Articles
American Fabricator
American Chopper's Vinnie, unplugged
April 11, 2006
How do you get to Hollywood? Ride a motorcycle when you're 3 years old, start welding at 8, and rebuild a car engine at 9—if you want to be the lead fabricator on American Chopper, that is, one of the most popular metal fabrication-as-entertainment reality cable TV shows airing on the Discovery Channel. Paul Sr. and Paul Jr. Teutul are the highly visible father-son pair usually featured in the media. But it is Vincent DiMartino who is the fabricator behind the bikes, the muscle behind the biceps, the grin behind the guns. Vinnie surmised that the automated waterjet from Flow Intl., Kent, Wash., is probably the most sophisticated equipment he uses, and that much of what he fabricates for the choppers is cut on OCC's waterjet.
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| Vincent DiMartino—Mr. Vinnie to you—is the fabricator behind the bikes, the muscle behind the biceps, the grin behind the guns. |
The show follows the everyday work of custom motorcycle shop Orange County Choppers, Montgomery, N.Y. While the shop provides a creative outlet for Orange County Ironworks owner Paul Sr. and company, the show gives viewers an insider's look at the fascinating world of custom chopper shops and at how highly stylized, intricate metal components are formed and fabricated.
Wherever the choppers can differ from ho-hum, mass-produced motorcycles, they do—from the handlebars to the carburetors to the gas tanks to the foot pegs to the fenders. Rims spiral. Frames swoop. Exhaust pipes form impossible curves. Tubular rakes stretch from here to eternity. And then every square inch is chromed, painted, powdered, or polished.
Most featured choppers are designed and fabricated to embody a theme. Each component is customized to support the chopper's theme, and every detail is tended to. Beveled, daggerlike accent pieces that look like they could double as ninja weapons are welded to the rims of the I, Robot-themed bike (see Figure 1). Webs of round barstock cloak the Gothic Black Widow bike fender, rims, and frame. One ride is modeled after a Comanche helicopter, dedicated to Viet Nam POWs and MIAs. Another is customized to be a fitting dedication to the firefighters who lost their lives on Sept. 11, complete with a fire hydrant-shaped carburetor. Even the end of the exhaust pipe is fitted with a part resembling a firehose.
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| Figure 1 Cutting the beveled, daggerlike accent pieces that look like they could double as ninja weapons for the I, Robot-themed bike required the use of a waterjet cutting machine. |
Although the bikes' glistening, customized components are dramatic in and of themselves, there are plenty of other sources of drama to keep the show interesting. Let's just say the bikes aren't the only things that are high-maintenance. Start with continual sparring between rough-edged Paul Sr. and Paul Jr., thrust Vinnie in the middle, add jokester Mikey Teutul into the mix, and you've got the makings of a compelling reality drama.
Learning to Fabricate
Vinnie attributes his fine-tuned mechanical skills to his father, who owned a repair shop and gas station.
"My father is the type of guy who [believes] nobody fixes anything for you—you fix it yourself. So when something broke, no matter what it was—a hot water heater or a car—he would make me watch him fix it, which I hated when I was young. You know, I wanted to go out and play, ride my bicycle, then my motorcycle. Which, now, I appreciate, because I fix everything myself; that's basically how I learned fabricating. I'm a total hands-on guy." Couple his mechanical abilities with his love for machines in motion ...
"I guess I'm just a pure motorhead. I was into cars before bikes. I always built hot rods, and I liked to drag race. I used to work on all my friends' cars, and then I got into motorcycles—mainly offroad, sport bikes. But I tend to get into trouble with them" he said with a laugh, "so I took it upon myself not to ride them anymore, or at least not to own one. I'll ride one every once in awhile, and then I realize why I can't have one. Now that I'm married with a kid, I gotta think more about that stuff."
Vinnie Makes the Cut
Vinnie and his skills were in the right place at the right time when "American Chopper" was conceived. "My father was friends with Paul Sr., and I was friends with Paulie for a long time, and I had worked on their four-wheeler and some other stuff. I guess Senior mentioned something about how he was interested in hiring me. I started working here just after the two pilots were filmed. And then, within a month or so, we got a call from Pilgrim Films, the production company, saying they wanted to do a series. So, it just kind of worked out that I was working here when they started filming the series."
