If you’re going to name your custom-bike-building side hustle ‘Atomic Contraptions,’ the machines that you create better be imaginative enough to warrant a second look. Judging by this custom BMW R65, Andrew Knott has no trouble in that department. Laced with wooden details, and with a subtle steampunk influence that avoids clichés, this café racer is as curious as it is clean.
Based in Hobart, Tasmania, Andrew’s main gig is as a designer and photographer. But he’s also a motorcyclist and a compulsive tinkerer, so custom motorcycles were always written in his stars.

?My first project was a little old 73 CB350 that I bought just to tear down and put back together again, as an exercise in mechanical education,? Andrew tells us. ?And it wasn?t until I started the reassembly process that I thought, ‘I might as well put my designing hat on and do something interesting with it.’ Things snowballed a bit from there.? ?I?m at that place in life where I really want to take this thing to the next level, so this is the first bike that I?ve made with the express intention of selling it (with more hopefully to come). Being able to combine my background in design with my mechanical side is what I?m finding rewarding these days. It?s great to be able to see the whole process through myself, from concept and design to fabrication, final touches, and, of course, photography.?

Andrew’s a sucker for handcrafted things that use raw and rob...