http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Build-a-Bamboo-Bicycle/
Yeah,
I’ve seen a bunch of these around and came across it in the NY times today, you can gorilla wrap a resined carbon or natural fiber string around the joints a bunch, vacuum bag it, and cure. Lign up the metal inserts at the head tube,bottom bracket, seat pin and dropouts then go to town on it. Neat, but I like mine steel. Got to come up with a lug type fitting that could compensate for the variation in diameters you’d get in the stalks so you could just loosen it up to replace a tube.
I built the Jerry Garcia bike up for myself with the second set of prototype shift pods and some spare parts, I really cleaned up the mounting and may have figured out how to make and paint bright a pile of them to get on to some bikes. Making much of a profit on the first hand made batch will be impossible and I’d really need to have the parts made on an NC machine to get the kind of economy of scale I’d need to price them affordably but the idea seems to work great, I still tap futily at my brake lever every once in a while but the shifting is really intuitive with the old push pull simplicity. I need to scoop up some older 7 and 8 speed downtube shifters to mount up, the wider spaced cogs on the 7 & 8 speed gear stacks don’t clog up or come out of adjustment as often as new stuff and the wider chain will last a lot longer than the modern ten speed stuff for cross racing too. The best part of the product may be that any older bike with the old down tube shifters can get the same hands on the brake lever gear changes as with integrated shift levers without having to upgrade any of their other parts besides new cable, cable guides where the old shifter was and the old shifter on the BBW mount, just below the brake lever. Access to the shifter from the tops of your drop bar is allowed with the shift mount as well.
The new bike feels awesome, I really flared the rear end & it seems to have worked to keep the thing from wagging on out of the saddle efforts without feeling too stiff on washboardy surfaces. The guy that spec’d it is about my size but asked for a centimeter less top tube than I’d run on my last cross frame and it makes the fit feel a lot better for off roading with more maneuverability over the bike. I got to hammer on it all day every day since Monday this week, the regular guy that posts the GG parking permits was out so I’ve been carrying a heavy pack to the far corners of boston, somerville, and brookline posting signs instead of loading trucks. It has me looking forward to trying to go fast this year and mixing it up in some races. I haven’t wanted to get off the thing I ended up playing polo on it till they pulled the plugs on the lights at 11 last nite.
I’ll be getting down to PA to drop off Anita’s bike, pick up the folks old car and hopefully load it with some housewares for here the Mother and Brothers birthday weekend of the 21st. The housemate really is moving out so there is a lot of stuff to replace. I’ll need to look into getting that Ford registered commercial, it could be cheaper, definitely easier to park downtown. Commercially registered or not the little SUV’ll make doing things like the Palmer event much more of a possibility. I am really excited about the Philly bike expo Billenky is putting on this Halloween.
I need to tie a string around the finger to remember to register for an MTB race in the Catskills the last weekend of August. I’ve ridden a couple times with this guy Johnathan who is close friends with the guy organizing the event with World Cup Proffessional races the same weekend as my general public race. Anyway Johnathan is Hand Forged Works, a business doing some nice ornate ironwork and got the commission to Build all the trophys for the weekend and prime booth space at the events trade expo, since my bike stuff is in no way in competition with his bottle openers, belt buckles and design build services I can bring and display as much of my stuff as will fit in the dude’s enormous pick up truck and trailer. The space where this guy is working is bizzarre. It used to be the finishing department, a 10,000 sq. ft.building with 25′ cielings and a 20 ton gantry lift still operational in a corner of an immense old manufacturing campus in Andover. 20,000 people used to work there, Now maybe a hundred do, alot of them doing really neat stuff. His neighbor making bio-diesel in the next building had an event in the shop to announce his candidacy for the state senate on a platform of eco-manufacturing jobs creation, not the raucaus warehouse party I thought I might be going to but probably better for my braincells that it wasn’t and I really wish I were in the right district to vote for this guy.
If all goes well it could be a good fall. Turns out I’d a bit much to say here, haven’t been writing so much in the blog or anything lately and I’ll probably do something lame like post up this e-mail for lack of any creative content. Between making a thing here and there, giving my 40 hours to the man, and getting out for some fresh air occasionally while it is still warm and light out there just doesn’t seem to be enough hours in a week.
How is the ramp up to the VT trip going? Are you and my Dad still getting out fairly regularly?
Say Hi to everyone down there for me.
Matt
