“So is that the gas tank, or is he just happy to see me?” was my wife’s comment as I showed her the pictures Lock Baker had sent of his build. I laughed and honestly replied that I hadn’t really looked at it from quite that perspective. “How could you not?” she asked, with one eyebrow cocked in disbelief. I didn’t really have an explanation, but what came out of my mouth was,...

Buying his ’94 Softail Springer FXSTS was a little traumatic for Shawn Ohler. First of all, the original owners were still madly in love with it. “It was their baby, but they were relocating, and didn’t have the space to take it,” Shawn explained. When he bought it, it was aqua pearl with a tall, padded sissy bar. Leather braided levers with foot long tassels hung off of the 13”...

Our photojournalist Jack Cofano found this ’78 bobber at this year’s Smoke Out Bike Week. The bike is owned by Rich Ewaskiewich.

Don’t let the pink hair fool you — Chris Gibbany is no girly girl. When she came up with the design for her 1981 Harley Sportster, her goal was simple: “I wanted a really cool looking bike, something you didn’t see every day. I also wanted something that didn’t scream to the world ‘I am owned and ridden by a woman.'” Chris came up with the design for...

At some point in January I wrote about Chocolat, a mystery bike I knew nothing about but insisted on publishing anyway because I really liked it. I asked readers to come up with a backstory for the bike since I didn’t have one. It was a risky move to publish a bike about which I knew nothing, but I figured if I received any legal threats I’d simply post them on my...

  The thought process behind this bike was not the typical, ‘I got this frame lying around and it’s a (fill in) so that’s what I will build.’ Nope, Josh explained how this bike came to be. “I took a little different approach to this one. I was sick of fads and all that other sh*t. I thought to myself, ‘I’m gonna build exactly what the hell I want to build and if nobody else likes...

  This happy marriage of man and bobber began when Kenny ordered his bike with Jeff Cochran and Danny Loos of Sucker Punch Sally’s back when they were originally in Ohio. From date of order to ready to ride was only six weeks and Kenny had a bike that he’s ridden since 2003 with nary a glitch and requiring only a very few personal cosmetic changes to keep him happy. That’s a story...

  For this bike, Spitfire drew its inspiration for local color. “With all the long bikes around Cincy I wanted to build something short, fat, and low, and kind of scary.” Youth-n-Wisdom is obviously special to Bill Jr. “This is a build I will never forget,” he said. “The things I learned from my father and the things we have learned together are...

  “A customer had come in wanting to redo his old Shovel,” Jason said. “I told him about a design we had on paper that had not been done yet. He was a go once he saw it.” Yeah, I bet. I would too, because although I was born way, way, way too late to have been a modster, and I think modsters were Banned in Boston anyway, being that everything else was. But...

  Like his others, this bike is for sale. It’s Ben’s personal bike, and he rides it all the time. “It’s my every day bar hopper so to speak. I’ve probably got around 5,000 miles on it now. I finished it last March, so I’ve had it a little over a year now,” he said. Beginning with a 1949 Panhead he bought from “a guy in...