SaddleBag and Seat Update

The saddlebag is coming along but it got stalled off for a few weeks. The paint job on it came out well except for just two small imperfections I was able to wet sand out. I hated to sand on it because the paint was all nice and glossy smooth. Wish I had a camera to show a shot of it. The best part is my pleasure in seeing all of my filling and fiberglass work coming out as hoped. Places that had holes and damage are not visible at all. Happy is not the best word to describe how pleased I am with the outcome, this bag looks brand spanking new.

The saddlebags took a backseat because of my new solo seat given to me. It only had a few miles on it before the owner took it off his bike back in 1990 something. He had this and some other new takeoff parts from his bike just collecting dust. He gave them to a fellow I work with who new I was at a standstill on my new fiberglass seat project. (Having a hard time finding seat fabric locally) So anyway, I have this brand new condition solo seat for my bike and needed to make a front attachment bracket for it. The old IronHead sporties have a different seat mount system up front. I kept going over ideas in my head and have been working from the extreme complications end down to the simplest I could think of. So far all the bits and pieces are from what I could scrounge up around the garage and small shop. The hope is to not spend any money on the setup so it is truly a FREE seat.
I took a piece of bracket from a shield I had laying around for years from an old dump truck. Then a little of conduit from an animal catch pole I'd made maybe ten years ago and the part of the bracket I'd already made for my own fiberglass seat pan. Oh yes, and I used some of my block shock rubber (Used for mounting engines and/or equipment to reduce vibrations) for the front bracket to mount to the seat with. Part of the bracket is aluminum and part is steel, so I am bonding the parts together with JB weld. At first thinking about how to do it was sketchy but once I found my first part for the bracket it seems that all the other bits and pieces just jumped from hiding places saying: "I'll work for that."

My mind just went to work on it's own and my body just kinda followed along for the ride. This just does not happen for me often, I usually over think and complicate things like this.
It's like when I invented the folding step ladders for semi-trailers and my friend took the concept and simplified it. We put them on two trailers and the driver gave us his views after using them for a couple of weeks and we modified them. Thing is, my friend and I did not think about marketing them and now we see them all over the place all these years later. We just did it to help out our own drivers at the time. You lose when ya snooze.

But back to the seat, I'm at the six hour cure time for the JB weld and will check it in the morning. I love the old JB weld and have fixed untold things with it. The first thing I tried it on was probably an small twelve horse engine which had thrown a rod. I made a patch using the broken bits which I had to carefully coax back into close shape, then used the JB weld to make a patch from both the inside and outside. When I was done you could not tell where the patch was. It held up for a long time. I saw the mower in action some five years later still going strong after my complete overhaul and case patching.