74. Duckman

It was over two years ago, in January 2023, that my son Mark and his partner, Adele, together with my grandson, Lars (all of whom live in The Netherlands), travelled to Australia and stayed with us in Sandgate for 10 days. I wrote about it in post 12, “Stingrays Everywhere”.

During their visit here, we were able to walk together to the Shorncliffe Pier, where Mark met my friends and shared the experience of my “walking and talking”, and of enjoying the summer weather and our beautiful natural environment. It was a very special time for Sue and for me to have them stay with us, and to have time to have quiet talks and reminisce about some of our past shared experiences.

For a long time, I’ve wanted to write about Mark’s amazing design achievements. They are extraordinary, and they deserve to be documented for his family here in Australia and in Holland and to be recorded for future generations.

Mark is known among motorcycle enthusiasts as “Duckman”, a brilliant CAD designer of a series of one-off, exclusive motorbikes, as well as of hundreds of individual motorcycle parts, many of which can still be seen on show-winning bikes in Europe, the USA and elsewhere. He has also brought to life some of his designs, by building these special and unique bikes.  They were featured in shows and in magazines around the world.

Mark’s own and very popular website is dbbp.com, which has been online and updated weekly since 1996, making it one of the oldest and biggest motorcycle websites in the world.

Mark was born in Australia, in 1964, and, for the first 7 years of his life we lived in Wollongong, a city south of Sydney. When he reached school age, he attended The Illawarra Grammar School, a private school for boys, where he did exceptionally well. He had excellent reports and was, for some time, Dux of his class. He loved drawing and, even at that early age, showed signs of his creativity, a talent that he was able to develop in later years.

In 1971, our family moved to Killarney Heights, a suburb in northern Sydney. This move, which was brought about by a work transfer, proved to be a big and unsettling change for our family. In August 1972, when Mark had just turned 8, they left (without me) for a long holiday in Holland, where they were (as they had been on an earlier visit) received with open arms by the Dutch families. As time passed, however, and this holiday was extended, it turned out that this was to be a permanent stay for them in Holland. For Mark it was the beginning of a new and very different life in The Netherlands.

Mark’s sketchbook, which is shown under the “old pages” section of his website (dbbp.com) provides evidence of his developing creativity. It displays pencil-sketches, paintings, scale models and computer-generated images. Some of the sketches date back to the early 1980s. His art has been featured on T-shirts, posters and flyers, but most of it was made purely for his own amusement.

On his website Mark states that he began riding motorcycles in 1981, moving to Harleys in 1985. He met his partner, Adele, in 1988 and they have been together ever since. Their sons, Dave and Lars, were born in 1998 and 2002 respectively.

Since 1994, Mark has been working in the product development department of a multinational company which manufactures stainless steel pumps. He worked there full-time for the first 9 years and 3 days per week for the next 22 years (with the other 4 days devoted to his own company). As a professional designer he used advanced 3D CAD software. The developers of this software were so impressed with his work that, in exchange for the right to use Mark’s work to promote their product, they gave him a license allowing him to use the software for his own designs. Since then, Mark has been sharing his amazing CAD-designs with the world. In 2003 he started his own motorcycle product development company, DBBP-Design, and in 2005 he was accepted as a member of the exclusive Motorcycle Design Association.

The aim of this blog post is mainly to describe Mark’s achievements as a designer, so, in an attempt to try to understand a little more of the processes involved, I (randomly) picked one of his designs, Cadbike #33, which is referred to on his website as the “BMW Bobber”, and which was featured as the “Best Classic BMW Custom of the Year from Europe for 2008” in many magazines, and was also published in different languages around the world. In some of these magazines, it included a story written by Mark himself. I’ve copied this story to illustrate just how far Mark had progressed since he began drawing and designing as an 18-year-old.

Posted 9/16/2008

Waaaay back when I was 18 years old, the first bike I put together myself was a 1951 BMW. Back then I wanted a Harley but could not afford one yet, so I put that Beemer together, all black & chrome & pretty and before I had a chance to ride it, I got an offer to trade it for a 1969 Norton Commando, in boxes. The Norton was a 750 with papers and the BMW was a 500 without papers….

I fixed the Commando, sold it, bought my first Harley, a 45” flathead WLC, loved that bike! When I was 21, I bought a Shovelhead, rebuilt that bike every winter until pretty much all of it had been modified at least once. I still have that Shovel by the way, but I kept thinking about that old Beemer too.

A couple of years later I was able to buy a crashed BMW R90/S for about 400 dollars. The bike was in terrible shape as it had hit a piece of concrete curb and landed in a canal. It had been dredged up the next day and dumped in a shed where it had sat for 6 years, so when I bought it there was still canal water in the engine and gearbox.

I bought an old 1951 BMW R51 frame at a swapmeet, the neck had been raked to put a 10” overstock Honda fork in it. I took apart and repaired the engine and gearbox of the crashed R90/S and put them in the R51 frame, and using all sorts of parts I had collected over the years I built me a BNW ratbike. It had a Benelli front wheel, DKW headlight, Honda forklegs, Harley trees and so on. I painted the whole thing army green and rode it like that until August of 2005.  

