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Sergeant’s love of steel, paint creates rolling artwork

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Martin Jackson
  • Pacific Air Forces Public Affairs
HICKAM AIR FORCE BASE, Hawaii (AFPN) --  It has been said that clothing styles repeat themselves, and motorcycles seem to be no different. Tricked-out choppers with stretched frames, custom tanks and tons of chrome are back by popular demand.

These custom choppers are so popular that several television series are dedicated to how they are built. However, because of their popularity these two-wheeled masterpieces do not come cheap. With prices ranging from $20,000 to $60,000, most military bikers can only dream of ever owning one. But for Tech. Sgt. Greg Price, a C-40B aircraft crew chief with the 15th Airlift Maintenance Squadron here, he stopped his dreaming and got to building not only one, but 14 choppers the past four years.

The idea for his first bike started while attending a maintenance school in Washington and was just about ready to pay $19,000 for a new Harley Davidson V-Rod. It came to him that he could save money by putting together his own custom chopper.

“Piece by piece I bought a motorcycle and built it in my hotel room,” Sergeant Price said. “I, of course, first cleared it with the hotel staff before I started, and it was pretty cool because they would dust and clean my bike and take pictures with it.”

With his first bike built, like any artist, Sergeant Price was already dreaming of building his next one.

“It turned out to be a real nice bike, so I shipped it back to Hickam and was riding it downtown one day and a guy made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, so I sold it and started making plans for my next bike,” Sergeant Price said.

But the skills to build custom bikes did not come overnight to this Airman, and he gives most of the credit to the skills he developed during his 12 years as an Air Force crew chief. Sergeant Price said it all started when he was a young Airman at Beale Air Force Base, Calif., where he was encouraged by his supervisor to go to college.

“Like most young Airmen I was encouraged to go to school, and I guess it was the rebel inside of me that made me decide to go to paint and body school,” Sergeant Price said. “So I took paint and body classes and got certified in custom paint and body modifications for automobiles.”

Soon after, he got a part-time job working as a painter’s assistant where he learned the tricks of the trade and developed professional painting skills.

A few years later, he moved to Tinker AFB, Okla., and opened his own shop where he completed minor repairs and painted automobiles. There, he was introduced to working with motorcycles.

“Soon after opening up my shop, I started having customers who were bringing me their Harley Davidson’s to be painted, and it was through disassembling, painting and reassembling the bikes that I developed my love for motorcycles,” Sergeant Price said. “I realized there wasn’t much to a bike, and with the current custom bike craze I decided I could do it too.”

Sergeant Price volunteers in the paint facility at the auto hobby shop here where he teaches and mentors others, sharing his painting and fabrication skills. Of the 14 bikes he built, not all were for him. He has made several for servicemembers, sharing his skills with them along the way as they helped build the bikes.

For Sergeant Price it is not that he can do a $2,000 paint job or build a $30,000 chopper that is rewarding. It is the fact that he is able to share and teach his skills with his fellow Airmen.

“Someone took the time to help me, and it is only right I do the same,” he said. “The most expensive side to motorcycles tends to be the maintenance, and by me sharing my skills with my fellow Airmen, I am helping them to not only get the bike of their dreams, but also create a love for the bike. They helped build it with their own hands and in most cases are now able to do most of their own maintenance on the bike when we are done.”

While he loves to work on these bikes, Sergeant Price said his family and the Air Force will always come before his bike building.

“I am constantly asked why I am still in the military and why I haven’t gotten out … to work full time building bikes with how lucrative it is right now,” Sergeant Price said. “But I always tell them that me and my family love the Air Force and that for now building bikes is just a hobby.”