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In his previous life, Matt was a popular architect from Sydney, but twenty years ago, he began to build and restore his first bikes.
Its taken him twenty years to get to the point of being able to set up his workshop...tools....enough space...he had to move to the country to get this space.
the workshop is at the farm.....which is about 3 hours south of Sydney....in a town called Braidwood.
The Workshop is named "MACHINE" after the Jim Jarmusch movie "DEAD MAN" starring Johnny Depp...in that movie he visits a back of nowhere country town called Machine....he is travelling on a train from the east coast to the frontier in the west....and the last stop on the line is Machine..
Matt love pre 1970 bikes...his birth year...mostly british ( Nortons addicted, Rudge etc)...and 42-69 harleys... He was very into Ducatis at one point and had a couple of concourse winning bikes but the cost of running italian bikes there (parts etc) killed it for him.
His favourite bike in the whole world is the Norton50 model es2....he rode it every day for about 8 years...and will never sell it....it the cheapest bike he ever bought....He's still in love with it after 15 years...and it never let him down...
With the new business...MACHINE...He want to dedicate himself to being the best fabricator he can...and like architecture...he want to strip it back to the bones...reveal the structure...dispense with ornament for ornaments sake and remove anything superfluous...making the machine lighter, faster, and all that..
but more...he want it to be about loving the construction and assembly of the elements...with a bike he can control the assembly of the parts...its the reason the architecture has crippled him...there are so many other external forces and influences he cant control....
In my opinion Matt has built the most interesting Norton Bobber/Racer, don't change anything Matt it's perfect...
Matt like to build the bikes for himself and then sell....but he's also building a couple for customers....and would like to build maybe 3 or 4 a year for customers.....that would be ideal....
Matt's Blog Here
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