This month’s skill set is a little different than the previous Electronics, Woodworking, and Mechanics series. For starters, we tweaked the name. We think Skill Builder has a more active ring to it, more about the process than the thing. Increasingly, we want to get you, the maker community, more involved in these series. There’s a lot of knowledge, talent, and creativity in our pool that we want to tap. On a subject like bikes, we know there’s a broad range of experience, expertise, life-stories, and other treasures we can mine. So, we’ll be doing more crowdsourcing of content going forward.

Also a little different this month is the scope of what we we’re covering. We’re calling it “Bike Shop” because of its diverse offerings of “bike basics, maintenance and repair, and mods (mutant or otherwise).” We’ll be looking at everything from the anatomy of a bike, what to look for when buying one, to basic maintenance and repair, to fun hacks and accessories to improve your cycling experience, all the way up to how to seriously mutate your bike to create a truly unique ride. The folks from Atomic Zombie will be helping us out, as well as some of the other heavy pedalheads you may have seen at Maker Faires. We’ve done a lot of bike projects over the years, in the magazine and online. We’ll be featuring those and other bike coverage from the site, as well as some original features and profiles. The next episode of Make: Live, April 13th, will be all about bikes, too. And we’ll be doing some giveaways. AND (but wait, there’s more!), all of this will segue nicely into Volume 26, the Karts and Wheels issue of MAKE, which will be wending it’s way to subscribers by the the end of the month. Happy Spring!

As always, we’d love to get your input on the theme. What aspect of bike basics, maintenance and repair, and mods would you like to know about? And if you’re a biker and want to write something for the series, email me and let’s talk. Or just share your ideas for great bike-related resources.