A goodbye to my friend Jessi Combs— educator, welder and fabricator, land speed record holder, motorcycle builder, TV show host, off-road racer, Queen of the Hammers, beautiful, bad ass, intelligent woman.
Goodbye Jessi Combs- Legend, Leader, Lady
Lorenzo Buratti’s Boxer Chair
Like many awesome things, Lorenzo Buratti’s motorcycle inspired furniture is hand-crafted in Italy.
This time, he created a very cool wooden chair called the ‘Boxer Chair’. Like his other chairs (featured in the past article about his furniture) there is space underneath for magazine, books, and whathave you.
I recently met Lorenzo when he came to Southern California for a vacation- he told me that he likes making furniture and decor because he likes to work with his hands and get back to the basics.
Make sure to check out his website, LorenzoBuratti.com and you can also follow him on facebook.
related: Lorenzo Buratti’s Amazing Motorcycle Decor | more decor
Posted on December 4, 2014 in Art, News & Features by Alicia Mariah Elfving
(((Hmmm – Yanno, I enjoyed his Godier-Genoud fairing bubble-top hair-salon perm-&-set Wilma-Flintstone & Betty Rubble inspired chair much better than this one. Funny – my first “wife” of 13yrs [oh but don’t read that wrong – she was 15 when we met ha-ha – like the “Kids In The Hall” sketch, “Mix-Mix, Stir-Stir, I married young. It’s all a blur…..”] *cough* Yes, the WIFE and I had some original ’50s Perm-&-set hair-dryer chairs, plus a couple of old chrome & vinyl barber chairs, all taken together, quite reminiscent of Mr Buratti’s Godier-Genoud fairing chair, strewn about our crowded lil’ livingroom – funny, I should’ve drawn the same conclusion way back then, as I’d always stuck our motorcycle helmets on top of ’em when we walked through the front door. Would’ve been cool to set ’em up with some proper vintage Soviet jet-fighter helmets or at least a couple of full-face bubble-visor style helmets – Never would’ve got past the idea of cutting HOLES into a motorcycle helmet, I suppose…. AND I suppose it’s a miracle that we’d even set them up at all, considering we got ’em at an auction together along with a vintage doctor’s exam table with the gynecological exam stirrups…..)))
(*cough* YES – Mr Buratti’s furniture!)
Dudettes, I’m WAAAY ahead of you!
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This isn’t so much about any REVERENCE on my part for the bike-parts in question. More to do with the value that I place on solid one-piece wheels of ANY era style or size – I’m all about the Composite wheels be they wire-spoke or Comstar style bolt-up types – of which there are many different versions, the best of which revolve around the Akront “NERVI” rims – THEY’RE the type of rim which I’d have hanging high on the wall as ART until such time as I could use ’em. While THIS one stays right down there on the floor – and a good excuse for keeping a dried-up old diamond-tread vintage tire and enjoy looking at it’s wavy lil’ sipes – (We NEED a new production tire with a period-correct pattern borrowed from say, a mid-’70s AVON racing tire! Depressing to see a nut-&-bolt replica of the RC-181 but wearing the same Bridgestone Battlax tires as my crusty old Comstar wheels once bore….)
*cough* – HENCE THE CHAIR: It’s the 100/90-19 & 1.85×19″ seven-spoke cast/mag front wheel off the donor bike of my teenage Ex-Daughter’s “KZ440LOL” – It’s being replaced with a MAXI-SCOOTER type 110/70-16 RADIAL (and 140/70-16 on the same sized rear rim, though sadly the dual-compound Michelin is no longer available) wrapping ’round the 3.00×16″ Borrani, which itself is practically riveted around the shoe-horned in hub which is a Suzuki 4LS drum, held together with spokes shorter than navy-cut cigarettes (not just ye olde “you’ve come a long way, baby” “B!#@%-STICKS” – Wish I’d heard of that Duck 900 Square-case homage to the V4 Apollo, ’cause THEY managed to stuff a Grimeca 230mm into a cheap chromed-steel Firestone rim – Buchanan’s was already reluctant about doing the 200mm 4LS for me – But the Benelli Tornado 650’s 230mm 2xSLS drum would’ve been a LOT cheaper than the Suzuki drum these days. Evidence the Internet spreads the word, but not always the understanding! A Guzzi 220mm 2LS drum would probably have been the better drum – Ah but now I’m more or less STUCK with the thing, so I’ve done some awesome improvements to it. Keep an eye out for it whenever the heck it’s finished –
The KID has given me the deadline: next summer. Which would be when she’s getting back from her year alone touring India & South-East Asia … like I say, -ALONE- at 19yrs-old. Which is terrifying for me & the ExBaby-Momma, yet perhaps it’s nothing compared to her trip to Costa-Rica alone at 16 – She rented a scooter, chained some college boy to the BIT- … uh, the PILLION seat, and rode it up into Nicaragua without checking in at the border crossing stations – Which is to say, obviously she was travelling the back roads?
