Make: Online: Bicycles Archives

Archive: Bicycles

June 29, 2009

How-To: Re-cover a bike saddle

Say your bike saddle's fabric/leather is wearing thin, or you just don't like the color. Or say you live in Phoenix and your black bike seat gets so hot while it's outside baking in the sun all day so that when you go to ride it, you get second degree burns. You might want to change the cover, and Instructables user djeucalyptus has just the tutorial for you. And me.

June 26, 2009

Pulse-jet bike

That looks like one rascally rocket to ride, but hey, it's a PULSE JET! You can buy one of the jets from the maker, on eBay (link on the Instructables item below).

Buy this pulsejet so you can make your own jet bike

June 19, 2009

Bicycle Music Festival in SF

You're invited to the Bicycle Music Festival this Saturday (tomorrow!) in San Francisco. It's a mobile community music festival, all day long!

More:

Xtracycle QuickHitch tutorial and Maker Faire special

Amphibious bike

Not sure how well it works, but from the pictures on Inhabitat, it does appear to at least... float. It's made from eight plastic water jugs. Wanes attached to the rear spokes provide power.

The DIY Floating Water Bike

June 16, 2009

Xtended Xtracycle deal for makers

Our friends at Xtracycle have extended their maker special. They lent us some of their Radish bikes during Maker Faire, and they were major eye-catchers. The FreeRadical is a nifty add-on to extend the end of your bike, making more room to haul stuff and passengers. Once you've got your bike's backseat all set up, use their DIY tutorial vids to trick it out even further, like this DIY kickstand mod.

More:

Xtracycle Radish deal for Makers

June 15, 2009

How-To: Portable tallbike

So you've just made a tallbike from two frames, and you have a great time riding it around your neighborhood, but what happens when you want to take it farther away than your pedals can bring you? Instructables user sprocketscientist made a tutorial for a tallbike that comes apart for easy travel.

More tallbikes:

June 12, 2009

Super classy bike trailer

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Bryce & Naomi uploaded pics of this elegant homebuilt bicycle trailer, "The Edison" - perfect for those leisurely days you'd rather leave the motorcar at home -

It's made from 3/8 in birch luan on an Aluminum base frame. The wood frame was then fiberglassed to weather proof it. Copper sheet (14 Gauge) was used to protect heavy wear areas (and make it look good). The "hood" is cut into the curved top surface, hinged and lined with a leather snap cover that is stitched to the wood hood cover.

I am still working on the martini bar I am installing in the trunk. More pics when the bar is complete.

Check out a bunch of nice build photos in the Flickr photoset.

June 8, 2009

Make: Projects - Pedal-powered phone charger

by Alastair Bland

This winter, my dad and I took up the project of building a simple pedal-powered cell phone charger to mount on my bicycle. Cell phones are small potatoes in the big picture of energy consumption, but the apparatus we built could be a very practical concept for those on self-supported bike tours or those living temporarily in situations without electricity. Just unplug your phone from the wall, and in the time that it takes for you to rig up this gizmo your phone will be out of juice and you'll be due for a long ride!

A couple visits to the local hardware store and Radio Shack secured all the parts we needed for the job.

Read full story

June 7, 2009

Tool drool: Park Tools

[Photo from Park Tools]

Mike writes in the comments:

It's good to learn how to maintain anything that you use and bicycles are one of those few things that people own that you can still do this with only $100 worth of tools.

One of the best websites I've found for bicycle maintenance is on the Park Tools website. They have guides for doing lots and lots of things, and how to do them properly.

Indeed, this seems like a good resource. All the repair how-tos have a printable version that pops up, giving you a way to keep your keyboard clean during your bike repair projects. It might even make sense to print a copy of the most used repairs in your shop and keep them in page protectors, handy near the bench for quick reference. The tool list is worth checking out, too.

From their Home Mechanic Tool Lists page:

Maintaining your own bike can be fun, but it can also be confusing at times to know which tools you will need to perform the service you want. Below are a series of recommended tool lists for general maintenance of the average road or off-road bike. Attempt to develop two sets of tools- one for inside a seat bag for on-the-trail/road use, and another set for home use.

The page goes on to list a collection of tools, some of which they manufacture, others that you can pick up locally.

[Thanks Mike!]

WoodenBikes at Maker Faire

During Maker Faire, people of all stripes were riding these crazy junkcycles around. I took a moment to speak with Tom Kabat, their creator on Sunday.

Tom and his bikes were a mainstay of Bike Town, an area of Maker Faire that featured many bike builders and their projects.

A former serious cyclist who still loves bikes. An engineer, 30 year bike commuter and bike tourer (Trans America 1976), Tom was inspired to build bikes after seeing other great home built pedal machines at Kinetic Sculpture races and a wide variety of antique bikes on display in museums. He says, "I enjoy Maker Faire as a festival of inspiration and idea exchange."

On his site, he shows many of the bikes that he has made over the years and explains some of how and why they were built:

My epiphany came when was trying to make a large castor wheel for a parade float. I drilled a hole in a scrap of redwood 4x6 lumber and mounted an old Campagnolo bike headset in it. I installed an old bike fork through it and attaching a wheel to make a BIG castor wheel. But many other possibilities emerged. I was also immediately captivated by the incongruous look of an old piece of lumber sporting a fine headset and supporting a fork and wheel.

You might check out Wooden Bikes on Instructables, where there are lots of tips on how to recreate some of these hand crafted vehicles, like the Wooden Wedge.

