Blogfromthebarn

Monday, February 23, 2015

A very organic approach to engineering, bamboo bicycles...

The back story, my Christmas present this year (from the current wife) was a two-day workshop building a bicycle, from bamboo! A pretty niche idea but I'd enjoyed making my fixie (click here for that tale) so much last year that Mrs Stuffy felt that I'd like this.

Bikes made from wood? I admit that it took me by surprise but apparently bamboo is a very strong and light material and anyone who has seen it used as death-defying scaffolding in the far East knows how much load, stress and movement it can bear. The company, www.bamboobicycleclub.org, sell kits (for home assembly) and also coached sessions in their studios in increasingly trendy Hackney Wick.

So I researched (well I googled 'bamboo bikes') various possible bikes and despite the obvious challenges, and the relatively small number of examples I decided to build a mountain bike, no real logic other than the amount of MTB bits I had lying around and a fortuitous, for them, marketing email from Chain reaction cycles offering a half price groupset. For the uninitiated that's the brakes, gears, pedals, cranks and chain, all designed to work together. A few late night drunken internet shopping sessions later and I had a bulging box of bits, saddle, handlebars, forks, wheels and tyres.

The workshop itself simply delivers (hopefully) the frame, 7 pieces of bamboo, custom designed to fit my bodily dimensions (normally a secret between myself and my tailor). These bamboo bits are bonded together with delightfully gloopy mix of hemp and epoxy resin to make a structurally sound bike frame capable (allegedly) of taking my not inconsiderable weight crashing down a hillside. Making it pretty and adding all the expensive metal and plastic to turn it from bits of wood into a rideable bike is phase two of the project.

Day 1

Thus it was that I arose at silly o'clock and schlepped on a Saturday morn to a chilly space filled with bamboo bikes, bamboo bike frames in various stages of construction, there I found two couples (dad&son and sister&brother) of similarly slightly bemused punters and James, our coach, instructor and bamboo evangelist for the weekend.

James had prepared aluminium jigs to hold the bamboo elements in the right place based on our physical dimensions and the type of bike we'd each selected. The other participants had opted for simpler challenges, road bikes, and James cheered me up by congratulating them on their wisdom in not taking on the technical challenges that I'd accepted. So far, so bloody typical,sorry, so good.

We picked out various lengths of bamboo, learning about fibre lengths, nodes, strengths and weakness and using various saws, knives, drills and jigs I then chopped pieces out of my fingers, thumbs and forearms until we had something that looked a bit like the pre-printed scale drawings we were supposed to be working toward.

Maybe it's James' laid back approach, maybe my choice of bike but it turned out to be a far more flexible and organic process than a classic engineering one, solving challenges and redesigning bits of the frame as the practicalities caused a series of minor compromises.

The others rushed on, unhindered by the need to consider fat tyres and disc brakes but by the end of day one we'd all assembled our frames, tacked together with glue, tape and in my case wishful thinking. Off home to shower off a bucketful of sawdust, stickiness and sweat, a sustaining supper and a good nights sleep.

Day 2

and a beautiful sunrise as I headed into London

So,here I am in sunny, chilly Hackney just a stones throw from the Olympic Velodrome, on day two of the bamboo bicycle workshop, the day which I like to think of as Gloopy Sunday.

The areas where the lengths of frame join are to be held together and reinforced by strips of hemp cloth saturated with epoxy resin, the basis of fibreglass. This layering and wrapping is similar to the process of making bikes and cars from carbon fibre, similar I think in the same way that TeamBreakfastBike working up an appetite on a Saturday morning is like Team Sky attacking the Tour de France.

The glooping, wrapping, slopping, sliding, slicing and taping was pretty much full-on all morning, but by late lunchtime we'd jointed all of our frames. We made a cursory attempt to lessen the amount of gum on clothes and skin and then strolled into the Arctic winds to a local Hipster hangout the Crate Brewery for some excellent pizza and engaging chat whilst the miracle of exothermic chemistry turned our squidgy matting into rock hard lumps of plastic and cloth ready to be sanded, smoothed, filled, sanded, filled, sanded, smoothed, polished, painted and lacquered.

The BambooBeast (as I've provisionally named it) is now back in my workshop, ready for the next phase...

I really enjoyed the two days with James and the team and I'm looking forward to the next week or two of organic engineering...

Watch this space...

