Joe from CrimeScene Choppers has written two killer How To’s that he’s given me permission to post here and share with all you greasers. First off, if you don’t know of Joe or CrimeScene, go check out his site (www.CrimeSceneChoppers.com). Not only does he make some sick parts, but he also sells kit and other builder parts for you guys wrenching at home. On top of that, he provides a bunch of free detailed plans and info so that if you got the skill and desire to make something up yourself you have an idea of where to start. Chances are that yours won’t come out as nice as his (dude has skills) but the fact that he is giving out this info, free of charge no less, is awesome. When companies and shops do this kind of stuff - giving back to their customers and the community at large - they get a lot of points in my book. Joe’s got it right, so go check out his site and his blog (where he’s documenting the bike build these tutorials stem from.)

Ok, onto the first tutorial / How To. This one focuses on shaving fork legs. In this particular example, they’re the legs off an Ironhead Sportster, but the same general process would apply to most motorcycles. I’ll let Joe take over from here.

Shaving Fork Legs Tutorial
By Joe CrimeScene
(click all pics for bigger)

I took some pictures of how I shaved the legs on my forks for my “Memento Mori” ironhead.

The original 35mm Showas were beat to hell, and had these big tabs for the fender which I certainly wasn’t going to run. I started by marking out some rough cuts with a sharpie. I’ll whack off the bulk of the material with a 4.5″ cutoff wheel on my angle grinder.

There is (well, was) a big pad where the reflector mounted. Ick. I’ll use a grinding disk to knock off some of the bulk.

Time to get to work.

The wheel will only reach about half way through the tab, so I’ll need to cut from both sides. With any luck I will avoid digging into the part of the leg I want to keep.

Almost there…

One down, three more to go

I used my belt sander to knock down some more of the excess. The belt sander is one of those tools I can’t imagine being without.

I used the disk grinder with a hard wheel (special no-load wheel for aluminum) to take the reflector pad down.

Since the imprint that said “Showa - Japan” was deeper than the surface of the slider I bead blasted it to clean off the oxidation…

Then I TIG’d it up. Not my best weld, the material seemed dirty still.

I decided to use the lathe to true things up. You _could_ do this all with hand tools, but it would be really easy to lose control and have legs that were wavy.

The top end is easy enough to chuck up in a chuck, I had to make this little boss the fits into the bottom — it is held with a live center to support the leg. Very important.

Here is the first cut. I took pretty light cuts to start so I could make sure I had a solid setup.

A little further along. My goal is to get everything true without cutting much off the actual OD of the slider

Almost there…

Last cut. The blue marker is what I attached next, using a 3″ D/A and some cartridge rolls. I blended all of the sharp edges and removed the casting flash. Then I used some fine belts on the belt sander to smooth out the leg. The last step was to send it to the chrome shop. They came out really nice

Here is a sequence of the original leg, one cut and one all sanded smooth.

Last pic, these are the legs ready for chrome.

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Stay tuned for tomorrow’s How To about Splitting the Rocker Boxes on an Ironhead Sporster.