As soon as you get into High School in a few years, take a look at who is in shop class, then look around and look at the kids who *want* to be there. Yes, this is news for nerds.
There is more to nerdism than programming and Windows/OSX/Linux bitchfights.
Much as I love a good systemd related trollfest, and article like this is actually substantially more interesting. It really appeals to my inner nerd and has a good hacking aspect of just making something out of unexpected things for the heck of it.
I thought the same thing. But I clicked on one of the links. One of the first things I looked at was how the pedals drove the back wheel. I figured it'd be a chain and sprocket he took off of a production bicycle. However, it looks to me like a three wooden gear setup.
This is a 15 year old kid. He built this using a single sheet of plywood. Even though he complained about the gears not meshing well, it's pretty damn impressive he was able to make these with tools you would find in, even a well equipped, h
Can we please stop renaming every single existing technology as 3D printing? Is a cupcake mold a 3D printer? Is a computerized sewing machine a clothes 3D printer?
Are you sure, he just built the damn thing with a sheet of plywood and a CNC machine AKA the original 3D printer.
RTFA. He did not use a CNC machine. He hand made a cardboard template and glued it to the plywood and cut it our that way. For his next version, he wants to use harder wood and cut the gears using a CNC machine.
And no, a CNC machine is the exact opposite of a 3D printer. You start with a chunk of material and cut away what you don't want. A 3D printer is an additive manufacturing process.
Again, for a 15 year old kid, it's pretty interesting.
That sounds daming with faint praise. It's good... for a 15 year old.
Nah, it's just plain good over all. Actually, I've started woodworking for a hobby and it's actually both interesting and really good, for any one of any age.
I didn't intend it to be damming in any way. The exact opposite , actually. At 15, he had to use the tools his father had in their shop. From what I read in TFA, his father wasn'ta mmaster carpenter. He had the tools needed to add a room onto the house.
At 15, with what my father had in the way of tools, this would have been a hell of an undertaking. For me as an adult, this would be ridiculously easier as I have a ton of tools and acquired skills. And I can afford to buy what ever I need for a pr
More seriously, why? If this was a 3D printed bicycle, I could understand it being here. If he was selling them for BitCoins, I could see why someone would post it to Slashdot. Even the summary admits that there is nothing special about this accomplishment, it's just a bandwidth-eating video and a link to a woodworking blog!
More seriously, why? If this was a 3D printed bicycle, I could understand it being here. If he was selling them for BitCoins, I could see why someone would post it to Slashdot.
Even the summary admits that there is nothing special about this accomplishment, it's just a bandwidth-eating video and a link to a woodworking blog!
Then open your own website, and put only the "real" stuff on it that only your sort of nerd allows..
I'm a nerd, I enjoyed the article, the bike is cool looking, and the best part is that it really pisses you off.
I disagree, the threshold for calling something "3D printed" is awfully low. How many "3D printed cars!!!" have we seen that consist of a perfectly standard factory-made car with a god-awful 3D printed shell on top? Is that really a 3D printed car? No!! You could remove the shell and still have a car! No one has 3D printed anything remotely resembling a full-size functional car.
It would have been the same with a "3D printed" bike: someone would take a perfectly standard store-bought bike and 3D printed a bo
I've also seen bamboo framed ones where jsut the tubes are bamboo. They're much like normal biles otherwise and I presume exactly as comfortable. There's at least one I've read about which is 100% wood. Getting the bearings and power transmission were apparently the harddest bits.
Can't find a link though.
Anyway props to this guy for making bikes out of wood.
"They're much like normal biles otherwise and I presume exactly as comfortable."
Comfort comes almost entirely from the tire size and pressure relative to rider weight and road conditions. The frame is largely irrelevant, at least for anything made in the last few decades by any half-competent company.
"Getting the bearings and power transmission were apparently the harddest bits."
Getting alignment on these items is the hardest bit. Bicycles require an incredible degree of proper alignment of a couple of key
Getting alignment on these items is the hardest bit. Bicycles require an incredible degree of proper alignment of a couple of key components in order for things to work right, mostly shifting, but also handling-wise.
I think on the wooden bilke the biger problem was doing it at all: getting a good sliding bearing out of wood is really hard. You can't have roller bearings and you can't precision ream a journal to the same degree because of the grain. Even the best wood is vastly softer than the carbon steel t
I've been to Calfee and seen the best-known bike. Yes, the tubes are just bamboo. It's just that simple.
You should see how carbon fiber bike frames are prototyped. Cut and scallop your CF tubing, epoxy the tubes together into a frame shape, put it into a clamp and then wrap the joints with CF twine while brushing on the resin. When done, stick it in the oven and cook it. When it comes out you take a die grinder to the places where the tubes come together and just smooth it out and make it pretty, done and d
This is not a practical bike. "Even on smooth pavement, your vision goes blurry because you're vibrating so hard," Collin said to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter back in 2012 when he was only 15 -- and already building wooden bicycles. Collin's wooden bikes are far from the first ones. Wikipedia says, "The first bicycles recorded, known variously as velocipedes, dandy horses, or hobby horses, were constructed from wood, starting in 1817."
