CB350 Steampunk Frankenstein Cafe thing called Isabel
- Thread starter Noddy78
- Start date
makegooddecisions
New Member
stroker crazy
crazy as a fox
It might be expensive, but it's a great find!
Crazy
Crazy
Noddy, not to ask you to give away any secrets, but might you be able to tell us more about how you did those beautiful faces on your gauges? I've been experimenting with some sun-cracked, damaged gauges, and have tried making new faces with a computer and printer with limited sucess.
TonUp said:
Yeah, I initially thought "just print out some new gauge faces and stick 'em over the old ones" but as soon as I thought it I dismissed it, printer inks just wouldn't stand up to UV. Even professional signage grade UV inks are only guaranteed for about 5 - 7 years. So that's when I came up with this alternative. It's a laser-etched (or chemically-etched) sheet of 0.25mm brass. You can go as detailed as the brass is thick apparently (well, the place I found to do it for me could). Which is then backed with a 0.5mm thick piece of tinted acrylic (so that at night the lights behind would show through the etched numbers) and sandwiched back in place of the old faces. When I ended up going a different direction with the lighting in the gauges I just sprayed the backing acrylic matt black so now the etched numbers just show through to a black background. But you could realistically do it with any metal or plastic, with any colour/s underneath. No ink, nothing to get faded by the sun.
stroker crazy said:
Yep, I love it.
rhavindog said:
Holy shit, they're crazy! I reckon one of those would be the whole budget for my entire build and then some! And probably a touch OTT... but I love the concept. They are very cool.
JRK5892 said:
Yep, I think we're on the same page mate. Some Steampunk stuff just gets a bit too out-there. Which is great for a showpiece I guess, but I also wanted this to be a useable/ridable bike. After all, it's all a bit pointless if you can't actually ride it. It's more a Steampunk inspired bike, than a full-on sci-fi extravaganza. Not that I don't love that too though.
LearnAsIGo! said:
Picture's worth a thousand words (I have no idea what it was used on originally, some old american car I assume):
Yeah, I gotta say. I found this thread earlier today and was really intrigued, but none of the pictures came up.
Must have been a temporary glitch, because I can see them all just fine now and... HOLY FREAKIN' COW!
Not only is it an amazingly cool build, but those are magazine quality photos for sure.... Hint! Hint! Hint!
(You'll have to send those out somewhere to be published when it's all done.
Cheers Mate!
Must have been a temporary glitch, because I can see them all just fine now and... HOLY FREAKIN' COW!
Not only is it an amazingly cool build, but those are magazine quality photos for sure.... Hint! Hint! Hint!
(You'll have to send those out somewhere to be published when it's all done.
Cheers Mate!
dean owens
Pittsboro, NC
not a fan of steampunk but i'm digging this.
coolest thing i've seen in a while. hats off to you.
Thanks guys!
Well, a few more parts have come in, and I'm almost to the stage of trying to kick this thing over... I think I'm actually putting it off... There's still plenty of little things to do, I haven't weathered up the new brass pieces yet, the front brakes suck arse, so I'll have to pull them apart and adjust them, and obviously the seat needs doing. But, it's mostly there! Oh, and of course the rear brake light, that one is proving to be a little more difficult...
Well, a few more parts have come in, and I'm almost to the stage of trying to kick this thing over... I think I'm actually putting it off... There's still plenty of little things to do, I haven't weathered up the new brass pieces yet, the front brakes suck arse, so I'll have to pull them apart and adjust them, and obviously the seat needs doing. But, it's mostly there! Oh, and of course the rear brake light, that one is proving to be a little more difficult...
