Make It

 So the 'busa has been off the road again for the last little while; I learned three (3) painful lessons the hard way cruising down Fairbairn Ave at 2AM on my way home that night: 

1. Possums are solid little bastards;
2. When they decide to commit suicide-by-hyperbike they act like a Pete-seeking missile; and
3. Aftermarket ABS fairings are brittle as fuck. 

There was no sign of the little fucker when I went back the next day to pick up the pieces of my shattered left-side fairing, but there was enough of it stuck to the bottom of my left fork and oil-cooler that I reckon one of the local foxes got a free meal at the cost of Gideon's not-quite-month-old party frock. The oil-cooler took enough of a knock that it was spraying a fine mist of oil, and the possum got to take my left foot-peg with it to Valhalla. Fortunately JB Weld Cold Weld Epoxy is both oil, and heat resistant and seems to have sealed the cracks nicely, and I had a spare left peg from the pair I bought after the last crash. The fairings, on the other hand... 

I've spent the last month arduously gluing a piece back on, waiting for the epoxy the cure, then gluing down the next one, adding nylon fabric to the rear-surface for reinforcement where it looked necessary, then sanding back, levelling, priming, sanding, priming, filling, sanding, priming, and preparing. I finally got it to a point where I felt it was ready to take colour, so have laid down 3 x coats of the Metallic Blue I found quite fetching, then 5 x coats of 2K Clear Coat. I'll need to leave that for a few days to cure before I mask it off and do the lower section in Matte Black, so whilst I wait I have some time to kill. 

Workshop Music: Faderhead - Destroy Improve Rebuild

When not riding motorcycles at silly speeds, applying for jobs, riding motorcycles with reckless abandon, having emotionally-loaded encounters with my Ex, riding motorcycles at 2 in the morning, and sending possums to Sto'Vo'Kor, I've been putting a lot of time and energy into Making Things. It used to be that my focus was Fixing Things, but I got through my backlog a while ago. If doing the same old shit was going to get me anywhere I figure it would have ages ago, so in the interests of switching things up it was time for a bit of creation; I'm still recognisably 'me' tho, so my preferred building materials are still Broken Things, with a bit of productive destruction thrown in for fun. 

Like the mirror I made out of the tempered glass front of the old watch winder I finally gave up on trying to repair after something like 6 years. 

Whilst shopping for paint I discovered a product called Glass-To-Mirror Converter and thought it would be fun to try; I thought it might be good for making mirrored helmet visors or bike screens, but I really needed to test it to see how it worked first. Whilst introducing Dropbear to the original 1995 anime Ghost In The Shell one night around the start of the year I spent an hour or so carefully masking out a pattern that I thought would be fun on one side - a thin line, a thick one, and another thin one representing dot-dash-dot (the Morse Code for 'R'), and a pair of diagonals because I thought diagonal lines would break things up nicely and wanted to practice making diagonal lines. Before heading off to find some food we popped downstairs to the ghetto spray-booth I made in my storage cage out of the box Damo The Vet's new couch came in so I could show him how to lay paint down, then we did another coat on the way back up to put on the 2017 version with Scar Jo. I encoded an 'R' out of vanity, but I gave it to Dropbear when it was done because he has a thing for girls who's names start with that letter plus... it was finished, and I realised I'd stopped caring. 

Came out nice tho: 

I was shopping for paint because I had a small horde of parts left over from the 'busa - ordering a full, custom-painted fairing kit was about the same price as the three panels I'd broken, so went that way; it also meant that I could finally get rid of the gold-coloured 隼 kanji on the sides and replace them with silver. I've wanted to do blue highlights on my accessories to bring out out the blue mica in the Pearl Nebular Black (Suzuki colour code YAY) for... oh, I don't know... a decade and a half now, so finally I'd be able to without it clashing. The original guard had a pile of scratches on it, so decided to use it for practice. I must have fucked it up at least three times in one way or another and had to strip it back to the plastic before I finally got the finish right, but now it's been redone in Matte Black with a fetching Metallic Blue stripe carefully laid down in the groove. 

I'll probably fit it at the same time as I fit the repainted side panels - it's the same blue and black paint, so it might actually look intentional instead of a back-yard bodge. 

