remember: There can be no beauty without despair.