I decided to put a Springer fork in it, so the neck on the frame needed to be de-raked and moved forward a bit. Once we had the frame in a jig we noticed that the frame was pretty warped although I had never really noticed while riding. I decided to change the plans and build a hardtail frame then. The part of the old BMW frame that I really loved was the fact that it had oval tapered tubing in the front downtubes and under the seat, so we kept those pieces and built the rest from scratch. Thanks to my buddy Ronnie Breuer at Iron Pit who welded the frame together in his frame jig.

Somewhere along the road things got a little bit out of hand, as I decided to design my own wheelhubs with long spokes on one side and short spokes on the other. Aad Heemskerk machined them for me, and of course the spokes and rims then also had to be made.

The Springer was shortened about an inch and a half, we made the front brake from scratch using the internal parts from the BMW R90/S wrecked bike. Tank is a heavily modified Superglide tank I got free, headlight was 10 bucks at a swapmeet, fender homemade, seat modified Crime Scene Choppers Hardass. Taillight Crime Scene Choppers (I did the CAD work for most of CSC’s cast parts). The midcontrols are homemade in stainless using Mooneyes exhaust caps as footrests. Handlebars and pipes also stainless thanks to Aad Heemskerk.

The bronze risers are parts that I make and sell on my website www.dbbp.com. Carbs are Stromberg 97’s with homemade aluminium manifolds, instead of cables they are operated by little stainless steel pushrods.

Paint is Crème White with Reseda Green, Nicoline painted a german eagle with a ducks head on the front of the engine (from a drawing by my friend venividivince.com) The bike has no chrome, all the shiny bits are either nickelplated or stainless steel. Was fun to build something other than a Harley for a change!

Mark

Mark told me that the most recent bike he and his friend Aad had completed (in 2022) was Cadbike #49, the “Triumph Bonneville Bobber”. They took it to 4 shows in Sweden, Germany, UK and The Netherlands and won “Best Custom” in 2 countries and “Best of Show” in the other 2.

The Triumph Bonneville Bobber was featured in an article in Pipeburn.com, which is a website owned and run by two biking Sydneysiders, Scott Hopkin and Mark Hawwa. I’ve read that Mark Hawwa is the man behind The Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride (DGR) and Throttle Roll Custom Motorcycle Shows. DGR has raised over $24 million for Prostate Cancer Research and Men’s Mental Health. The ride now takes place in over 104 countries around the world.

The article in Pipeburn.com includes a very long, interesting and detailed description of the Triumph Bonneville Bobber, including the following paragraphs:

“If you’ve ever wondered to yourself, how long does the pursuit of perfection actually take? It appears we have the answer: fourteen years! That’s how long Dutch builders Aad Heemskerk and Mark van der Kwaak have spent painstakingly building this incredible show machine. Mark is the man behind DBBP Design and specialises in product development and computer-animated design. Aad on the other hand, is a metal worker who plies his trade making parts for very expensive boats. Together, they’ve built a number of show-winning bikes, but it is this Triumph that is their shared magnum opus. Designed in CAD and built literally by hand, this T120 Triumph Bonneville Bobber is custom bike building at its best.”

“The name of the bike, CAD 49, comes from the fact that this is the 49th complete custom that Mark has designed, many of which the pair have brought to life.”

“Yes, this bike is not only built and not bought; there is a level of genius that deserves a standing ovation and has been honoured with plenty of trophies for the cabinet.”

I asked Mark if he had a list of all the prizes won by him, but he said: “I don’t really have one”. So, I decided to try to get some idea of how well-known he was, and I found that his bikes were featured in at least 70 publications, when motorcycle magazines were still popular, in 2007/2008, covering 10 different countries. Since then, he has acquired a very large following on social media. His website dbbp.com is extensive. After having designed 58 “cad-bikes”, Mark has built up an impressive library of CAD parts.

Mark, and his friend Aad, are currently working on simultaneously building a “Panhead Motor” (#56) and a “Knucklehead Swingarmchopper” (#58). Aad still owns cadbike numbers 31, 49 and 58 and Mark is currently riding cadbike #13.

In conclusion

Although Mark lives on the other side of the world, we have managed, over the years, to meet him and his family on many occasions, in both Australia and The Netherlands, and when holidaying in exotic places such as Koh Samui and Hawaii. We once even made a trip to Disneyland in Paris together.

This story has focussed on Mark’s achievements as a creative designer but there is, of course, another side to him. He is first and foremost known to us as a great partner to Adele and a supportive father to Dave and Lars. He is loved and admired for his kindness by his Australian family, and is deeply loved by me.

O.P.

P.S.   On Sunday morning, 22 June, we’ll travel back to Moreton Island to talk about our recent visit to the Tangalooma Resort there, with about 50 members of the Sandgate Probus group.