Harley-Davidson Panhead

Petri Ruusunen is a professional goldsmith and jewelry designer from Turku, Finland. To relax after work, Petri spends his time building unique custom bikes. The strangely beautiful bobber spread across these pages is the seventh bike in his ever-growing collection. "There are more and more guys like me in the bike scene here in Finland," Petri said. "I mean guys who have never been bikers." he added, "These are guys with a University degree and a career in art design, who also build bikes as a hobby."

We were relaxing in the shade outside Petri's big, old house in the fashionable outskirts of Turku, Finland's second largest city. Talking about bikes over coffee and rhubarb cake sounds like a good way to earn my daily buck. Petri's beautiful home is just one of the fruits of his success. He has been running his goldsmith shop together with his wife for 16 years, and the customers are still lining up. "As a teenager, I had a '55 BSA and a Ford Fairlane from the same year," Petri said. "But I had to sell those to buy my goldsmith tools. It is nice to be back around bikes. I started building up my little collection six years ago."

In the spacious garage under the birch and oak trees is one of the nicest collections of motorcycles we have ever seen in private ownership. There is a '60s-style chopper, a '90s high-tech Softail with tons of expensive custom parts, a Honda chopper that is still under construction, and a fairly stock Harley-Davidson. "But this is just where I keep my bikes," Petri said. "I build them in the basement under our gold shop. There is a lot more nice stuff there. You should see the panhead that I will have finished in a few months. Afterwards, I will start on a Honda CBX."

The "Boomerang Bobber" started as a crashed bike in a sales ad. The owner had a minor accident and came out of it in very bad shape. It turned out he suffered from osteoporosis, a disease that makes your bones brittle: No more riding a rigid for him! "I bought it as a basket case," Petri said, "and the owner got the money he needed to buy a bike with suspension."

Petri told us he wanted a bike with a gas tank and an oil tank made out of copper, a wooden seat, and Art-Deco styling.

"I had to skip the copper oil tank," Petri said. "I made one completely round, like a ball. It looked nice in itself, but it was not right for the project. I wanted the bike to look compact and sort of dense. But the oil tank had a lot of empty spaces around it, so I had to use a normal tank."

The gas tank is made out of 2-millimeter copper and has no bolts in it. The gas tank is held in place by the Art-Deco style steel bars on top. Petri claimed the shaping of the tank was the easy part, but TIG-welding the pieces together was a lot trickier. "It would have been easier to solder it together," Petri said, "but the silver would come creeping out."

The seat and grips were made by the owner from teakwood, as well as the mother-of-pearl inlay lettering. We asked Petri to explain the name of his bike. "Well, check it out. You can see the boomerang shapes here and there in the bike. Basically, I did everything I could to make it look as compact as possible, heavy in the center, you know. For example, take the exhaust pipes. I did not want anything sticking out, so I did this ultra-tight package of an exhaust system."

You may remember the big winner of last year's Norrtalje Custom Bike Show. The winner was Isto with his bizarre hub-steered Indian. Well, the silversmith Isto and the goldsmith Petri are good friends and have even worked together for a period of time. "I let Isto see my bike when it was half finished," Petri said. "Isto told me that everything was perfect, except for the Keihin carburetor. He wanted me to dump it, but I did not want to change the carb. I went halfway and painted it black."

Petri's bike was finished right in time for the Norrtalje bike show. He then took it out for the first test ride. "I actually find bike riding kind of boring," he said. "But the first test ride is always a thrill. It was even nicer to be able to see my machine from a distance for the first time. In the workshop, you are always up close and you cannot really see the overall lines. Anyway, my big kick has never been riding. Designing, tinkering and planning unusual parts is the thrill, if you ask me."

Winning shows is not all that important to Petri, either. He thought he could bring his wife and kids along to Norrtalje to treat his family to a different weekend adventure. But Petri was a little concerned that he might not win any prizes. He did not want his sons to be ashamed of their old man. "I was hoping I could get at least third prize, so my family would not think the trip was a waste," Petri said. "As you know, things worked out OK. I won the Classic Custom class and finished second in the Jury's Choice."

The Jury's Choice means Petri got 1,500 euros to spend on taking his machine to the European Championship in Mainz in March of 2007. This is a prize that Petri is not sure what he should think about. In places like Mainz, 99 percent of the bike builders are professionals who need to show their creations and win prizes to get PR for their business. But the full-time goldsmith from Turku, who only builds bikes as a hobby, is not in that situation at all. "I cannot help thinking what is in it for me," Petri said. "But I guess I will go there anyway. It is always fun to see something new."

Tech Specs