SHEDIAC, NB – New Brunswick leather artist Timothee “Timo” Richard is willing to try just about anything, so this past summer, when he was asked to build a custom motorcycle that looks like a lobster he thought it was “probably the weirdest, craziest but maybe the coolest project I have ever been asked to do.”
But he did it.
Timo was commissioned by a Shediac lobster shop owner to craft a motorcycle to look like the two-clawed crustacean.
“I don’t even like lobster, I don’t even eat lobster,” Timo said Tuesday, while showing off his masterpiece to Global News.
Despite not being a lobster fan, he didn’t back down from the challenge. With a background in graphics and painting, Timo starting tinkering with leather about 10 years ago and it quickly became his obsession.
“When I first got into leather it was like a whole bunch of stuff just faded away and my focus just really caved into leather. It just took off from there,” he said.
Timo says it took two thousand dollars worth of leather alone to frame the entire bike.
“I had no idea it would take three cows to make one lobster,” he said. “Every piece I tried worked and the lobster just kinda built itself in a way, of course with 173 hours over 14 days.”
He says it was an exhausting job, literally keeping him in the shop day and night to complete the bike in only two weeks. But in the end, the results were outstanding.
The ride he now calls “Lobster Roll” looks incredibly like the real thing, right down to the beady eyes.
The motorcycle costume is crafted entirely of leather molded around a custom Buell Blast 500 cc street bike.
Timo says he is a perfectionist, so it had to look authentic. But he’s quick to point out that he does not build custom bikes, but is first and foremost an artist.
“It’s just a rolling piece of art that’s it, it just so happens it is on a motorcycle,” he said.
With the bright red shell, the bike looks almost edible.
The leather is treated he says, so the bike is 100 percent “rideable” too.
On Tuesday, he took it out for a test drive to the local wharf, where lobster season has just ended. Local fishermen Paul Richard was eyeballing the costly crustacean.
“It’s a good thing he wasn’t here yesterday they would have probably found him in a trap or something,” Paul joked.
It would have been a $6,000 catch, as that’s the final price tag for “Lobster Roll,” and that’s not including the bike.
“It’s the most expensive lobster per pound ever caught on the east coast for sure,” said Timo.
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