During his first decade of building custom bikes as One Way Machine, Julian von Oheimb worked exclusively on older Harley-Davidsons. Then, about a year ago, a customer asked him to apply his signature touch to a modern Milwaukee Eight-powered Softail. Julian obliged?and even though the platform demanded a fresh approach, he still knocked it out the park.
Julian’s clearly wrapped his head around modern machinery now, because his vintage-only rule has all but disappeared. He’s just built his third contemporary Harley custom, this time based on a zero mile 2021-model Harley-Davidson Softail Standard.

?With the modern technology and the power of the M8 engine, it’s not as easy as you would think to build an old school bike,? Julian tells us. But he’s unnecessarily modest. At a glance, this newer machine is almost indistinguishable from his typical retro builds. The order came from a regular client, who wanted a fresh OWM creation to park next to the three he already owns. Other than specifying that the donor bike should be new, he had only a handful of requests. So Julian had free rein to flesh out the concept his way?which is just how he likes it.

This Softail is dripping with OWM’s hallmark style. But it’s not just evident in the obvious stuff?true to form, Julian’s made a ton of small changes that have a big impact.
It starts with the Harley’s flawless stance. Julian lowered the suspension at both ends, then wrapped the f...