Yep. Here’s a budding young Moto-Lady who’s future motorcycle exploits are sure to give you Moto- LadyWood!
Can’t talk about that CHAIR without mentioning why the wheel had to come off of it’s BIKE – can’t mention the “KZ440LOL” project without explaining the REASON why such a weird lil’ adult-sized mini-bike must be built:
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One tough lil’ GRRRL straight from the get-go – Within a couple of days of crashing her bicycle and breaking her forearm, she went straight back out there tried the same stunts and broke the other one for a match. That’s also where the two front teeth had been spent by that point, come to think of it!
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Can’t wait to see what sort of bike she rents/buys on THIS trip! Been bugging her about the Enfield Bullet factory ride-away tours, for nigh on a decade now. Though I’d rather think she’s got the smarts to dig up a nice older Honda CD250 or some such – Hopefully she’ll grab a Cub/Passport at some point, and see the folly of spending what SHOULD’VE been the resto-mod budget for my old C70 Passport the glorious storied “Lil’ Big Red”, which thanks to the “divorce” slash Step-Booting which preempted said restoration, was wasted instead as her last minute 14th Bday 1st-scoot budget on a Honda CHF-50 Metro – at least she picked out a HONDA – PLUS my CB750F-resto budget was simultaneously blown/sucked on a Yam Vino 125 ostensibly for her Smother (my EX at that point, no less) – whereupon yon blighted highschool teacher slash guidance councilor would chase her around the neighborhood wearing the same wardrobe and hair-dye, shoes etc – shouting out such vile utterances as “We look like SISTERS!” and “I feel so YOUNG when we hang out like this!” driving the poor GRRRL onward ever faster on her smaller slower bike….
Not long after this all got up to speed, I caught her in a state of quiet brooding intensity, concentrating over some thick “text-book” which I at first glance had assumed to be her math homework – yet which turned out to be a line-through-the-chicane S-turn diagram from some Keith Code book or other! Turns out she’d not only grabbed all of the technical riding books from the library where she worked at the time, she’d also went to Chapters and bought all of the technical riding stuff THEY had, like “Proficient Motorcycling” by David L. Hough, and as soon as she got home all of her time was spent studying ’em as though she were cramming for her SAT’s, until she was finally able to pull away from the bigger bike through sheer technique and brass-ladyballs alone.
Well obviously all of my scooter-funding brownie points had been flushed away by the purchase of her Smother’s scooter, but all was forgiven when I explained my reasons for buying it – Not to motivate her to ride ever faster, I’m not THAT kind of genius – No THAT was pure serendipity – I said to her “When the cat’s away, the mice will play” – And then as soon as the cat was away, ditching my CANE for a SKATEBOARD which I hadn’t tried in more than a dozen or more years at that point of walking with the cane & the pain-killers etc – I hung on behind the scooter at some 0-80kph in under 3.5-sec to demonstrate how to tow all of her GRRRL-friends along with both scooters, five astride the bikes and two or three in two per each bike as one monstrous middle-school Roller-Derby Wolf-Pack – which turned out to be the ONLY riding instruction I ever gave her, the rest she figured out on her own and she’s a genius scooter-jockey AND auto-driver as a result of which –
No really though, can you picture what a more or less complete C70 Passport could look like after some TWO GRAND worth of only purely functional and wise well selected performance parts and zero anodized billet shite, just bigger 2LS drums say 180mm-200mm front & 140mm rear, laced into 1.85×16″ & 2.15×16″ or 2.15×16″ & 2.50×16″ light-weight alloy rims, CA72 Dream leading-link fork with factory kit clip-on bars, CB72/CB77 Hawk/SuperHawk rear-sets with the CB77P police type heel-toe rear-set gear-shift pedal, a Gates Industry “Poly-Chain Carbon GT” belt-drive off of a “Zero” electric bike, some back-up copies of LIfan crate engines with 200cc heads and maybe something like the Bob Milyard inspired V-Twin conversion crank-cases? A one-off DIY welded racing frame based on the SL70 Motosport model…. Let’s just say, the same damn $$$’s for these hokey SCOOTERS would’ve built an “UNDERBONE” the like of which this world has never seen, not even on the “Chalopy.com” photo-blog….
