See Jesse. See Jesse weld up a cool motorcycle...

After a summer of earning money by working for his father's construction company, 13-yearold Jesse Srpan's parents asked him what he was going to do with his earnings.

"Buy a welding set," was the reply.

Three years later, Jesse is just as keen on welding. But let's back up: As a little kid, Jesse liked minibikes and entering minibike races.

His father, Rick, has ridden Harleys for years and, when Jesse was nine years old, Rick decided to rebuild a 1950 Harley Panhead. He invited Jesse to help out, and taught him the fine art of cleaning welds and how to apply filler putties to achieve a good surface finish.

The completed motorcycle did well for several years at bike competitions, so well that, when Jesse was 12, he asked his father if they might set up a custom bike business. Thus, Raw Iron Choppers (www.rawironchoppers.com) was born.

It was the following summer that Jesse earned enough to buy himself a welding rig.

With his new Lincoln Electric SP-135T, a 120V combination MIG/flux-cored unit, Jesse modified a junked minibike into a mini-chopper. His first weld beads were educational for him and his father, who had done a little welding years before.

"The buzzing of the arc kind of had me thinking that, even after I stopped welding, I shouldn't touch the part or I'd get electrocuted. But after the third bead, I was thinking, ‘This is totally awesome,'" Jesse said in an interview at the family home in Chardon, Ohio, where Raw Iron Choppers is based.

"Jesse was having trouble for a while getting good welds," said Rick. "Then, a friend who welds came over and saw that the torch's tip was extended out of the nozzle, instead of inset. Once things were readjusted, Jesse was really hauling."

For their next project, Jesse and Rick took a step into radical design. Although he idolizes custom bike builder Jesse James, young Jesse felt that custom bikes shared rounded designs that looked too much alike.

Starting with coat hanger wire forms and cardboard patterns, Jesse developed a dramatically different look. Once Jesse liked the shapes, he substituted ¹/₄-in. rod for the coat hanger wire, shaping and welding the rod to a minibike frame he had purchased to created a skeleton support structure.

Then Jesse transferred his cardboard patterns to sheet steel and cut out the pieces. After hand-hammering the parts to the shapes he wanted, Jesse welded them to the skeleton.

"I was very anxious about working with the sheet metal, as we'd spent a bit of money on it and we'd never done anything like this before. But Jesse took to the task, right away," Rick said.

Along the way, Rick and several friends in the biking community taught Jesse the metalworking skills he needed. However, much of what he was doing was self-taught.

Jesse's creation — the finished minibike — has appeared in several magazines and at several motorcycle shows, catching a lot of attention and a few first place awards in the process.

Today, Jesse is working on a full-size version of his minibike, using same process of welding wire to a purchased frame to make a support skeleton, and hammering sheet metal by hand. He also acknowledges that he is making some of the parts on a friend's English wheel.

Jesse already has logged more than 900 hours of work to bring his motorcycle to a near-final form. A 113-in. S&S V-twin motor and a Baker 6-speed gearbox await installation.

After three years, Jesse is very serious about bikes and welding. He plans to attend a local career center to get his welding certificate, and later he wants to take business classes in college, with a goal to build bikes full time.

Meanwhile, Jesse said his school art teacher couldn't understand why he isn't finishing art projects during class time. Kids…..