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Archived Press Releases Built by Thugs - Helped by Hardinge CNC Lathes Monday, July 10, 2006
LOS ANGELES, CA — Built by Thugs is the name of a very real specialty bike shop with a reputation for turning out street bikes that can cost $100,000 or more. It’s also the set for Build or Bust, an increasingly popular weekly TV show on SPEED, whose premise is to select one of the thousands of applicants who have a dream of what they’d like to build, a limited skill set when it comes to tools, machinery and the shop environment and team them up with a master builder. If at the end of a 30-day period, their dream becomes reality (the bike starts right up and does a “burn out”), they go home with the bike. If not, they go home with nothing, outside of the knowledge that they did their best. The brains behind both the custom bike shop and the TV show is Scott Gillen who began his career racing cars while still in his teens. He went on to become a top Hollywood stunt driver. After an accident curtailed his stunt career, Gillen built a highly successful business in rigging cars for stunt and camera work. As creator, director, producer and participant in Build or Bust, Gillen has brought to the Speed channel a unique, one-hour TV show which is an entirely unscripted drama, offering novice mechanics, called “wrenches,” the chance to work with master builders to build the bike of their dreams.
The Tools
Built by Thugs is a 2000 sq ft facility with a staff of six bike builders, “overall” machinists and craftsmen, and while the shop also stands in for the set of Build or Bust, it’s a fully functional custom bike shop. Gillen: “We’ve got a Bridgeport Series One MILLPWR knee mill and a Hardinge HLV toolroom lathe, a tig welder, mig welder, plasma, band saw, cutters — just a ton of stuff. The mill and the lathe are the two biggest pieces we have, but you need all this equipment if you’re a serious custom motorcycle shop.” Gillen says that tools are crucial assets in a specialty shop. He says of the thousands of applicants that try to get on the TV show, if a wrench comes in the shop and has a basic idea of what he wants to build, has some knowledge of tools, the lathe, for example, or the mill, they tend to let them go to work. But if the wrench’s just got the idea and is a novice in most other ways, the craftsmen will run the tool while they direct their vision. But at some point the wrench has to jump in. The whole idea is that they build the bike themselves. And if a wrench shows up claiming knowledge in this or that but doesn’t really have it, he’s sent packing immediately. “This isn’t just any shop,” Gillen says, “and if a guy comes in here and starts hacking away and breaking taps and dulling bits because his only goal is to win a bike, or if he tries to come in here with a kit and wants to build a kit bike, we know we’ve got a squirrel on our hands, and we really don’t like that. So, we look at these guys very carefully, and if they give our shop respect, especially the tools, and a guy carries himself the way you would if you walked into someone else’s living room, then we respond in a helpful manner.”
"Buy American"
Gillen is up front when it comes to selecting the mill and the lathe. “We wanted to deal with Hardinge and Bridgeport because those were names that were legendary,” he says. “I knew what I wanted in here and told my staff to go out and get it, but they did all the negotiating. It’s interesting, because this is also a TV set, we could have selected anyone’s mill or lathe, and they would have jumped at the chance, just for the exposure. But I knew what I wanted. I wouldn’t have considered a Korean or Taiwanese lathe.” Gillen explains that Built by Thugs is a motorcycle shop that builds choppers, which is very uniquely American, just as Bridgeport and Hardinge are American brands that have been around forever and continue to be built today in upstate New York. “This is just like NASCAR.” Gillen says. “It’s an American sport. We’re building American motorcycles. We deal with S&S in Wisconsin for our engines —American made motors manufactured entirely here. Our transmissions are from Jim’s in Ventura County, and they’re made entirely here, and our frames are made here. We’re not building Harleys, but we’re building the kind of bike that people for decades used to make in their garages, and they didn’t rely on anything. They were building an American bike, and that’s what we’re doing here. We stick with Made in America, and I think that stands for a lot.”
Launching Careers
Gillen says that at the end of the day, at the end of a show, when someone walks away with a bike he’s really put his heart, soul and sweat into, they’d like to think they may have launched a guy into a new career or profession, something creative. The bike-building bug is a pretty strong one, he says, and when a winner leaves with the new bike, it’s nice to think they may have put someone on the path to full time bike building. Gillen is clear about this, however: The TV show is his show. He came up with the concept, and he sets the rules. Should the rules need to be bent to accommodate what’s going on at a particular time, he calls the shots. “When these guys come onto the program,” he says, “I tell them they’ve come to the dance and whether they go home with a bike or go home with nothing, I want the best dance they can do. “Which means we don’t cut any corners. We don’t put up with shoddy welding, for example, just to grind it all down. That’s not what we’re about. I’ve got a very picky eye. I’m a commercial director, a filmmaker, that’s how I make my living, and this show is just one aspect of what I do. I’m a stickler on how things are played out.” He notes the TV show is in its second season and going into its third. It pulls very good ratings because, he says, it has a raw realness to it that keeps the audience engaged. “If you watch the progression of the show you can see that these guys really do the work. There’s no behind the scenes ‘make it look nice stuff,’ or give this guy the bike because that’s the way the ratings would like to see the show turn out. Everything is real. We’re using real tools and making real bikes.” He notes that this relates to the lathe and the mill. The lathe, he says, is just great. It’s very reliable, just about bullet proof. The mill, he says, is too good.”
An operator's point of view
Michael Barragan is one of the shop mechanics, and he’s been building bikes for 10 years. It’s a passion, he says. He’s on the mill and lathe all the time, everyday, he and his partner Thick, and says they love the machines. “The Hardinge lathe is a great machine,” Barragan says, “it’s smooth, packed with speeds, a great digital readout that allows super-accurate tool positioning, including cutting to a zero reading — I love the whole machine. We’ve been making all our foot pegs, our shifters and shift knobs on it. We do a lot of art on the machine, tapering, knurling, cutting bushings, and we’ve never had a problem, no matter what we ask it to do. You can slow the speed down when cutting or speed it up to do polishing. It’s a very well laid out machine and very reliable. We recently upgraded the chuck so now it runs even truer than before. It’s easy to adjust and that’s a big plus. We can do multiple tools quickly, and since we do quick changes all that time, that’s really important.” The Bridgeport mill is pretty much the same story, according to Barragan. It’s a straightforward machine, cuts with amazing accuracy and repeatability, and the three-axes digital readout is easy to use. “You just lay out your piece,” Barragan says, “get in maneuvers, and you can repeat steps, zero out and set table parameters. It’s just a really cool machine,” he says.
Barragan says he's used lathes and mills in the past, but with these he was up and running in a couple of hours. He now uses them every day, training other guys to run them. “I’m the guy who makes sure everyone is running safely, correctly and not messing up our tooling,” he says. “I give both machines a thumbs up. It’s exciting to get on the machines and get done what we need to and not to have to even think about them not delivering.” <<--Return
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