So YEAH, like I was saying – it would be some SMALL JUSTICE if she has to go overseas to try out an actual Honda PASSPORT but wtf – it could inspire a cool rebuild when she gets HOME. The main question is what she’ll do with a bike like that while she’s over THERE – And which model she’ll find ripe for the pickin’s…. Guess we’ll find out soon en- … sooner or later.
I’m pretty damn proud, obviously: She’s a dyed-in-the-wool mad-skillz SCOOTER-jockey, which is why the KZ440LTD had to become more … “scooter-esque” if you will. Perhaps it’s best feature is the all-NOS belt-drive, with two full sets on hand – When I got a 2LS drum and 3rd matching rim for tire changes, before I could even explain what they were for, she sez “SIDE-CAR!!!!” which has only complicated the build even further. But now “thanks to” the 2013 house-fire which set the project back by a good couple of years, there’s a 2nd donor-bike and 4LS drum and enough rims to build spare wheels for both a 2-wheeler AND the side-hack version. Perhaps this is the only way I can reconcile the low-profile radial tires, with the side-hack requisite square-shouldered racing tires – BOTH – Was thinking of building just the two different sets of wheels for the two radically different tire profiles, and a removable racing-style flat-deck either with or without a hack bucket (it’s for hauling her DAWG after all) – but with the two good frames, two full sets of the belt-drive, and two spare 39mm forks from my “CB900K0 Bol Bomber” project, all that’s really needed is another KZ engine – and IMHO we should hold out for a 400 base built up to 440cc’s plus, ’cause the 440 has no kick-start. The KZ400S of course has the stripped-out electric start and starter-clutch etc, and with the kicker we could run a battery-eliminator style ignition, to eliminate the generator – THEN perhaps a small gel battery with a quick-trickle-charger pigtail, to run as a total-loss ignition system, but with everything stripped off the side of the crank just the late model CDI ignition from KZ440LTD-D circa ’83-’84 – we’ve already got the one KZ400S part the tachometer-drive block-off plug – gonna run electric drive clock dials inside the old’s-cool clock housings – with the 4LS drum’s speedo drive gutted out, I’m sticking a hall-effect sensor inside the drum, VIA the mechanical speedo drive, with the lead-wire running down the middle of a hollow OEM cable sheath! Everything would LOOK old’s-cool, but no more need for replacement cables all the damn time! Thank GAWD. It’ll help rebuilding it anyway, as the 16″ rim vs 19″ standard with the GT750J/GT550J speedo drive, gonna plot out the solution with a pc’s PIE GRAPH program – can you think of a better use for ’em? Got an oval shaped clock bezel to stick ’em both into, might help to use a dial drive from a later model sport-bike with an actual 16″ front wheel, say a ’90s Black-Bird or some such – ’cause that way the normal sweep of the clock arm over some 300+kph would be shrunk down via the KZ’s max 130-140kph (in STOCK trim, mind you? Heh-heh.) cutting down that dial sweep to less than 180-degrees maybe even 90-degrees, and then both clock dials will be able to fit into the oval bezel – Right?
Well, as soon as the KZ440LOL is finished, along with the CB900K0 Bol Bomber, (((that’d be whatcha call an ’82 CB985F Bol D’Or based homage to the ’65 CB450K0 Black Bomber – ’cause there aren’t any Tony Foale Leading-Link forks laying around on the ground, so I can’t just build it as a “CB902” homage to the ’59 CB92 Benly Super-Sport!))) *cough* – As soon as there’s room on the “work-bench”, we’re (hopefully BOTH of us, together) building another Honda DOHC-4, a “Featherweight 750 Four-Ever” which is already a considerably and formidable collection of upgrade parts, including 2.50×18″ & 3.50×18″ alloy rims, which were considered too “SKINNY” for the Bol Bomber – Hoping to use (maybe even scratch-build?) a DUSTBIN on that one, as the CB900C/CB750C CUSTOM type fairing bracket wouldn’t work with the Duck 900SS Bevel-Bubble for the Bol Bomber – Gotta use it for SOMETHING! I figure with a 100lb/110lb jockey, some decent running-gear upgrades that are respectful of the weight loss plan whoops I mean binge-&-purge anorexic/bulemic body image disorder, which the bike will undoubtedly have developed from it’s many years of abuse…. (((Okay so THAT’S maybe taking the analogy a bit too far?))) AND the right aerodynamics package, that lil’ bog standard 736cc DOHC-4 engine should in theory be able to keep up with the 985cc Bol Bomber – And with it’s better fuel-economy it’ll get by with a CB750K tank while the bigger bike will NEED it’s CB1100R toaster-tank style polished alloy, 6.9-gallon tank – Well the smaller version is gonna be even MORE “Retro-Fried” than the first.
