[Stevenator_]

That's pretty amazing Lara. I'd love to know more. That bike is cool as shit and I'm also interested in the other things you mentioned, the fish traps especially.

So far we've got three musicians ITT.

Very Cool

[HelloDiDi]

Wow nice bike, excellent pinstriping, you should advertise people pay good money for that sort of stuff

There is no way I could make this as a job... No way, its too demanding, too expensive and Finland is absolutely tiny, so the market for custom bikes is even tinier. Its just impossible, especially the way I have to do things as I lack space and good tools and have to improvise a lot. Otherwise its a cool idea and these things are very expensive, I bet I could sell this black bike for 3000€. Parts and sand blasting and everything cost me around 800-1000€ in the end so it turned out quite costly.

The pin stiping is kinda neat, I didn't use marked spots for it, so looking closely you can tell its free hand style work... Doing it with tape and brush is really old school, I wanted to prove that I can do the painjob so clean, there's no way to tell its not done with a paintgun and it worked out really well, super neat, not a single brush stroke is visible.

I'm in particular happy about the finish of the entire thing. And the details, there are certain parts with gold hue. Bell, the horn, lock bolts on the fork (Made in Taiwan Schwinn repro), the chain and so on. The seat btw was originally black, my fiance helped me to add the leopard print finish on it. And that white fur thingie is kinda scarft type of thing from my grandma, I bet she would laugh a whole lot finding the current use for it. xD The gear shifter, that's so cool, its 3-speed Torpedo from 60's, backhub is same era three speed Sachs Torpedo, one of the neat things on which German engineering has hit a homerun.

I should try to find batteries for the torpedo shaped lamp in the middle, its another repro piece and it takes those huge old school batteries which are a bit hard to find. Then the hand made pieces, I had to make something to get the fork spring sit in right place and something to make the sissybar attachment get far enough and make it so that the back wheel can be adjusted/removed without messing with the sissy bar. Those things are all hand tooled, took a good while to make them from the flat steel bar.





Stevenator, the fish traps are kinda neat, the idea is very ancient one and Finns have used that type of a trap for millenia... These days they're made from steel wiring and netting but the old kind were built in place so they stayed all summer in same spot and were much bigger. Modern ones are similar but made of metal and they're movable. I'll drop a few pictures with some more detailed explanation some time soon, I should have pictures of the ones I made somewhere.

[Stevenator_]

I used to have a beach cruiser bike when I lived in Miami Beach in the 90's. I loved that bike very much and I'd ride it for miles until one day when it got stolen.

I'm very intrigued about the whole process of fish traps in your locale.

Thanks

[notveryinteresting]

I'd guess pinstriping a bike would be harder than a car, proper custom car guys would go nuts for a proper hand pin stripe paint job, also sign writing old vans is very popular, might not make you a full time job but might help the finances. I think Amazon sell rechargeable D cells
Danni x

[HelloDiDi]

I'd guess pinstriping a bike would be harder than a car, proper custom car guys would go nuts for a proper hand pin stripe paint job, also sign writing old vans is very popular, might not make you a full time job but might help the finances. I think Amazon sell rechargeable D cells
Danni x

I think I might find those batteries in some bigger local shops as some places still sell them. Should keep those in production due to all old hardware needing them. Obviously I could play around with smaller batteries and wiring to make the lamp work, all the usual ones function at 1.5V anyway so its not really difficult. (My dad is a phone electrician, taught me a lot about simple electronics when I was kid so I would figure this out quite easily.)

Oh yea, I bet! Bikes are difficult due to everything being rounded and slim, it gets especially demanding when shapes are done on the frame as its perfectly round pipes all over. Its doable but takes so much concentration and trial and error. This is one of the reasons why bikes like these take insane number of work hours.

I think using a brush rather than paintgun is really nice for detailing as there's no paint all over the place, much easier to make it clean, but it requires skill to make it so that brush strokes become invisible. The type of paint I used for the black bike was really amazing for it as it settles extremely well, the downside is very long drying time. I let the parts dry almost a week after each coat. This would get really amazing if I used a tiny brush meant for actual oil painting, that would be even better hiding brish strokes. Oh and with some trickery, I could do fading pinstripes too! I haven't tried it out yet, but paint thinner and some skill could make perfect fades. I have formal training on oil painting along with other art stuff so again I could try do it and see how it goes. Maybe on the next one I build, I make another "faux tank" with fancy paintjob and try make fading pinstriping. Make them change colour halfway or something like that. It could totally be done and look mind blowing. Gosh I'm getting inspired.

[HelloDiDi]

Stevenator, here's pictures of the fish traps I have built.

They're shaped like heart of a pretty girls butt. And well.. The "mouth" of the trap is, where you would expect it to be. xD lol. There's even a joke about this, how fist trap maker knows the best shape for it, it is the shape that womans butt leaves on sauna bench. And its correct! I built mine using fibonacci ratios btw to make it have natural proportions. And the green colour is amazing addition, this makes sure it looks "natural" under water and the colour and all is mimicing water plants which fish use for cover.

Mine has a bunch of features I have copied from other trap makers, basically taking all the best things I can think of and put them all together. Like five handles on top, big wide hatch to release the fish with a sort of hook to keep it closed. There's a bump in the "mouth" at bottom and top which has a straight horizontal ledge on the inside, this fools certain bottom swimmer fish from escaping. The mouth is 105mm wide but its made so that it can widen to around 200mm or approx 8" to allow absolutely huge fish inside, but then it returns to its original shape so that big fish doesn't know how to get out. The fence is 70cm long, twice as long as a normal one, that's from the old fashion way of making these as the ancient ones might have a fence longer than three meters.

If I remember correctly, the trap is 105cm wide and 140cm long counting the fence. Its not the biggest of these things but definitely bigger than a normal one, also its 60cm high, so takes quite lot of space, but its not too hard to manage, number of handles really helps. Maybe on new ones I could add maybe three handles on the sides too just in case those are needed. Another idea would be to have a hatch at the bottom part to even easier let fish out. 

These things are perfect for letting unwanted fish go free without harming them. A lot of times they're in perfect health even after day or two, no missing scales. I think a fish trap like this is the most humane way of fishing, they're easy to to use, easy to let unwanted ones back and its very effective! When ever I use five of these in certain spots I know to be good, I can catch so much fish each day I don't know what to do with them and definitely can't eat them all, so few of these allows me to choose which ones I want and never run out of fish. Permits for them are also very cheap so its very good way for catching some lovely fish food. Most typical ones are perch, pike and ide along with some others.

[thegirl1951]

Building counter-terrorism sensor systems.

[Stevenator_]

Building counter-terrorism sensor systems.

That's an interesting hobby haha!
It sounds like it could be a lucrative venture!

[Wills747]

Porting adult RenPy games to Android.
Although lately I seem to be using more of my free time researching this site 

[notveryinteresting]

Porting adult RenPy games to Android.
Although lately I seem to be using more of my free time researching this site 

That does seem to be a theme