Scott Jones lets his choppers do most of his talking. If you’ve ever met him, you probably know that. Scott, aka T-Bone would rather show you what he thinks before he actually says it. “As much as I don’t like talking to people, I love to listen to people talking about my bike. I feed off that. It makes me feel like I do something different. I like people doing a double take. That’s the way I try to build a bike. I don’t want to talk about it, but I like to hear about it. That handbook drives me nuts and it’s out there and I don’t want any part of it.”

The problem with buying someone else’s build is it’s like marrying someone’s ex-wife. She may be hot, but everyone knows who had her first. When Jason McCormick brought him this Pan Shovel to build, he wanted Noise Cycles to transform it into his own instead of the previous owner’s. “It was a pretty known bike before. Called the Shrimp Boat Captain, it was the personal bike of Mike Davis, one of the owners of Dice Magazine. It had a mural on the top with a shrimp boat out to sea. Jason bought the bike from Matt and ended up not wanting Matt’s bike, but wanting his own. He wasn’t fully comfortable or 100 percent into the riding stance or style. He had to hold on, the bars were too far forward, and he wasn’t enjoying himself at all. He wanted to be able to ride it comfortably. He wanted to be one with the bike and it not be such a “job,” meaning such hard work to ride it. We took his stance and how he sits on a bike and made him part of the bike; made for the way he wanted to ride it.”

In order to stray from the handbook on chopper builds, T-Bone added his own little bits of personal taste. “I’m from North Carolina and I remember going to Crack’n Barrel and getting the cloth napkin and they used to have that little wooden thing. The exhaust mounts have that shape to it. I also took that shape and moved it to the handlebars. I also put in the cover for the sissy bar. The headlights are actually from like a vintage Honda or Nissan car. I like them because they weren’t the typical Volkswagen shape. I ran them sideways because to me there are no rules.”

But by far the most odd add-on was the picture of the calf encased in glass on the gas tank. T-Bone explained with a grin where it originated, “The original paintjob started with the tank and dash. From the get go, the first thing I was going to do with the body was put a picture in there. I wanted an ornate old grandma oval looking picture like you’d find sitting on her bathroom counter. I had Sonny Boyd Paint do the paint and we did the scroll. The whole picture frame was supposed to be dark with a dimmer switch. Last minute I wanted to find tinted glass but I had to use clear. Originally I wanted Beatle Juice from the Howard Stern show just to throw people off. I couldn’t get a picture that size and plus the screen was clear. One of the guys that helps me was at a yard sale and bought a ton of black and white photos from the ’60s and ’70s. I was thumbing through them and I saw the cow. My nickname is T-bone and when I started eating meat again, everyone made a big deal. That black-and- white picture didn’t take away from the bike and it works in your sick mind. It was the perfect fit and was something else for people to talk about.”

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Harley-Davidson Chopper | Ressurrection

Photos: John Zamora

Harley-Davidson Chopper | Ressurrection

Photos: John Zamora

Harley-Davidson Chopper | Ressurrection

Photos: John Zamora

Harley-Davidson Chopper | Ressurrection

Photos: John Zamora