First Place at the Easyriders Show!!!

A crew member here at Crazy Horse has won a First Place at the Easyriders Show here in Charlotte. The Chopper Farm is the bike shop and fabrication facility for Crazy Horse and Jim Bortles is the man behind the incredible bikes that come out of it. Last year, Jim picked up a stock sportster for less than $2000.

He has turned it into a badassed little hardtail bobber and now it is a show winning bike. His little low buck sportster beat out a whole crop of big buck bikes to take home that First Place. Jim's creations can be seen on our Custom Bikes page. http://www.crazyhorsepainting.com/custombikes.shtml

The Chopper Farm offers many services for bikes. From service and repair to customizing stock bikes to full on custom bike builds. And you won't find a btter price on custom work. Call 704-771-6405 to talk with Jim.

And 3 of our bikes, bikes with our paint and Jim's fabrication are featured in the 2010 Karney Law Firm Custom Bike Calendar.

That's it for now, Its almost Febuary and here in the Carolinas that means winter is half over. We have a full schedule of work for Febuary into March in the paint shop. So we'll be putting in some long hours so when the warm weather comes, our customers will be riding.
Check back to the blog for pictures of Jim's evil sporty bobber, the before and after pictures.

Hope ya'll are keeping warm out there.

15 Degrees

The thermometer is currently at 15 degrees here in old Waxhaw Creek. The forecast says it will get down to 10 next weekend. It might get to 35 today. Lovely weather for painting. Not! Our normal high is 50, the low is 30 for this time of year.

Long week of work ahead so this will be the only blog post this week. The shop is full of work and we have some amazing paint jobs for the months of January and Febuary.

Keep warm out there. Meanwhile I will be riding as I am still testing Harley's FXRG Riding Gear for Cycle Source magazine. Of course we would have to have to coldest winter in 30 years, the winter I choose to test riding gear.

Hoping for Merry Christmas For All!

Its a cold rainy Christmas morning here in the Carolinas. If it were a bit colder, there'd be a foot of snow out there. But instead the wind chimes are singing as wind and rain pelts The Chopper Compound. Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday season. And hope everyone has a wonderful and safe New Year!

The sun threatened to come out for a little while this morning. But no, the clouds are taking over once again. And it is colder than yesterday. I really shouldn't complain as I talked to my buddy Tony with SATA Spray Equipment up in Minnisota and it was 23 below zero there.
Today I'll be finishing up the paint sample for Tony Schumacher's bike and airbrushing real fire. The other half of the shop will be finishing up the prep work for the Constitution bike. That bike is going to be so cool. I like doing projects that make people think about things. I'll be posting updates about that project here as it gets worked on. Some very classic and timely words will be airbrushed on that bike.
So for now, I'll share a few cool pictures I've collected.

and here in the rain forest

The weather dude said the Carolinas have gotten more rain in Dec so far than in all of Oct and Nov. After living here for over 14 years, I can say, I have never seen this many cloudy mucky days. Normally we have more sunshine than clouds.

This is worse than Seattle.

But we all keep working.

I still have a bunch of holiday shopping to do. I did make a cool decoration. All you a wine bottle, emptied and dry. A shirt strand of miniature lights, and some glittery garland. Stick the garland and lights in the bottle and plug in the lights. It looks so cool.

Meanwhile in the woods............

It was a very nice day here at the Compound. I started the smoker up first thing this morning. I got this Brinkman Smoker about 12 years ago and never used it. Today is the second time it has been used. Living in the Carolinas, there's no getting away from BBQ. They have these very intense BBQ competitions and these guys are very serious about it. They'll start the night before and cook all night.
Well 14 years of Carolina living has inspired me to try my hand at smoking BBQ. I had a Boston Butt soaking overnight in a tasty brine of water, white wine, soy sauce, Kosher salt, pepper, and fresh thyme. Got the smoker going good, added water soaked wood chips to the coals, slapped that roast on there and let it go all day. I had a mixture of water, white wine, marinade and more fresh thyme in the smoker's water pan.
It was a perfect day for cooking outside. Sunshine streaming through the woods, a light breeze to take the smoke away.
And there was more smoke in the studio as I airbrushed real fire flames. I'm using Artool's True Fire2 Shield's from Mike Lavalle and they totally rock. I loved his first set of True Fire Shields, and combine those with the newer ones...I'm getting great results. Pictures to be posted soon.
Off topic, there is a lost golden retriever dog in our neighborhood. Roxie was on vacation with her family in a park just down the street and got lost. Its created quite the search and we've even been looking. People all around the country are following this search online. Local folks have been checking the shelters, everyone is pitching in and there's been Roxie sightings. But so far no one can catch her. Now National Geographic is filming a documentary on the search for Roxie. They might be stopping in here Saturday to talk to us.
And Saturday is also the big holiday sale at a local Potter, Marshall Art. And I am taking Saturday afternoon off to bake cookies with my godsons. So Saturday looks to be a pretty hectic day here in the backwoods of Waxhaw.
Kris Krome has been hard at work on the Tony Schuacher bike, welding and welding. AndI'm getting some great ideas for the paint. You can see pictures of the build progress at www.facebook.com/KrisKrome

Cold, rainy day here in Waxhaw. It feels like winter. Working in the warm shop. Tried out a technique for painting a parchment effect basecoat. I'm pretty happy with the results. The samples are almost ready to get sent out to the customer. I'll be taking photos throughout the paint precess, so they can put into a how to feature. There was realy only one product that made this effect possible. Water based automotive paint. I used Auto Air. It dries slower than solvent based and it easy to manipulate and mover around on the surface.
Lots of new products arriving in the shop. Having the right tools makes such a difference in how a particular technique is done. I think all the years I worked without a computer, no printer. Knowing the location and hours of every copy machine in a 30 minute drive from my studio. SATA hooked me up with quality spray guns in '04. Until then I sprayed with anything I had and many times, I paid dearly for it in wasted time and materials. I finally got a plotter in '05. And little by little my shop gets more goodies that make the job so much less of a hassle.
I know there are some shops that start out with a big budget for tools and such. But for most of us, it takes years, buying little by little, to collect the tools that make your workday more effective.
Ok back to work.