Category: Bikes
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homemade bike frame bags
In one week (eek, so soon!!) I will go on a long bike ride with Muffin. The plan is to post details of our adventure on amybikessomewhere.wordpress.com This weekend I worked on some bike frame bags to help free up some space in my rear panniers. Here is the result: The small top tube bag […]
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bamboo bike Part 5: final sanding/finishing and assembly
In hindsight, I definitely applied too many separate layers than was necessary. This also meant that I sanded more than was necessary, and used more epoxy than was necessary. Anyhow, at last I arrived at the last layer: Although I always have random bike parts, I rarely have a full (compatible) set. I was very […]
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bamboo bike Part 4: brake bridge and water bottle holder
Besides the lugs, the other metal bits on this frame are the brake bridge and the screw bosses for the water bottle holder. For the brake bridge I started with some 1/2″ thick aluminum plate. I sketched a shape on cardboard, traced that onto the metal, and cut it out roughly with a bandsaw. The […]
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bamboo bike Part 3: lugs
With all the tubes tacked in place on the jig, I could start wrapping the lugs. This is a crazy messy business, so I wrapped everything besides the lugs in tape and plastic to minimize the epoxy clean up later. Here’s the frame with the first layer of epoxy on it: Definitely not ready to […]
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bamboo bike Part 2: fitting the tubes
After building the jig that holds the lugs in place, it was time to fit the bamboo poles together. I found that Orchard Supply Hardware was the easiest place to get bamboo (neither Home Depot or Lowe’s near me had it). You can definitely order bamboo online, but I found OSH to be much cheaper, […]
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bamboo bike Part 1: Frame-building Jig
Almost 9 months ago I built a frame jig for a bamboo bike. Between work and life, I didn’t actually finish the bike until Thansgiving, and I’m only getting around to blogging about it now. Here’s the finished bike: I’ve wanted to build a bamboo bike for a long time. More than a year ago, […]
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The Last Bike…for a while at least
I guess I always say it is going to be the last for a while, so we’ll see how long it lasts this time… Anyhow, this time it coincides a bit with the end of an era: I have graduated and re-situated myself on the west coast once again. For most of July I was traveling, […]
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Small Bike (part II)
Small Bike (part I) covered most of the front end and the dropouts. Next I worked on the front and rear forks, which were very similar. Both are essentially 2 dimensional shapes. So I cut them on a waterjet, and then used a boring head on a mill the clean up the tube clamps. For […]
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Small Bike (part I)
The Small Bike (creatively named…) is a project I finished March 2009, but I haven’t gotten around to documenting anything until now. I built it because I had a set of 12″ wheels and I wanted to build a bike. I can’t weld aluminum (hoping to change that soon!), so I decided to make the […]