Labels: Alf Webb, bamboo, bamboo bike, bike, blog from the barn, blogfromthebarn, Chain Reaction cycles, CrateBrewery, fixie, Gloopy Sunday, Hackney Wick, hemp, mountain bike, MTB, oakwood barn, resin, Stuffy, Velodrome

Monday, June 16, 2014

A fixation, a fixie, a flirtation with fashion,, a folly?

I am, as many of you will know, one of those folk who seem to always need a project.

Over the last year or two I've been intermittently fixing, modifying, rustically pimping and mechanically restructuring my Series 3 Land Rover and despite my best endeavours it's now currently running smoothly and my list of things to resolve has 98% of its boxes ticked.

The joy of a Land Rover is that it won't stay fixed for long. But, O best beloveds, "a project" is a very different thing than fixing. There are always demands at the barn for my dubious repair skills, some triggered by chickens, foxes or bees. Some by garden activity, trees falling down, the occasional exercise in electrical, the inevitable plumbing challenge.

I always have a few bike maintenance jobs on hand but again that's not a project, bikes break and I fix them, that's just the circle of life.

So, a project...

For no good reason I found myself looking wistfully at an old bike I've had hanging around for a bit and deciding that what it needed was everything extraneous or superfluous stripped off, cleaned, painted and rebuilt as a single speed or fixie bike. Fixies are very much the 'now' thing in cycling in our cities, single speed, (no complex heavy gears) lightweight, minimalist bikes built to cut through heavy traffic and designed to go quickly along flat city streets rather than up and down hills with much puffing and panting. As I live miles from the city, with plenty of ups and downs not only an impractical but a downright silly idea.

I started browsing the web for inspiration and ideas and was checking out prices of various components on Ebay when I came across a listing for a single speed bike, the right sized frame but with a number of mechanical problems, mostly around buggered up (technical term) wheel, bracket and hub bearings, damaged wheels and defective brakes.

There was little bidding activity on this bike which I put down to this terrible photograph used to portray it but the text did mention that the builder was a chap called Alf Webb, a name I knew. He's a bit of a bike maintenance legend and a little research on various cycling forums identified a number of comments, criticisms and photos of similar bikes, apparently Alf specced and commissioned 250 track bikes a few years ago as "a project" and to promote his wheel building service. So, the original plan paused and I put in a very low offer in to try and win this bike.

No sooner bid than done, the bidding never really heated up and I won the auction for £60. An apologetic mumble to Mrs Stuffy that I'd 'accidentally' bought yet another bike, a quick drive to delightful Didcot and I was delighted (relieved) to finally see what I'd bought and discover that it was pretty much what I'd hoped for. Result!

I bought the bike back home and stripped everything off it. An exchange of emails and conversations with Alf and with support from the twin resources of Wiggle and the helpful gents at my Local Bike Shop, (Wellington Trek in Sunningdale) I spent a couple of evenings, rebuilding the bearings and wheels.

Then it was back onto Ebay to find cheap replacements for the pedals, handlebars and brake system. It's a flip-flop hub so I can either run it with a freewheel or fixed, (fixed means using backward pressure on the pedals to make the back wheel skid and hopefully stop before impact). I've not tried it fixed yet but I shall.

The frame cleaned up really well, has little damage and is a lurid dark blue/purplish/black effect, it looks a little as if it was painted by dipping it into an oil bath but I quite like the effect and decided to try and stick with a blue theme for handlebar tape, pedals and chain.

The saddle was well past it so (thanks Ebay) I sourced a replacement and I really didn't want drop or straight handlebars, the bike originally had some nice Deda drops but I'd decided I definitely wanted bullhorns.
Again Ebay was my friend and I managed to find some really nice ones (Deda again) for a tenner including postage.

I've added some additional touches, some tensioners designed for BMX bikes to help keep the chain working effectively and I like the blue mountain bike pedals, this velo doesn't need clips, I'm not racing it and I do want to be able to hop on it in a pair of ordinary shoes and pop to the pub or pick up the papers without all the lycra/lubrication and gear that invariably accompanies the annual Tuxedo Team tour (this year watch out Corsica) or the weekly road or off-road exploits of the group of my chums collectively known as the Breakfast Bike Buddies (motto, "it's not about the bike, or the ride, it's all about the breakfast").

So that's the Alf Webb fixie project, pretty much done, I'm happy with the result and thought I'd share it with you, the only question now is, what's the next project?

Well I've still got that original bike hanging around, I wonder ...