Wooden bicycles, lots of pics

spinningmagnets

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If you Google "wooden bicycle" or even "bamboo bicycle" (use "image search" also look at "fun bicycles" and "odd bicycles") there's plenty of crude whimsical examples...but I was pleasantly suprised and more impressed than I expected. A "trash day" MTB can provide head-tubes, BB's, drop-outs,...and a selection of bikes can even be bought for $20 at thrift stores.

If you can't afford a custom metal frame that accomodates a motor you want to use, or you wish you had an expensive recumbent...

Tino Sana
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Old chinese carpenter, Peijia Wu (crank rods ! no chain)
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High school shop project, Marco Facciola
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Close-up, wooden freewheel
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Waldmeister, German work of art
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Tandem work of art, Jens Eichler (plywood laminated, then shaped)
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unknown Wooden MTB
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West-8
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After a while searching, you begin seeing the same examples. I resisted posting more, but for those who have read so far, here's the best of the rest I found.

Reinhold Eichhorn
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Peter Dahlberg
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Gota
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Magni Vinicio
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Giuseppi Matera
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The Amazing Wooden Bike Company
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Two from Igor Ravbar (steam-bent strips glued together and cured while clamped in a form)
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Alan McKay
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Howard Hung
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Bernd Vonau, SWB recumbent
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Jan Gunneweg
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1940 Italian Borsari (wartime metal in short supply)
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Yer welcome :)
I think of this one too as a "woodie"... not sure why:
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I found the Igor Ravbar bikes fascinating, made of steam-bent strips. I recently stumbled across a story about furniture making where strip wood was bent by applying the side of the strip to a hot-pipe (heated by an electric element or a small propane torch).

The heat partially melts the connective lignin "glue" between the fibers, and if clamped in shape while cooling, the strip will retain its bent shape. Gluing several similarly bent strips together makes a laminate that is light and strong with a certain amount of springiness to it, much like a laminated archery bow.

this site is for making guitars, but it had the best pics for the hot-pipe wood-bending method.

http://gicl.cs.drexel.edu/people/sevy/luthierie/guitarmaking_guide/side_bending/side_bending.html
 
Wood is a fantastic building material. It is only important that 1)you dry the moisture content down to about 10% in the finished structure and 2)that you absolutely seal the wood completely to keep any moisture out after that.
tks
LoCk
 
Here's a great link about making your own fenders out of thin wood. It looks like a great winter project when you're stuck indoors. You can make them very simple and classic, or as complex as you want if you have an artistic streak.

Once the thin wood substrate is shaped, you can take a razor blade and cut veneers into patterns of stripes, diamonds, or any shape you want to make a attractive skin to add. Add a coat a clear sealer and you're set. Home-made guitar websites have some great info with lots of pics on making a skin of attractive wood designs.

http://www.momentumplanet.com/components/how-make-your-own-wooden-bike-fenders

http://www.woodysfenders.com/store/

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thats just amazing. i wouldnt think that bike could be made out of wood but that proved me wrong. there are some pretty cool designs that they have. how about building your own http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Build-a-Bamboo-Bicycle/
 
Good find, def215, I have seen pics of bamboo bikes on the web, but the instructable you found had great info on the process, so a home-builder could make one themselves. I originally started the wooden bikes thread because I was interested in collecting info and examples of methods for construction used in the past, and I knew wood could be very strong and reasonably light if engineered properly. This would allow me to make a custom frame just the way I want (and I have odd taste). Pic is from bamboo-bike link above (frame ended up being VERY strong)

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