Rawhide Cycles is the Nampa, Idaho based brainchild of Brandon Wurtz. The shop specializes in 1960’s and 1970's Japanese motorcycle repair, restoration, and custom-built bikes. For Brandon Wurtz Rawhide is family, and an expression of his family’s shared love of all things with wheels. “My grandpa had a race car, a 67 Mustang with 427 motor… It was called Rawhide, so I named my shop after that,” said Wurtz. “Hot-rodding was big in my family,” Wurtz said, “My grandpa drag-raced, and my dad does still, so I got into junior drag racing. Growing up around hot rods and race cars since I was a baby taught me a lot about tools, shops, and being a perfectionist.”

Although Rawhide takes inspiration from his family’s hot-rodding past, it owes an equal amount to Wurtz’s long history with Honda motorcycles. “I got my first motorcycle when I was seven or eight,” Wurtz explains, “My dad took me down to the Honda shop and bought me a brand new Z50.” It didn’t take long for Brandon to become obsessed with the bikes, “It took me a few weeks before I grabbed a handful of throttle straight into our fence. That was the beginning of my obsession.”

One day, inspiration struck Wurtz in the form of a passing motorcycle. This led Wurtz to pursue going to school to become a motorcycle mechanic. After moving to San Francisco Wurtz enrolled in a motorcycle mechanics program, and after graduating applied for a job at Charlie’s Place, “I was like I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, and I will learn everything you need me to learn, I won’t let you down, and I’ll be your mechanic for years,” said Wurtz.

After starting at Charlie’s Place, the shop moved to Los Angeles in 2012 where it is still thriving. It was at Charlie’s Place where the seeds for Rawhide were first planted. “The dream to open my own shop someday started literally a week into working at Charlie's Place,” explains Wurtz. “I saw that he had mastered his trade and had complete control and freedom in his field, and I wanted that for myself.”

After six years of intense work at an extremely busy shop, Wurtz, with family in tow, moved back to Idaho to be closer to extended family. “I got a shop next door to my dad's powder coating shop, Allegiant Powder Coating and opened Rawhide Cycles,” explains Wutz. “When I got back to Idaho, everybody thought there was no market here for this… and we built it, and we are having a good time.”

“When we opened the shop in February of 2016 I was working by myself,” explains Wurtz, “The first big project was a 1971 CB750 I tore down and rebuilt in 35 days for the Boise Roadster to show the local scene the type of work I do. Right after that I hired Ryan Stallcup and we built Jolene for Born Free.”

Although a good portion of Rawhide’s work is classic restoration and customization, they are not complacent in their approach. “We are trying to do is refine what we are doing into something that will influence our customers,” explains Wurtz. “When it comes to Hondas, when people want to customize them, most people want a café racer or something like that. But for me, I try and push them to a more timeless bike and not a bike that will look a 2015 bike in ten years from now,” he continues, “I want a bike that looks timeless, tough and aggressive. More of a nod to 1970s muscle bikes.”

The attention garnered from the Jolene and Honey Wagon builds featured at shows like Born Free and 1Moto has earned Rawhide a strong following among the chopper crowd, “With choppers, we really want to push people outside of thinking only about Harleys, I mean Harleys are great and we are working on them now, but knowing you can do more than just Harley choppers is what we are trying to do.” With just three years as a shop, the Rawhide family seems poised to do just that.

From the pages of The Ton #3