You can build unusual and useful wood bikes without welding. I think wood bikes should become poplar again. :-) This is a simple one speed wooden bike with coaster brake, fits everyone from little kids to TALL adults. There are no metal tubes in the frame. Wooden' you build with wood if you couldn' weld? I wood.
It's got a 4" Razor scooter front wheel, so it's only safe on smooth roads without potholes or bumps.
Bike is designed so there is not much weight on front wheel. Bigger riders have center of gravity closer to back wheel.

WoodenBikes captured a lot of people's attention at Maker Faire. Kids rode them around, adults tried them out, and many people had their eyes opened about how they could take back bicycle design.

June 5, 2009

How-To: Prep and powder coat a bike frame

This guy's ladyfriend sure is lucky to have this bike frame customized with appliqued logos and powder coating. In this Instructable, user corwin shows you how to form and affix the logos after prepping the frame for the powder coater's.

Xtracycle Radish deal for Makers

At Maker Faire, the crew used these Xtracycle Radishes to get around. They carry extra cargo than a normal bike and can even be fitted to carry an extra passenger. Xtracycle is offering a deal to makers in celebration of the Faire, so check out their site for reduced Maker pricing until June 14th. Their site also shows you how to make some cool mods to the Xtracycle to carry a surfboard and more. Maker Faire even had a tallbike Xtracycle floating around the grounds! The above pictures are by Kim Dow.

Next-gen POV bike-wheel display tech

I was stunned to see the MonkeyLectric folks' new persistence of vision (POV) bike-wheel video display at Maker Faire, and to see how far they've... er... driven this tech since the last time I saw it. The video does a good job of showing off all that it can now do. Dan Goldwater adds:

I didn't say it in the video, but this is cutting-edge tech! The notorious 'pimpstar' car wheels only do static images, not video. They also appear to have much worse color depth - their video shows only 8 colors while we have 4096 - this was a significant technical hurdle in POV and i have not seen any other POV system anywhere with more than 8 colors (or with full video).

MonkeyLectric.com

June 4, 2009

Flashback: U-G-L-Y Your Bike

Looks like a piece of crap bike, right? Not quite. In MAKE Volume 11, Rick Polito showed us how to deter bike thieves by uglifying. It may look like an old clunker, but the bike above is actually Rick's Bianchi Milano, which rides like a dream. Here it is pre-makeover:

I love the analogy in the intro:

"Nature is the master of disguise. The tiger swallowtail caterpillar starts out camouflaged like a bird dropping to discourage birds from eating it. You can take a tip from the crawling turd and keep your bike from getting swiped by camouflaging it as a piece of crap: dress it down as a rolling piece of junk.Having an ugly bike doesn't mean having a junky bike. Looks and performance have no exclusive relationship. A savvy bike thief may see the gem under the Krylon, but he also knows he can't sell it as quickly as the tricked-out speedster at the other end of the bike rack."

Think paint (emphasize the sloppy factor), faux finish rust, accessories, tape, stickers, swapped out nuts and bolts. Check out the article here in our Digital Edition. And of course you can pick up a back issue of Volume 11, with our alt. vehicles special section, at the Maker Shed.

More:
Jimmie's uglified camera

May 29, 2009

Bike to Maker Faire!

I always enjoy riding my bicycle in new places, so I was very excited to hear that a bunch of makers will be riding to the San Mateo County Fairgrounds in the morning.

Join the ride from Dolores Park with the Rock The Bike crew and other two-wheeled enthusiasts. I'll be riding into town to help guide the group down to the Faire on the coastal route.

You can alternately follow the Rock The Bike route.

There is a $10 discount for attendees arriving by bicycle, and there is a bicycle valet to lavish your bicycle with love while you enjoy the festivities.

May 28, 2009

Bike painting tips

My bike's paint job is looking pretty sorry these days, which I guess makes it less likely to get stolen, but doesn't get much drooling out about town... Instructables user Panda Face shares some awesome bike painting tips for a pro-looking job minus a large chunk of cash.

May 25, 2009

Kinetic sculpture race in California

Garth Johnson recently got to attend the Kinetic Grand Championship, a human-powered art vehicle race across road, land, and water between Arcata and Ferndale, California. He took a lot of nice video and included some anecdotes of the more eccentric aspects of the competition over at Extreme Craft.

May 22, 2009

DIY bike helmet fan

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Matt outfitted his headgear with some quick-n-dirty AC -

I was bored one day at NYCR and started playing with my rising collections of motors.

Ended up stuffing an 18v motor into my bike helmet and putting two 9vs in series on it. Runs awesome. Surprisingly effective as a cooling apparatus and even more surprisingly effective as a fume buffer.

Probably not very safe in an accident though =P

Consider it an early prototype - fume buffering == quite welcome for urban usage. See the original photo on Flickr.

May 10, 2009

Creating solutions - Worldbike

Worldbike Slideshow: Bicycles as a tool for Development from Ross Evans on Vimeo.

Worldbike designs higher-strength, longer-wheelbase bicycles with integrated cargo capacity. We conduct trial markets to determine the ideal price levels, work with the bike industry to get the best quality parts and frames at the lowest cost, and partner with international development organizations like Kickstart International to sell and distribute the bicycles.

Worldbike was included in the Design for the other 90% exhibition by the Cooper-Hewitt Museum.

[Image from worldbike]

The impacts of the Open Source Bike project will be principally felt in identifying and solving the key design challenges in using bikes in the developing world. Through the distributed brains of the worldbike bike community, we'll be able to mobilize talent that otherwise wouldn't be able to participate in this effort.

[Image from worldbike]

Bikes from Worldbike are actually designed to be used to carry the heavy loads demanded of them by developing world users. The durable frame extending racks provide a stable platform and make the bicycle more appropriate for the applications of carrying cargo. Having a properly designed bicycle makes it less likely that the bike will fail from being used outside its' intended use.