T
here have been a few times in my life when I’ve had a master craftsman living in my midst, and it took a while to meet them. Josh Allison is one of those craftsmen. I don’t throw that term around a lot. The reason being that I have master craftsmen, painters, photographers and visionary artists in my life, and they never call themselves that. It takes a true eye for detail to be a master at anything and an uncompromising ethic for everything to be perfect, balanced and produced by your own hands. Josh Allison says he is a metal shaper, but he is truly a master craftsman with a commitment to
58
January ‘18 - CYCLE SOURCE MAGAZINE
metal shaping and form that is backed up by decades of experience and a wealth of formal metalshaping education. Josh grew up in a household with bikes. His dad had a few shovelheads, and Josh started riding when he was five. He took a shine to BMX and would always take his bikes apart, customizing and painting to make them his own. That morphed into motocross, where Josh could hone his mechanical aptitude and also customize his bikes for optimal performance. He raced for several years and did freestyle motocross until he got hurt a bunch, and decided he’d hang it up to pursue an education
at Wyotech. Wyotech showed him all the potential, in terms of metal shaping and customizing, and added some breadth to the paint shop he had started. He built a gas tank at Wyotech, and that solidified his need to learn more, get better at everything from fabrication to welding, and his passion was ignited. He got great opportunities with some of the best local automotive fabrication shops and soaked up everything he could. He wound up at Born in the Forge, owned by Mike Detweiler. He perfected his craft there, typically doing mostly automotive fabrication during the day and motorcycles after hours. He was approached by