The hoodie Dropbear gave me wasn't broken, although it did need a wash, but even after the smell of BO and boy-sweat was gone there was something I found offensive about it... or maybe 'offensive' is the wrong word here... 
not boring, either... 
Incomplete? 
It had these little 3M Scotchlite Black reflective strips on the arms and back that looked like someone aimed for minimalist, but landed on half-arsed instead.
It needed... More. 
I'm pretty sure it was Archangel by Pendulum that put the idea of cyber-angel wings in my head, so I snagged a free easel off Buy Nothing and a box of chalk, and did some prototyping with the words "wings", "feathers" and "speed lines" in my head whilst waiting for the nylon-backed reflector tape I ordered to arrive: 

Then I moved on to masking tape: 

I had a rough idea in mind based on sets of of 3; some might call that "predictable", I prefer to think of it as "a design language". With the basic theme laid out, I decided to break it down and started with the arms, going through at least half a dozen iterations before I got to an arrangement where the 'feathers' were cut to a ratio of 3:2:1, laid out slightly splayed when vertical so that when you bend your arms they look almost straight: 

The back took at least as many different iterations of the same "sets of 3" and "1:2/3:1/3" before I got to the layout I hated the least, but worked within the constraints: 

Yes, that IS a pillow I'm using to give it shape clamped to the easel - do you have any idea how hard it is to prototype something which needs to follow a human form using only shit you can find around the house or pick up for free? Likewise, I'd originally planned on stitching it all down, but that idea went to hell in a handbasket because keeping the strips straight whilst sewing with clumsy, nerve-damaged fingers was an exercise best described as "NOPE". Spotlight sells quite serviceable Fabric Glue Tape for not many monies, so I used that instead. I had grand intentions of using the tape to keep it in place for stitching but it's proven wind-, rain-, and generally bomb-proof so why turn something fun into not-fun? There's no ego-trip for me in making it harder for myself unless it improves the outcome, and this got the job done. 

The reflective paint is made using microscopic glass beads embedded in a grey paint, and the whole arrangement is pretty fragile - the beads rub off with friction, and the paint fractures with movement. It's already starting to show wear, bits are less reflective than when I first put it on, and some of the edges are starting to wear away. I considered looking for ways to protect it, make it last longer, then I realised...

Fuck it. It's not a bug, it's a feature. 

Over time the wings will fade, looking more and more tattered. 
Just like I have. 
Art imitating life, after a fashion.  

It's received plenty of positive feedback when I've been out, and I'm told it GLOWS in people's headlights. One thing's for sure tho: 

People are going to know EXACTLY who's in front of them. 
From half-a-kilometre away.

Not everything's been motorcycle-related... 

Pfft... 

No, of course it has. 

"Jinba ittai" has occupied an adjacent vertex to bikes in my mind's knowledge graph since the day I first heard it. You've seen the image I created by breaking down the font I found in Faderhead's More Is Never Enough clip into vectors, and rearranging pieces to build the kanji. A few weeks ago I finally got around to getting them printed: 

Whilst waiting for them to arrive I ran into Her randomly at Arbo after She'd Blocked me again. She told me just how poorly Her dog Millie's surgeries had gone, and how much money She was bleeding. I decided to put my art to a good cause, upped the asking price, and told everyone I was selling them for charity. I'd already thrown Her more money than I ever expected to make from selling decals, so it was VERY easy to put my hand on my heart and solemnly swear I was up to no good handing all of the proceeds over to help with vet fees. One of the first people to fling cash at my PayID was Damo The Loose Unit, who's also been taking lead on helping make Millie well again - his contribution paid the entire cost of printing, and more besides. Now I'm down to 24/50 of the original batch, and made nearly $400. 

Good deeds aside, pulling up at a meet and seeing my art on a dozen different bikes in a row is a fucking amazing feeling: 

I'm still playing with an idea for adding it to the hoodie rearranged vertically down the spine using iron-on vinyl, along with a line of logos down the front-left - Suzuki, 隼, Triumph... 

Eh, I'll get to it when it feels fun. 

In the meantime I have an idea for something that can hang in a window... a mason jar or something like it, which has been broken and glued back together kintsugi-stylez with some of the leftover Mirror-To-Glass paint sprayed on the broken edges. My theory is that when the sun shines through it the light will reflect off the surfaces and refract through the pieces, spraying sparks and shattered rainbows around the room. I ran the concept through Gemini to see if it had any suggestions on how to pull it off, and it said: 

"This is a brilliant, "mad scientist of decor" kind of project. The aesthetic you're describing—internal reflections and fractured light—is essentially 3D puzzle held together by hope and chemistry," then it helpfully added, "it won't be watertight or food-safe."

Hope & Chemistry. 

Sounds like the sort of name I'd give an Art Project... 

If it's right, it should look something like this: 

And when I'm done, I'll probably just give it away.

Time to go practice smashing glass jars... 

Destroy. 
Improve.. 
Rebuild...