Tools of the Trade, Tools on the Set
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| Figure 2 Vinnie uses a waterjet to cut many of the custom choppers’ intricate pieces. He said the waterjet allows him to cut parts that cannot be cut otherwise, such as finely detailed sissy bars cut out of half-inch steel. It also reduces the time required to reproduce the parts for multiple production. |
Fabricators tuning in to the show might see Vinnie materializing Paul Jr.'s design concepts using some of the same tools, equipment, and products they use—waterjets, welding guns, gases and helmets, press brakes, band saws, cold saws, tube benders, grinders, shears, and notchers.
Vinnie surmised that the automated waterjet from Flow International, Kent, Wash., is probably the most sophisticated equipment he uses, along with a CNC milling machine. "A lot of the stuff is done on our Flow waterjet cutter" Vinnie said. "I did a suicide shifter on it. The handlebars were cut on the jet too."
Vinnie said he learned how to use the waterjet out of curiosity and necessity. "Basically, I'm a knowledge junkie. If I don't know how to work it, I have to know how to use it, whether it's driving or using a piece of machinery.
"We used the Flow for a little part of the Liberty bike. We did a lot of special accent pieces on it for the Dixie bike, and since then we've used it on everything that we have. The beauty of that machine is what it can do for you, the way you can fabricate."
Vinnie said the bike he and Mikey built is one of his favorites. "It's very clean, not very extravagant—kind of my style. It's the first time we've done a single-sided swing arm. One side of the rear tire is completely open, which gives it a clean look. The suicide shifter—that's when there's no foot shifter and no hand controls—the handlebars, and a couple of accent pieces were done on the waterjet.
"The Flow helps in every aspect you can imagine" Vinnie continued. "There are certain things that we do that are just totally physically impossible to do by hand. Like, I made a couple of sissy bars for our Dixie bikes out of half-inch steel, and they're very finely detailed, which you just can't do by hand, that detailed and thick. I don't care what kind of grinding wheels you have, you just can't do it. And they wouldn't be symmetrical."
He said some tubular parts, such as exhaust pipes, cannot be cut on the waterjet. "That's pretty much impossible, because you can't bend the water stream around the tube. The waterjet only knows one thing—cut straight through whatever is in its way" he said. "If you were to cut through the top of a round pipe, once it passes through its first piece of material, the stream goes through water and so it wouldn't be precise anymore when it got to the bottom of it, because the stream of water gets distorted."
Vinnie said the shop acquired a new, bigger Flow machine, a Dynamic Waterjet® with a larger 6- by 12-foot table to cut larger parts (see Figure 2). "We've been getting into cutting bigger things, parts that are up to 36 inches high. With the big machine, you can put in a big plate of steel, and let it cut out three or four of them. And you can let it work while you're working on something else. It saves you time."
He said the larger machine also allows him to cut very thick parts faster, because the water cuts faster at a higher pressure. "To cut something real thick, like a set of handlebars that are made out of 1-inch steel, it takes approximately an hour. The larger machine cuts that time in half."
Using programmable, automated cutting machines has expanded design options, too, he said. "We had never done handlebars out of flat steel like we are with the Flow jet now. We basically cut it out of round tube and bend it on a tube bender. Plus, we were using pretty primitive stuff, like hand grinder wheels to mill the parts, which takes a lot of time, and then it was very difficult to duplicate the part."
Having the capability to reproduce the bikes quickly and painlessly is important, he said, because once the original chopper is complete, it usually is reproduced for chopper enthusiasts, sometimes in quantities up to 150. "You can make something great and it'll take you a long time, and then they'll say, "OK, make it again for someone else.' And then you're like, geesh, I already made this once and it was horrible.
"There are certain times that you like working with your hands—at least I do—and certain other times you want to use the waterjet, especially with repetitive things. Once you program it, you can just pop out those things one after another, boom, boom, boom."
