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Article By Chris Callen Photos By: Melissa Shoemaker
rian Buttera is the kind of man who this magazine was made for. Self-made, overcoming personal trials and tribulations through putting his own hands and mind to good use. In the end, his pursuit of knowledge and willingness to roll up his sleeves paid off in an epic run at Daytona. Brian started out as a kid on a bumpy road, some bad decisions and a hard way to come up. He bounced around the country for a while and eventually found himself entering the world of welding and fabrication. He started out with the basics, working in a steel trailer shop but has worn a lot of different hats over the 20 years he has been at it. For a while he did almost anything for money, even taking a shot a professional fighting as
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June ‘18 - CYCLE SOURCE MAGAZINE
a moonlight gig from his plant manager position during a five-year stint in Cincinnati Ohio. Today, his skills put him more in the field of close tolerance pharmaceutical types of fabrication work and the pace of his life keep him out of the ring as well. It was through his work over the past ten years that Brian started to turn things around and has worked hard to make a life he can be proud of. Although he still takes full-time gigs in the industrial realm, he keeps his passion in his backyard shop called Butteras Metal Werx. There, he handcrafts industrial furniture one at a time, and it’s also the hidden workshop where he has created this beautiful motorcycle. While he has done a number of frames and some one-off parts for friends, you might be surprised to find out that this
is his very first build. It all happened very naturally, he told me. He and his wife Tina took a break from life and wound up in Austin at the same time the Handbuilt Show was going on. There, he would meet Ryan Gore of Paper Street Customs, and that chance encounter would change his life forever. He was immediately intrigued by the conversation with Ryan and fell in love with so many of the bikes at that show he knew leaving he had to build a bike. One problem, he needed to learn what he needed to know to build one. This started a yearlong chapter in Brian’s life where he read constantly and did research until he was blue in the face. He came upon a 77 Shovelhead, his birth year bike, and decided that was the perfect place to start.