Of course, if we can’t find a really good DONOR for it I’m equally prepared to try out a GL1200 based pseudo-replica of the “DLF-1000” Gold-Wing based ENDURANCE racer, or perhaps a V65 Magna based homage to the ’60s Czechoslovakian Grand Prix racer, the CZ Type 860 – or a V65 Sabre based replica of the RS850R, or an MVX250F repaint and wire-spoke conversion aka a perfect replica of the JAWA Type 673 – I’m prepared to work with any one of a dozen donor models, using this same “Retro-Fried” race-replica plan which could theoretically work for ANYTHING – like say, even a ’90s era Honda V-4 “Super-Magna” could stand in pretty good for the ’30s-’40s AJS V-4 racer, so long as you give it some crazy board-track vibes – the engine and headers might enjoy a bit of dress-up, but it should work out alright – within a certain margin of error of course, in that I wouldn’t put the real 1930s spec suspension & running gear. This is why my plan calls for the bike’s own era’s cutting-edge race-spec bits & pieces – So that Super-Magna based AJS Board-Track beast might utilize a fake girder ala the customized Ducati “MS4R” by Paolo Tesio – just fiberglass shrouds over an USD fork – OR perhaps some type of PAUGHCO brand reproduction springer/girder fork, I suppose. Better still, a Honda Valkyrie RUNE front end, if you had your druthers – whichever doesn’t break the bank first – the RIMS might be something more like a 2.50×19″ front and 3.00×18″ rear, OR perhaps some 16″ rims with BALLOON tires on ’em – far better to make the beast look all long and thin though, that’s what that AJS was all about. I dunno, it’s just an example off the cuff, but the idea should be to take the basic engine configuration and figure out which of the top 1000 most famous historical racers is best represents – then strip it down and throw parts at it which look SORTA like the period-correct bits which came with the racer. Maybe the AJS V-4 would’ve been possibly the most difficult of all these Honda pseudo-replica projects to pull off – with the Jawa Type 673 being the easiest – The MVX250F wouldn’t even need any of it’s bodywork changed, the plastic faux heat-shields over the upper “pair” of exhausts, would be sprayed with that fake chrome stuff, the tank just painted straight up red with the “JAWA” script/font printed as “HONDA”, while the same HUBS even, could simply be converted to wire-spoke – I figure the Jawa itself was the reason why Honda threw their “Inboard disc” aka “Faux-Leading-Shoe” front hub at it. Well, I’d really rather do a PC800 Pacific-Coast version of fake 4LS drum at it, with it’s dual 276mm discs, perhaps upgraded to 296mm with CB1100F-us-spec rear discs, perhaps GL1500 type rotor shrouds on it, and a 20mm front axle mod on a CB1100R/CB1100F type 39mm TRAC fork would be perfectly sufficient for that lil’ bike – the MVX250F has gotta be pretty damn similar to the NS400R engine, so you’ve gotta wonder whether the 400cc engine could squeeze into the tubular-steel chassis of the little 250 – an “MVX400R” perhaps? Or could it just be the “MVX673F” or better yet simply the “Bill Ivy Replica” irrespective of it’s displacement? Too bad that’s such a rare model around these parts. And too bad even a 400cc too-smoke triple would have such a hard time hauling MY ass around.
EITHER way I’m keen to get my hands on the next five donor bikes, all of which would be early to mid ’80s Honda models, preferably big four-bangers. ALL of ’em a wire-spoke conversion, or Comstar wheels rebuilt with Akront “NERVI” rims – all of ’em “Retro-Fried” aka “Pre-Riod In-Correct” and Pseudo-Race-Replica style to boot.
But the one recurring theme to all of these build plans, is they always roll in pairs….
What… the fuck.