How to Make a License Plate Bracket for a Motorcycle (from Scrap)

I had a great idea for a motorcycle license plate bracket, but I also wanted to get my bike on the road before I had the time need to make what I had in my head.  So, I needed a temporary solution. Being temporary, I don’t really want to put much money into it, and I saw a nice unused section in a piece of sheet steel in the scrap bin at Tech Shop (Pittsburgh). The wheels started turning, and plasma started cutting.  I made this license plate bracket at Tech Shop.
www.techshop.ws

Locate sufficient material from the scrap bin or bin wall at Tech Shop. Cut out the material needed using the plasma cutter. Why? Because A) it’s fun B) because I can and C) it makes working with the material easier.

Take measurements and etch out the shape you want to achieve on the material.

Now cut the shapes out of the steel with the ban saw. You don’t have to be right on here.  Getting it fairly close is good enough.  Once this is done we are going to take the pieces over to the grinding wheels and clean up the edges to remove enough material for it to look decent.  I decided to round off the corners. This gives it a more finished look and prevents you from cutting yourself on it at any point in the future.

Take the tab made (that you want to attach to the license plate area to the axle of the frame), over to the rotary hold punch and select the correct side punch. Put a hole in, to match your axle, or make it slightly larger if needed. Once this is done, use the iron worker to bend the top of the 12 gauge steel so the future tail light will have an area to attach the bracket.

Clean up the edges and prep the material for welding. Adjust your settings (I chose to mig weld this parts together here), and line up the work for final assembly. I decided at the last minute to add a re-enforcement strip to the back of the bracket to give me more area to place a good weld.  This will take some abuse on the road, and the area I was welding had a bit of a gap in the surface area. I also decided to fill in the gap with the welder and grind it back down to smooth out the surface.

Now the bracket is pretty much complete, but even being temporary I wanted it to look decent.  Since I was powder coating more parts that night, I took the license plate bracket to the sand blast cabinet and got it prepped for powder coat (HD vivid black)!

In about an hour I had a nice new functional license bracket with next to nothing out of my pocket.
I LOVE TECH SHOP!