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| Vinnie’s Picks | ||
"In looks and style, the Black Widow is my favorite. The handmade webs give it a more organic feel. They're not perfect, but that's the way a web is. They're basically all 1/4-inch and 1/2-inch round bar cold-rolled steel. We rolled them on a little roller until we got the arc we wanted. The welds have to do the job and look pretty. The welding was tedious, because they're all TIG-welded. Generally, TIG welding generates a lot of heat. So when you're doing detailed work, it's kind of tough, because the heat also distorts the metal. It tends to be very time-consuming, because you're TIG welding in little sections and letting it cool. So you're moving around and jumping back and forth, back and forth. If you were to do it all at once, it would not be the same shape as when you started." |
Drama-arama
It's one thing to be in the spotlight when things are going well, and another when they aren't. With the camera on for 70-odd episodes, glitches are bound to happen and be caught on camera.
In one episode, water sprayed all over the shop because the bike was parked on the drain hose connected to the waterjet machine. In another episode, when the bike was finished, it didn't run. In another, Vinnie had to scrape off the chrome from the inside neck rachis on a Miller Electric bike frame, because it had not been masked off as it should have been before the frame was sent out to be chromed. "That's one of my worst episodes. That's when Senior freaked out on me."
And then the time constraints imposed by television production schedules heighten the drama.
"We had a problem with a bike unveiling filmed in Myrtle Beach. The bike was modeled after a Comanche chopper. Paulie and I were supposed to fly in on this helicopter, and Senior was going to meet us there, and we were all going to get on these bikes and ride" Vinnie said. "But there was a big engine problem. We were working on the thing for hours and hours in this 110-degree trailer and nothing was working out—we just had so many problems. I had to leave the last 10 minutes before the unveiling to get on this helicopter, but the bike wasn't 100 percent done, and there was no time to test-drive it before the unveiling. So here I am flying in from the sky without knowing if this thing was going to start. Talk about "down to the wire.' It did start, but that was hectic."
As for the drama between Paul Sr. and Paul Jr., Vinnie says it's real. "It's not played up. That's just the way it is, whether the cameras are on or not." Vinnie prefers to stay out of the fray. "I'm not a big drama guy. The episode where Mikey and I built the bike—that personally is my favorite episode, not because I'm in it, but because there wasn't much drama.
"I thought that was a great episode. That was Mikey right there, playing himself, and he was hilarious. Mikey could probably be a very good fabricator. He'd rather just sit back and make you laugh, which is fine with me. He's total stress relief. When he's gone, it's horrible for me."
As a reminder that the shop is much more than a set, and Vinnie is a real-life fabricator, The FABRICATOR interview was frequently interrupted by others in the shop "busting his chops." "Mikey, you know, I'm doing an interview here. So leave me alone. Sorry. I hope you didn't hear what he just called me."
And when the interview was finished, Vinnie was right back to work.
"I'm pretty good at ignoring the drama" he said. "I just work. Where else can you do what you love and get paid for it?"
| Know Your Chops? |
| • Who are some of the celebrities who have commissioned choppers from OCC? Late-night show host Jay Leno, Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong, actor Will Smith, and golfer Davis Love III. • How much does an OCC chopper cost? The basic chopper starts at $40,000 and goes up from there, depending on customization. • What makes a chopper a chopper? Wikipedia definition—Where many parts have been removed (chopped) or replaced. Vinnie's definition—"It's raked out, and the down tube is up a little bit." • How long does it take, on average, to conceptualize and fabricate an original OCC chopper? Three to four weeks. • Vinnie's favorite part of fabricating and building a bike? Riding it. |
The FABRICATOR's Jessica Fruit contributed to this article.
"American Chopper" airs on Mondays at 10 p.m. (ET) on the Discovery Channel.
Orange County Choppers, www.orangecountychoppers.com
Discovery Channel, www.discovery.com
Waterjet photo courtesy of Flow International Corp., Kent, WA. All other photos courtesy of Orange County Choppers.
Kate BachmanEditor, STAMPING Journal®,
FMA Communications Inc.
Kate Bachman covers all aspects of the metal stamping industry.
kateb@thefabricator.com
TAGS: bachman, cutting, fabrication, waterjet cutting, waterjetcutting, weld metal, welding
By: John H. Olsen, Contributing Writer
833 Featherstone Rd. 
