Running Bull Paint

Mark Walker’s paint job on the Running Bull project has been overwhelmingly well received.

Some of the Indian ‘traditionalists’ find it too far from their norm, but most observers see the beauty in the art of it.

“It’s like all custom paint jobs. Some people won’t like it – other’s will really love it” Mark began when I asked him to sum up the completed job.

“This was a big job and very fiddly in parts.”

To hit Brum’s ultimate target, the paint had to nod to the traditional Indian two-tone colour schemes of old, while still clearly declaring itself as a full custom paint job.

Brum says, in a real ‘man bites dog’ twist, “Indian somehow got hold of the our plans and released their own two-tone plans while our job was well under way!”

Fortunately Mark’s result is actually a three-tone colour scheme. The base is black, completely re-laid after rubbing back the original paint, then comes a band of Purple metalflake with Ivory infill panels that are a pearl finish. Both the Pearl and Metalflake subtly change shades in different light. The metalflake at some angles has quite perceptible depth.

The panels are separated by numerous 12mm wide stripes of Gold Leaf: twenty-three carat gold leaf.

"You buy what is called a book, it has 25 pages of leaf in it, it is wafer thin, thinner than paper.” Said Mark.

“You carefully brush size (a sort of glue) on to your job, wait until it becomes tacky and then press the leaf onto that, it sticks to the part that has been sized up, after about an hour or two it is then polished up with some cotton wool, followed by doing the ‘engine turns’ by hand with a soft piece of velvet, its real carpal tunnel type of stuff after a while. Gold leafing is really about getting your timing right with the materials. Too late and it sets up too much, too early and you can turn straight through the leaf. When done properly you can almost see a type of checker pattern in it, you can get it in different sorts as well, 12 karat white gold, variegated leaf and copper as well.”

It’s very classy looking. The stripes are then highlighted at the edge with a hand-applied pinstripe in red.

The red ties in with the Authentic 1920’s logo, it’s called the ‘red faced Indian’ and was sourced locally.

The paints are Glasurit and PPG 2-pac and they give a truly outstanding effect.

“This type of metalflake needed more clear coats than normal” Mark also noted. “From start to finish there are about 15 coats of paint on this job, the extra clear, used mainly to smooth the metalflake”.

Smooth it is. And that’s just one of many appreciative words people have used to describe the finish so far.

We had a great chance to gauge opinion at the Laverda Concours event in Cleveland, southeast of Brisbane. The biggest bike show in Queensland draws thousands of visitors who spend hours wandering around a stunning array of historic bikes and a large variety of club and trade displays.

The boys form Indian Brisbane directed me to park ‘the Bull’ at the front of their big display and I hung around and talked to many people about the project. A lot of Heavy Duty readers too. You know who you are!

I asked Mark how much you would expect to pay for a job like this. A job that the show goers described variously as “Gorgeous, amazing, beautiful, superb, stunning” and more.

“Well this is a pretty unique job. There are the guards. The bodywork … and” …  “a mother of a big fairing!” I completed the sentence for him.

I have to admit to being way over when trying to estimate what the job would cost. I was actually quite surprised when Mark went on to explain “because there it’s such a big area – on this bike – around $4000. On a bike like a Heritage Softail for example, around $2500.”

To give any custom motorcycle this sort of unique style and finish, I think that is simply great value.

To find out more, visit qmpp.com.au