Forged From Passion: A blacksmith’s take on the Z650

Building custom motorcycles often involves a radical career change, and we’ve seen some pretty strange jumps over the years. Tom Simpson’s background is especially unusual: he trained as a blacksmith before setting up Foundry Motorcycle in England six years ago. Tom now builds very stylish cafe racers and bobbers in his Chichester, West Sussex workshop. As you can imagine, he has a deft hand when it comes to fabrication—but this Kawasaki Z650 is more about smart mechanical modifications than English wheels and ball peen hammers. “Originally there were two of us at Foundry, but my partner left when we discovered...