On 28 February 2026 at 22:37 Nigel Graham 2 Said:

If your main metalworking is large parts for motorcyles, surely you’d need larger machine-tools than those; but if you are not confident on your skills will you be confident riding on your results?

Hi Nigel, when I mention confident skills it is more of a “will I take a thou too much off this piece or that”. Or as I am not particularly experienced (as in properly trained) the shift in confidence could be “am I doing this in the best manner” (would somebody with more experience do it differently?).

I would not put my life or other peoples life’s at risk though!! 😊 I potentially have 2-3 home machinists in place to do the job for me.

One of which is my old mate Robbie (who I have not yet spoken too about this). He builds custom choppers and stuff that wins best engineering awards when he enters his bikes into shows. He also is able to widen stock motorbike wheels (from 6 to 12 inches!). He has the gear and knows how to use it. Here is one of about a hundred bikes that he has built from scratch. He makes everything apart from the engine and tyres. LOL.

Another lovely bloke is involved with a YouTube channel, but I don’t want to name names even though this has been discussed with him and it appears that the green light for go is on. I would love to have this man do the work and maybe even see a YT video of it being done.

Another is a mate who owns a motorcycle engineering restoration business. I could probably go and use his lathe and then his (or my own) milling machine with his supervisiona nd advice when needed.

But your sentiment is 100% correct. I will not do anything that could hurt or even kill anybody. Doing a bracket here or a spacer there will not harm anybody, but doing a wheel wrong would be a distaster.

Outside is not an option for me, sadly.

But the idea of fitting inside a box (as if outside) and then soundproofing it could work.