BLACKBIRD (Skylark Convertible)

[The Renaissance Man]

That is going to be nice, do you make the skylark headlight?

No plans for reproducing a headlight. At least for now.
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Somewhere inside this block of HDU is the nose of a Bluebird fender. Just got to carve all of the other stuff away.

 

[Chad T]

Wondered how involved the fender fine tuning would be...guess we know now. Look forward to seeing the rest of the process.

 

[Machine Age Victim]

I like where this is going, looking forward to the build!

 

[kingfish254]

Beautiful fitting of the tank to all the curves of the frame.
Love that fork too.

 

[The Renaissance Man]

First round of shaping went well. I'll check it closer for consistency and then give it a good primer coat next.

 

[OddJob]

It would be fun to see your tool set up for this process. I'm imagining you with a 'Fiberglass Fender Fabrication Machine....

 

[MazdaFlyer]

Not able to get the fender tip shape out of the original fiberglass piece or is the added material more expendable? Replaceable tip if the sanding goes wrong I’m guessing. Pretty intense process and impressive.


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[The Renaissance Man]

It would be fun to see your tool set up for this process. I'm imagining you with a 'Fiberglass Fender Fabrication Machine....

I wish I did have one of those!

Not able to get the fender tip shape out of the original fiberglass piece or is the added material more expendable? Replaceable tip if the sanding goes wrong I’m guessing. Pretty intense process and impressive.

The HDU is my 'go to' material for carving out shapes. It cuts and sands easily. Once I'm happy with the profile I can use it to make a temporary 'splash mold' to copy in fiberglass. Then it's just a matter of mating the fiberglass nose piece to the fender.

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I gave it a quick coat of black primer and mounted it back in the fork just to get a look at the shape. Based on all of the Blubird photos that I've collected, it appears to be pretty close.

The extra material underneath will stay for now so I drew an arc to help visualize the eventual shape.

Next, it will get a healthy coat of high build primer and a skim coat of body filler to erase the seam.

 

[The Renaissance Man]

Primed and skimmed.

 

[The Renaissance Man]

One step forward and two steps back.
Late yesterday after sanding everything nice and smooth I decided that the nose was too fat and ended up taking a big part of my work back down to the urethane board to reshape it. I couldn't make myself take a picture. lol
Got another coat of body filler on it today and sanded it again. So I'm pretty much back to where I was 24 hours ago but the nose is going to work much better now.
At least I cought the problem before getting past this stage! Still a lot left to do.

 

[Chad T]

I'm sure this will all become clear eventually but are going to use this fender to make a mold to make another fender?

 

[The Renaissance Man]

That's right Chad, this will be the plug for a new mold. I'll probably still use it but I'll remove all of this work and graft a copy of the nose back in place after it's all done. That's what I was talking about when I said earlier that this will be the most involved part of this build.

I finally trimmed off the extra HDU and sanded the bottom profile today.

Here's what the underside looks like.

 

[The Renaissance Man]

Still not happy with the nose. Been looking at every picture I can find of a Bluebird fender and each one looks slightly different from next. So I decided to use the original patent drawing as the final arbiter.

The bottom of the tip breaks from the arc toward the end and flattens out slightly. So that will get sanded away before the next step.

 

[GuitarlCarl]

It's your eyes in the final decision. It looks good the me (maybe just a bit less bull nose) and probably every original one made were hand cut so the subtle differences are there... I like the little extra bit of trim in the patent drawing, hoping you have something similar in mind.

Carl.

 

[The Renaissance Man]

You're definitely right Carl, that's all I've got to go by! The 'beak' just looks like it is pointing down even though technically it's not. I'm guessing that's what the designer thought also in his drawings. And yes, it will have the 'wing tip' added to the nose!

My 'Mullet' fenders were purposely made wider than originals. The primary reason for this is so that the rear can be used with skirt guards. A fiberglass copy of an original simply would not work with the skirt guards due to the added thickness of the fiberglass. So it makes sense to create the front fender to match.

I'm not trying to make a perfect copy of a Bluebird fender. If that were my goal I would find an original and make a mold directly from it. (Besides, I'm pretty sure that's already been done.) My goal is to create a Bluebird 'Style' front fender to match my Skylark 'Style' rear fender. By doing so I will be able to offer both TRM Bluebird or TRM Skylark fender sets for sale.

This is something that I decided to make for myself and by taking the time to create a mold, I will be able to reproduce them and hopefully others will also want them. I can see them being used on custom bikes other than the Elgins!

 

[The Renaissance Man]

The next step involves the fender, some hot glue and this IEC cable.

Sometimes you just have to improvise!

 

[The Renaissance Man]

No guesses on the cable?
I needed something to create this 'wing tip' shape on the front of the fender...

So after thinking through many different ideas I finally settled on the electrical cord. It is flexible enough to get the shape I want but still stiff enough to make a smooth arc.
Here it is glued in place.

Next step will be to fill this in with body filler.

 

[RustySprockets]

At first, I didn't follow what you were doing with the cord. Now I see that it acts as a dam for the filler. Innovative.

 

[The Renaissance Man]

Yes, the cable acts as a dam but more importantly will also leave a radiused edge. If you'll notice in the previous picture above there is also a plastic extension in front of the nose for the filler to continue the bottom profile.

It's time to play in the mud!

Sanded down level with the dams so that it will have an even starting point after the cable is removed.

The shape came out great but the hot glue was much stronger than I had anticipated.

Added work ahead now.

 

[Chad T]

Stinkers! Man that's a bite. Can you get some weaker hot glue?

Sorry to hit you with a bad pun on such A somber occasion but the way you're creating this detail on the fender is quite electrifying...

I'm sure you'll get this sorted in no time. So looks like this was the plan for the mullets all along? Great be along the R&D for a TRM product..