You know what else those early bicycles were called? "Bones [wikipedia.org]
They were boneshakers because they didn't have pneumatic tires. This is not true of a modern bicycle, and we also have far more understanding of mechanical systems and materials, including wood, now.
It is a widely perpetuated myth, mostly by bicycle frame makers who are attempting to get you to spend gobs of money on special designs, frame materials, etc that are "vertically stiff and horizontally compliant" (this phrase is now such marketing cliche it's mocked a lot)...that road bicycle suspension happens
Bullshit. I'm a former competitive cyclist (road and cross), and now I just ride my bike for fun, but a great deal of the suspension is in your frame. That said, you don't need to spend a gajillion dollars on the latest fancy marketing fad. My favorite bike has a steel IF Crown Jewel frame, and I've been riding the same bike for over a decade now (because I'm in love with the damn thing, it's brilliantly balanced and nearly indestructible despite my treating it like a cross bike. kevlar tires are a big win.
Things have certainly moved on from when I was a kid, although quite how dangerous a school journey would have to be to necessitate bulletproof bike tyres I can't quite imagine.
Kevlar tires are great because you wind up replacing them once every 6+ years. And that's after sliding the bike all the time and riding it on trails. They cost about $50-60 apiece (Michelon Pro Race series, currently @ 3), but they're well worth it when you ride every day and abuse your tires. It has nothing to do with riding to school and everything to do with pushing the bike to do things it wasn't intended to do. Like I said, I ride it offroad, with no modifications (no cross tires or anything), treatin
I need sleep. Also, for the confused (because I'm sure there will be some), the tread of the tire itself isn't kevlar. The trick with kevlar tires is that the bead is kevlar. After taking a normal tire on and off the rim a few times, they tend to wear out. You can take one with a kevlar bead on and off dozens of times before the tire will show any significant wear. The only downside is that the first few times are a real bear. Hope you brought your good tire levers and not some piece of
Because a 100% wood bicycle is a very hard thing to do because wood is just not very good at things like bearings. That makes it as much an interesting bit of hacking as a 6502 implemented in Minecraft.
I mean Jesus I know people have always complained about the quality of stories and dupes, but this is a completely nerdy topic even if it's not 100% pure comuter nerdery.
Actually, wood can be quite good at bearings --- one just has to use the correct sort of wood. Lignum vitae was used for the bearings for steam paddle boats and submarines and is now being used for bearings in hydroelectric plants:
Hey guys, just contributing, if Chrome had 39 balls and rode a wooden bicycle...other than annhilating each other on contact, these objects made entirely of antimatter would not be noticeably different from those made of matter, 39 balls or more: It is one of the principles of the symmetry of physics, the equations seem to show, that if a clock, say, were made of matter on one hand, and then we made the same clock of antimatter, it would run in this (exact same) way. He then adds the example of the left-han
There has never been a time when wooden bikes weren't being made. As late as the 1930's, people were making bikes with wooden compression-type spokes, rather than steel tension-type spokes, and currently there are piles of amazing wooden bikes being made. This Owen was used as a triathalon bike, with some very respectable finishes (race finishes, not varnish finishes): https://www.flickr.com/photos/... [flickr.com] Satoshi Sano has been building spectacular bikes using traditional Japanese boatbuilding techniques: https://www.flickr.com/photos/... [flickr.com] and http://sanomagic.world.coocan.... [coocan.jp] Note internal cabling in steam-bent frame elements, and a wooden seat on a steam-bent seatpost. And since bamboo is wood, there are at least a dozen companies using bamboo as the primary frame material. Calfee started it, as far as I can tell: https://www.flickr.com/photos/... [flickr.com]
Hero (and at least two other companies) go so far as to offer classes, where over a weekend you start out by harvesting bamboo, and end up making a complete ready-to-build-up frameset. http://www.herobike.org/collec... [herobike.org]
I've seen some modern wood frame bikes on a few organized rides in california.
They resemble any other modern CF bike, except they look fucking amazing. They're probably heavier, but like any other composite material they're just fibers soaked in epoxy.
More of a novelty than anything else, but not impractical at all.
well, but those people are sensible enough to make the bike useable by using some rubber on the wheels UNLIKE THIS GUY.
but this project is not about practicality but just about making a dangerous to drive all wooden bike(except for the glue in the plywood??).
I guess the editors have already gone full hipster. it's like going full retard, but to usability. and in them going full hipster they mistake that being impractical and having gears means that it's nerdy. stay tuned for some free energy videos next wee
well, but those people are sensible enough to make the bike useable by using some rubber on the wheels UNLIKE THIS GUY.
but this project is not about practicality but just about making a dangerous to drive all wooden bike(except for the glue in the plywood??).
