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WheelsOfGrace.com | Volume 10 Issue 2 | 37 started taking auto shop classes to help understand the inner workings of his engine, and it mo vated him through school to be on me and get good marks. He wanted to be a motorcycle mechanic, but his shop teacher saw the same rare skill we saw in his design and told him, "You should be designing them, not fixing them." And so his journey to become and engineer began. When he started college, he bought a MIG welder and got to fabrica ng, star ng with the making tools he would need to shape sheet metal and bend tube. A er school, he would work on building roll cages and fixing banged up muscle cars un l he finished his degree and was offered a job as a high performance machinist. Once again ac ng on the recommenda on of a teacher who saw his poten al, he turned down the job and went on to pursue his master's degree. He bought a TIG welder, which led to the purchase of a mill, then a lathe. His fabrica on got be er, ghter and more precise. It was in these years he had the crea ve freedom to really explore the art of design, while pursuing his educa on. When he finally got his degree, he was offered a job running flammability tests for NASA, which he took and has been at to this day. While his build seems incredibly ambi ous in the short meline, his work at NASA mee ng harsh deadlines and his lifelong passion for motorcycles, engineering and fabrica on, have made him ready for the task. Finalist: Christian Newman Lakeview, NY Building a motorcycle from scratch is a behemoth of a task on its own. Now imagine taking every li le detailed metal component that you made for that bike, and polishing it to a mirror finish. Then welding it to whatever piece it a aches to, and grinding and polishing your welds out to match. Professional builders will scratch their heads looking at Chris an's 1940 V-twin chopper that was almost en rely manually machined out of stainless steel and absolutely covered in gorgeous minute details, wondering "How does this guy have the me?" and not knowing that he is a full- me mechanical engineer, only able to work on bikes a er 6pm and on the weekends. When heading into a motorcycle build, Chris an approaches it differently than most customizers. Rather than knocking it out, using cheap, easy methods, or whatever will get the job done quickly, Newman will a ack the project with manual machinery. This undoubtedly takes longer and many would say it requires more skill, but it has resulted in an unparalleled a en on to detail that Chris an is becoming well known for. Newman's love for motorcycles started young, picking up the passion from his dad. In fact, when he found the first bike his dad ever bought at a garage sale, he knew it was des ned to be his first as well, and took it home that day. That 70's CB would become the first of many builds for Chris an, though he never got any real fabrica on training. Being a nkerer his whole life, he just figured it out. Perhaps it was the need to figure these things out on his own that has led to his willingness to teach and share his knowledge, as he will o en post how-to's or the details of his work for like-minded individuals to benefit from. Given the short meline of this build, Chris an knows be er than to try to build a frame out of stainless steel and polish it all up again. For The Wrench Build Off, he is u lizing the stock chassis of the Scout Bobber with a Crazy Frank fender, custom wheels and a scratch-built swingarm to completely change the look of the bike. He describes it as sort of an 80's swingarm chopper look, and we can't wait to see how it all comes together.