About

Welcome to the Roughboy blog, internet home for our shop which provides model-making and bike-building services. Our focus is on craftsmanship and creative expression as exemplified in scale model-making and bike-building along with the heart and soul commitment needed to see the gut-wrenching processes through. We believe in building our own, creating and fabricating what we need, making do with what we’ve got. We believe in sharing what we know and learn with other like-minded individuals and showing the work of craftsman past and present whose work we find provocative and inspiring.

Our workshop is located in the mountain village of North Fork, CA on the edge of the Sierra National Forest about 30 miles from Yosemite.

Brief Bio

I’ve been building models since I was old enough to hold an Exacto knife and open a tube of glue without squirting the contents over everything in sight. For nine years I worked as an independent professional model-maker, specializing in narrow-gauge railway prototypes. My work has been published in the Narrow Gauge and Short Line Gazette, Model Railroader, Model Railroad Planning and the Narrow Gauge & Industrial Railway Modelling Review. During that time I partnered with fellow modeler, Richard Christ to produce a series of craftsman structure kits under the Archive Models name. I’ve been working with and building bikes for the past fourteen years. After closing my model shop I worked as a GM at a California Harley Dealership back when they were bike shops, not boutiques. A few years ago my wife and I opened a short-lived custom motorcycle shop. Unfortunately the shop is gone, a victim of the economic recession and our appalling choice in business partners. The lesson learned was that if you want to do something right, do it yourself or don’t bother. However, the Heart & Soul spirit we put into the shop lives on and will be evident in posts on this blog.

Concerning our modelwork, we specialize in fine-standard models of narrow gauge railway prototypes in 1:48 and 1:24 scales. Refer to our Services page for information on the model-building services we offer. A few current projects are documented here on the blog. The pictures below show three locomotive projects that were completed for clients. There are currently three locomotive projects on the workbench, a scratch-built 1:24 15″ gauge Heywood Katie, a 1:48n3 Lima Shay #122 and an extensive rebuild of a 1:48n3 Kodama K27. Posts covering progress on these projects are being published on the blog. We are also in the process of re-releasing our 1:48 craftsman kit of Clyde’s Place, a depression era roadside café inspired by a photograph taken of the structure by Arthur Rothstein in 1938. Refer to our Products page for updates on availability and pricing.

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Concerning motorcycles we believe in remembering where we came from and hark back to the early days of choppers and bobbers in the 1960s & 70s. We don’t have a fancy shop and loads of expensive machinery. We’re not completely nostalgic though, we do believe in utilizing new technologies that weren’t available to our predecessors. Our bikes are built to be ridden, that after all is the whole point. There is absolutely nothing quite so satisfying as putting the miles onto a machine that you’ve built yourself.

Photos below show an early incarnation of the Iron Lady of Pain, a ’76 Ironhead chopper with a vintage Jammer frame and springer front end. This bike is currently undergoing a complete frame up rebuild. Progress on that project is documented here on the blog. Below that are several renderings of parts designed for our former shop, Roughboy Customs.

Enjoy your stay. If you have any comments, complaints, concerns or questions, please contact us through our Contact page.

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Roughboy Blog is published and edited by W. Paul Rayner.