I guess the editors have already gone full hipster. it's like going full retard, but to usability. and in them going full hipster they mistake that being impractical and having gears means that it's nerdy. stay tuned for some free energy videos next week as they go not just full hipster but full retard.
You are such a miserable twat. Maybe you could just respect that it was a challenging and fun project for the kid who built it, and he never really intended it to be practical.
but if they're going to go around making video articles, why not do one about the lego cnc machine(equally pointless, but involving computers), rather than a woodworking project?
I mean, this isn't burningmannews.com or like that.
I'm not dissing the project as such, just dissing the editors for choosing it to include it on the site. add insult to injury that it's under "transportation" on the site. and that they used significant time to create this.
Actually, bamboo is a grass, not wood at all, with far different properties. Bamboo is very fragile having an M&M-like makeup, a very thin, hard outer shell over a soft wall. Numerous bamboo bike producers have compounded that fragility by joining the tubes with rigid lugs of aluminum, steel and carbon. Calfee, who produces both bamboo and carbon bikes, learned through early failed bamboo frames that failure is guaranteed using a rigid connector with flexible tubes. He quickly switched to wrapped lugs w
Those wooden sunglasses don't show much wood working skill at all. It's 3 pieces of wood and they don't appear to fit together extremely precisely as it is. That's a high school shop class level project.
The AJC article mentioned the weight and the rough ride. I'd guess that yet another disadvantage of a wooden bicycle, at least when sharing the road with motor vehicles, is that it's impossible to trigger a green traffic signal [pineight.com] without enough metal surface to disturb the flux in the induction loop beneath the approach to the intersection. At some intersections, even a metal bicycle has a problem with that.
The AJC article mentioned the weight and the rough ride. I'd guess that yet another disadvantage of a wooden bicycle, at least when sharing the road with motor vehicles, is that it's impossible to trigger a green traffic signal [pineight.com] without enough metal surface to disturb the flux in the induction loop beneath the approach to the intersection. At some intersections, even a metal bicycle has a problem with that.
While an all wooden bike (including wheels)might have problems tripping lights, I almost always can trip the lights with my Carbon Fiber bike with aluminum wheels, I just have to careful where I stop. I don't think an all-wooden bike (including wooden wheels) would be practical enough for much riding around town - the road vibrations noted in the article would make long rides unpleasant.
Even with my metal recumbent trike, position is a huge thing when tripping stop lights. This is one of the "discussed to death" topics on sites like http://www.bentrideronline.com... [bentrideronline.com]. A lot depends on the sensitivity of the loop and the circuitry it triggers, and a lot of the detectors are specifically set to be triggered only by a metal mass lots larger than a baby stroller, wheelchair or bicycle.
"I'd guess that yet another disadvantage of a wooden bicycle, at least when sharing the road with motor vehicles, is that it's impossible to trigger a green traffic signal without enough metal surface to disturb the flux in the induction loop beneath the approach to the intersection."
1)Inductive loop sensors are much better than they used to be, and many can detect aluminum bike frames, metal in the wheels (almost all spokes are metal - carbon fiber spokes are very rare; many rims are still aluminum), or t
Inductive loop sensors are much better than they used to be
And a lot of cities lack the funds to replace old sensors with better ones. Or they intentionally turn down the sensitivity so as to reject a tractor-trailer in the adjacent lane.
Many traffic lights now use camera-bases systems.
I was under the impression that a lot of cities shied away from these for two reasons. One is cost; though they may be cheaper than an induction loop under certain circumstances, it's still greater than zero. Another is confusion with the red light cameras that have led to increased rear-end collisions as motorists attempt to compl
I have issues with traffic lights seeing me on my motorcycle. Not often admittedly but still often enough to be noticeable. It tends to be on 2 lane roads which have been subjected to heavy traffic. I'm not sure if the loops have been damaged or if it is me using a different position due to the damaged surface but they cant sense me. (Bike is a Honda CBR1000rr)
One of the tricks I've heard for that is to put your kickstand (usually steel) down near the sensor loop. Of course, some bikes will have kill switches that are triggered by kickstand down switch, so it may be worth a test.
My bike will cut the ignition instantly if it is in gear and the side stand is put down. That is pretty much standard on every modern motorcycle. The only variation I have seen recently is the one that kills the ignition when you start to let the clutch out. I prefer the one that cuts as soon as you put the bike in gear as you aren't expecting the bike to move forward when it happens so you aren't shifting your weight around.
I'm fairly sure that here in the UK traffic lights are just on a set timing sequence.
Is it different in the US because you have a lot more infrequently used roads that require manual triggering?
