Katana Owners Club U.K.

Many will know my thoughts about " restorations"
So bare with me here......
Last night I watched salvage dealers restorers on telly. The knowledge and skill of these artisans undoubted .
However.....there was a case.....in fact it was just that, a case, a Louis vetton travel case from about 1910 a one off possibly made for a specific purpose. It had leather straps, named rivets, and was a washed out orange in colour. They bought it for £800. Jesus.....
Then the restorer set about it. He sourced a material as close to original as possible for the insde, he removed the rivets carefully as these are not replaceable and reused them, For the outer covering he again found a material very close in what they assumed was an original colour as the orange was probably painted on after.
The time and skill of the chap produced a nice piece, he even used coal dust to age it.
It was valued at........................£3000

There is a parallel with motorcycles here.
So was this case ( katana in parallel world) restored,refurbished, or a fake?
Where is the line drawn.

This discussion has raged since people first realised that old things and “nostalgia” are to some worth a lot of money. My one and only new bike was a 1972 Suzuki Hustler after the first few months I fell off it (regularly) and had to replace indicators, brake & clutch levers and any number of other things. These bikes are now fetching north of £5k for a restored bike with “original” unrestored bikes going for similar money. My point is if my old Suzy turned up unrestored then it isn’t as I bought it cos I changed things so it’s not original? As soon as you restore anything it’s no longer original end of. Mmm nice bike mister, has it still got Japanese air in the tyres?

This has always been my objection, days after a Kat left the dealers, it had a Harris, Konis,Bridgestone slide masters were off, Avons on. Upgrades of the day.

If you replace with OEM parts, then I suppose this can be a restoration.........but up to what percentage ...how many new parts until it is a rebuild.

When you see the adverts for the £10 grand machines ...restored ...they are the wrong this and that...they are refurbished..... But they seem to think the part of the word -furbished,is £7 grand less than -stored.

I think we had a discussion along these lines before after the Kat 1000 appeared at a bike show. The bike had a complete nut and bolt rebuild to the extent that the clocks were reset to zero miles.

Now it undoubtedly looked in showroom condition but by zeroing the miles effectively deleted all the history of the bike mot’s services trips to Paul Ricard etc.

I like to see mint condition bikes, but out in the fresh air and a layer of road dirt/dead flys really improves them.

The Whitwell meet does attract some shiny bikes and I do know that there owners spend a lot of time polishing, but at least they are ridden.