how to make motorcycle mudguards

Des, I think you want to google up "english wheel".

-- Life is full of little surprises. --Pandora

...

Maybe this "'local' guy" "[has] the knowledge..."; why haven't you asked him?

Good Luck! Rich

I think the parts you're referring to are commonly known throughout much of the rest of the world, as fenders.

I think you may have better luck finding sources, techniques etc, by searching for them with terms such as: motorcycle fender fabrication or forming.. and possibly the word custom.

There's more than one way to skin that cat. I've just got book learning, so I'm not going to bloviate too much -- but if you read this book, you can bloviate from the same knowledge base as me:

The book is about how to do the job almost entirely by hand -- if you want a machine like a continuous gutter machine, that has a strip of sheet going in one end, and curled-up mudguard blanks coming out the other, then this book will provide inspiration but not much design help. Get it anyway.

I met a man who made aluminium mudguards (fenders) for Morgan 3 wheeler cyclecars. They are pretty much like motorcycles'. He modified a big old hand-operated cast iron clothes mangler, replacing the cylindrical rollers with specially shaped ones turned from wood.

Americans seem to think they are they rest of the world but fenders =America, rest of the world= mudguards (English speaking world)

Ooohhhh OK... you meant to say mudflap.

That's just a floppy add-on piece for a fender.

I put mudflaps on my last truck, but only on the front, to keep the doors clean.

OIC.. debris deflectors, as they're more commonly known as