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Description
Last summer I bought a motorbike from a guy who had crashed it, and have been fixing it up. The pavement scraped up the pipes, and the heat shields turn signals, battery case, and part of the air cleaner cover were gone. I fixed the brakes, and had new tires, primary chain, and final drive belt put on, along with a lot of other little thing. To save some money, and for the cool factor, I decided to make some of my own parts from copper. The first thing was to deal with the problem of setting my pants on fire with the bare, scraped to hell exhaust pipes. I used my girlfriend's angle grinder to remove the gouges, and painted the pipes with stove blacking, and then hammered out and riveted together a set of copper heat shields. When I first put them on and went out on the road I was a bit distracted by the beautifully changing heat colors on the copper. The next step was to make a battery case. I made the windows on it in the shape of the sky in a little landscape scene in the Cascades. The next thing was to make a cover plate for the air cleaner. I cut out the sheet metal and fixed it to pitch, and proceeded to chase the image with broad smooth punches. The design if of the leaves and flower stalk of wapato, a wetland plant that once was a common food. This shot shows the right hand side of the bike with the air cleaner and the exhaust pipes.

Description
Last summer I bought a motorbike from a guy who had crashed it, and have been fixing it up. The pavement scraped up the pipes, and the heat shields turn signals, battery case, and part of the air cleaner cover were gone. I fixed the brakes, and had new tires, primary chain, and final drive belt put on, along with a lot of other little thing. To save some money, and for the cool factor, I decided to make some of my own parts from copper. The first thing was to deal with the problem of setting my pants on fire with the bare, scraped to hell exhaust pipes. I used my girlfriend's angle grinder to remove the gouges, and painted the pipes with stove blacking, and then hammered out and riveted together a set of copper heat shields. When I first put them on and went out on the road I was a bit distracted by the beautifully changing heat colors on the copper. The next step was to make a battery case. I made the windows on it in the shape of the sky in a little landscape scene in the Cascades. The next thing was to make a cover plate for the air cleaner. I cut out the sheet metal and fixed it to pitch, and proceeded to chase the image with broad smooth punches. The design if of the leaves and flower stalk of wapato, a wetland plant that once was a common food. This shot shows the right hand side of the bike with the air cleaner and the exhaust pipes.