Kevin Cameron’s New Lamp

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Kevin Cameron has lit the way for <i>Cycle World</i> fans for half a decade. A custom lamp was commissioned to say thank you. (Mark Lindemann/)

For the last 50 years or so, Kevin Cameron’s writing has lit our path. For 40 of those years, I’ve been lucky enough to edit a bunch of those stories. I owe him a great deal—for making me smarter, for picking up the phone when I have a question, for giving me a lens through which to better appreciate something as simple as a birdsong or as abstract as Cartesian reductionism and the social implications of the metric system. He’s a treasure for an entire generation of motorcyclists, and anyone else who appreciates intelligent, clear, engaging, imaginative writing.

I figured it was high time I made an interest payment on that sizable debt. Over the years I’ve occasionally sent him a book or an engine part, but now I wanted something a little more deliberate and maybe more illuminating.

My friend Alex is another member of the gearhead brotherhood and a huge fan of Mr. Cameron’s prose. A self-taught jeweler from Germany, he’s also been wrenching on motorcycles for fun and (some) profit for the better part of those same 50 years. Appropriately, in his spare time he makes lamps. With his jeweler’s eye and an informed imagination he repurposes a wide range of objects into his designs; I’m particularly fond of the work he does with motorcycle and automobile parts. When I saw one of Alex’s rod-and-piston desk lamps, I asked him to make one that I could send to Kevin. That’s what you’re seeing here.

After I’d told Cycle World editor Justin Dawes what I’d done, he asked me to get a quote from Kevin. I imagine he thought it might be something along the lines of how the lamp fit perfectly next to the splinter from the True Cross in the Cameron study, or how it cast a warm golden glow on Excalibur in its place over his desk. The reply was something else altogether, and pure KC:

“Curiosity was immediate when I saw the disconnect between rod length and bore diameter. Maybe around 92mm x 72mm? 92mm x 70mm? And the piston is cast, not one of today’s nine-cavity forgings, suggesting light-to-moderate duty. The rod’s traditional shape concurs. But piston-crown thickness is more today than yesterday.”

On a subsequent phone call, Kevin did allow that the lamp would complement the Pratt & Whitney R-2800 master rod in his office. (I have the same rod in my little lair—birds of a feather, I guess.)

Skipping to the spec chart, the lamp’s rod and piston are originally from a Honda Talon, basically a CRF1000L Africa Twin engine in a side-by-side sport-utility-vehicle application. Of course Mr. Cameron is spot on concerning the bore and stroke (92mm x 71.5mm). The “Edison” bulb is actually a dimmable LED. A setscrew concealed in the piston crown allows adjusting the rod to a desired angle of repose.

Fiat Lux! And a most public and long overdue thanks.

If you’d like to see some of Alex’s other lamps or purchase one for yourself, you can visit his store LampsByZemlin on Etsy. From what I’m told he’ll take commissions.

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