Time For Paint

17. The first layers of tape were removed, and you can see how this badass paintjob was going. Then Buck used 1/4-inch tape to mask off the areas that would be silver-leafed. He then brushed on a thin layer of One Shot Gold Size glue. This is the area were the silver leafing would stick. As the leaf was pressed on the glue in full sheets, it would stick to the glue. Then Buck let it dry a bit before brushing away the extra leaf along the edge.

18. To achieve that old-school look and feel, the silver leaf was spun. Spinning the leaf was done by taking a cotton ball in a small piece of silk, and lightly pressing down and twisting his finger on top of the leaf to imprint small swirls. Then he let it dry before the next step. This took about 12 hours to dry.

19. He followed this up by pinstriping the edge to keep the leaf from lifting when the time came to clear everything. This also added color and style to the design.

20. To keep you up to speed on the fenders, they have received all the same graphics as the tank, we just thought it would be good to show them as well. The front fender...

21. ...and the rear fender.

22. Then, two colors of blue were striped on to the sheetmetal. First a dark blue that highlighted all the silver leaf was laid down, followed by a light baby blue.

23. After the all the striping was dry, everything was ready to get placed back into the paint booth to start getting cleared.

24. Buck sprayed on so many coats of clear that we lost count -- somewhere around 18 or so. The sheetmetal had to be covered in extra clear due to the lines and edges from all the graphics and striping, so that as you run your hand over the top of the sheetmetal, you can't feel the graphics. Every time he went in the booth, this set of sheetmetal was hit with some more clear.

25. Well, we are on the way to getting this bike back on the road. We know that we had to cut a step or two out due to the amount of pages we would need to show everything, but we tried. If you have any questions, just call Buck and let him tell you just how much work was involved and all the shit we had to cut. And if you need to know, it was about 13 days of work. We are going to start the re-build in the next issue with wiring and fitting a custom seat. We are even thinking about a Springer for a retro look that will go with this BuckWild one-off custom paintjob. Check back next issue to see where we take this bike.