I've been working on the seat pan and rear section. It started with a tail light I had laying around. Thought it would look good on a café rear end so I hacked it off of the license plate frame. I was thinking fiberglass, but decided to use some of my woodworking abilities. Thought it would be different. The dark wood is Claro walnut and the light colored wood is basswood. I hadn't seen anything like this before until I spotted a photo on the internet a few weeks ago. The bike in the photo had a rear section and side covers made from walnut, but no stripes. I had already started mine before I saw the photo.
I made the stripes the same width as the ridge on the Suzuki gas tank I'm using. I'm going to paint the tank to sort of match the rear section. I'm not doing a faux wood grain or anything cheesy like that. It won't be a perfect color match, but I think it'll be interesting when it's done.
Even after all the work I have it at this point I'm not sure if I'm really digging it. I wanted the tail light to be more recessed, but because the mounting base is wedged I couldn't get it as deep as I had envisioned. It kind of reminds me of a 50's or 60's style car tail light, something like and old Cadillac, even though it's horizontal. I still have a lot of sanding a fitting to do on it, but the basic shape is there. Hopefully it's one of those things that will look good when it's all done.
Now that I have the shape I can make the hoop.