steveb leatherworks: the blather

I dont make alot of stuff for myself. Most of what i wear and use is prototype work, usually it is a little rough design and detail wise ..a work still in progress. I usually try something new at the same time  that i am working out a new design – a new material,  a new piece of hardware, a new dye, etc – so really it is prototyping at its finest. I use what I made and correct the details in the “next one”, so by the time it is ready for a customer, it really is ready and shows that some time has been taken to make sure the details have been thought out.

Then, sometimes, I just get a wild hair and knock something out – zip/bam. These dash pouches came out of  the shop this winter as a replacement to the pathetic vinyl pleather junk that H-D sells. So I made these out of some really thick (too thick as it turns out) leather, riveted in some gussets and put them on the bike. Looked good.

After one ride, I hated them, even though they looked good and were a massive improvement over the H-D solution. Why?

Well, these “new” batwing fairings sit high (unlike my old evo bagger), you really cant put anything on the top edge of the inner fairing without impeding your road vision. I hate impeding my vision, so took a quick spin just to make sure –  without any junk on the dash and found i liked it alot better. So i took off the nice new dash pouches i made. Into the box they go.

Another unintended consequence of putting these beauties on the dash were vibrations from yet even more crap on the bike. I understand now why H-D uses pleather, it has no weight and doesn’t vibrate (because it has no mass)…

Some things are better left alone.