Since you do business with a lot of Japanese shops and keep tabs on both scenes here and overseas, what do you think of it?
Japan has a totally different scene. It’s really a different world. People aren’t doing much with the bad economy, the earthquake, and everything but there’s still people building bikes. You can see the passion they put into their bikes in Japan. I think the difference between the two scenes is that the bikes built in Japan don’t see as much hard riding as the bikes here in the United States. Nobody rides 80 mph daily in Japan; not all the time anyway. There’s a gas station at every corner in Japan, too, so you can get away with small gas tanks and not worry much about breaking down in the middle of nowhere.
Sometimes I think the bikes in Japan go too far, like they should stop working on it a week before they usually do. It looks like there’s too much going on. I like more simple bikes.
This bike isn’t so simple though.
It isn’t?
Yeah, look at it. It’s got a lot of detail; looks like a masterpiece.
[Laughs] I guess…I tried to make it simple by taking off the front brake, no battery, no turn signals, you know. All there is on this bike is the bare mechanical necessities.
What’s in the future for Hog Killers?
Eventually my goal is to build bikes for myself and sell them, instead of people asking me to build a bike that they already have in mind. It gets complicated when building for customers, so I would like finding a balance in that. Take this Sportster chopper for example. I built it for myself and no one was waiting for it so I got to do whatever I wanted to do for a change. STC