That rather prompts the question of why you bother having lights at all at junctions where traffic is so infrequent.
For the junction of a high traffic and low to medium traffic road, especially in cases where there is bad visibility. During rush hour the signal might be going continuously, but at other times it allows traffic on the high traffic road to be unimpeded.
"weight and rough ride" Those are both due to this dude's ridiculous artistic design. There's no pneumatic tires on the wheels, and the thing has obnoxiously large cogs off the crank, and unfortunately made wooden designs look like they would share these qualities on a materials basis.
While a piece of steel is obviosuyly much stronger than a piece of wood of the same dimensions, if we stipulate equal *weights* rather than equal dimensions, the piece of wood may be stronger. The "specific strength" (or "strength to weight ratio) of some woods like balsa are greater than most steels.
That means that the applications of wood overlap the applications of steel somewhat. Some places where you need a little steel you can use a lot of wood and the result will be equally strong and weigh about
I'd take your post more seriously if you didn't make absurd generalizations like "steel is very stiff and wood is very flexible." From that alone it's obvious you understand nothing about materials.
I'd take your post more seriously if you didn't make absurd generalizations like "steel is very stiff and wood is very flexible." From that alone it's obvious you understand nothing about materials.
Alright then. Woods have a Young's modulus (along the grain) of around 3-12 GPa. Typical construction steels have a modulus of around 200 GPa. Therefore a steel beam will be stiffer than a wooden beam of identical dimensions. However, I do realize that *some* wooden objects will be siffer than *some* steel objects. For example an oak beam with a 10x10" cross section will be stiffer than a steel bar of the same length with a 0.25 x 0.25 inch cross section.
Yes, it's certainly true that steel has a higher Young's Modulus.
However, you pointed out that the specific strength is similar, so for an equal strenght and weight structure you'll either have a little steel or a lot of wood. That Young's modulus is now spread over 10x the area, which evens things up a lot.
There's also some dimly remembered knowledge about beams where the distance of the area from the centre of bending matters so that would favour the larger beams made of wood.
You probably already know all this, but for what it's worth, Gary Klein's realization that you can build a stiff frame out of anything if you just increase the diameter enough is completely apropos for wooden bike frame design. The problem, as the Renovo guys have found, is that you need like 5" diameter tubes to get even acceptable stiffness, since stiffness rises as the third power of diameter for tubes. But at those diameters, for a competitive weight, the walls have to be like sub-millimeter in thickn
I certainly remember when Klein's bikes came out; he was a few years ahead of me at MIT. I don't know if the larger tubing idea was actually his; he was part of a group of students working on an aluminum frame. The relationship of diameter to stiffness had neen known for centuries; I think Euler originally worked out that the bending stiffness of a beam is proporitional to the moment of inertia of its cross section. I expect a lot of engineers realized the potential of aluminum. What stands out about Kle
Actually, Gary Klein's 'realization' is just simple engineering, apropos and employed by Renovo, Cannondale, Cervelo, Boeing and any other manufacturer who employs engineers and wants a torsionally stiff tubular section. The 'Renovo guys' have (actually calculated) and tested that they can easily equal the stiffness of a Cervelo S2 or Scott Elite carbon frame using a 2.5 diameter downtube (the Scott is 2.07).
Your assertions about Renovo's frames are authoritative sounding, but altogether wrong. Sorry, Re
How the hell is this news for nerds? (Score:0)
Someone's woodworking project is news for nerds... ...how?
Re:How the hell is this news for nerds? (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought it was very nerdy, and very interesting too.
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As soon as you get into High School in a few years, take a look at who is in shop class, then look around and look at the kids who *want* to be there. Yes, this is news for nerds.
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There is more to nerdism than programming and Windows/OSX/Linux bitchfights.
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There is more to nerdism than programming and Windows/OSX/Linux bitchfights.
Much as I love a good systemd related trollfest, and article like this is actually substantially more interesting. It really appeals to my inner nerd and has a good hacking aspect of just making something out of unexpected things for the heck of it.
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But what does Bennet Hassleton have to say about this? He's a frequent submitter.
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I thought the same thing. But I clicked on one of the links. One of the first things I looked at was how the pedals drove the back wheel. I figured it'd be a chain and sprocket he took off of a production bicycle. However, it looks to me like a three wooden gear setup.
This is a 15 year old kid. He built this using a single sheet of plywood. Even though he complained about the gears not meshing well, it's pretty damn impressive he was able to make these with tools you would find in, even a well equipped, h
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This is exactly news for nerds, not another 3D printing self-fellatio story because some idiot bought a hot glue gun on a stepper motor.
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Are you sure, he just built the damn thing with a sheet of plywood and a CNC machine AKA the original 3D printer.
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Can we please stop renaming every single existing technology as 3D printing? Is a cupcake mold a 3D printer? Is a computerized sewing machine a clothes 3D printer?
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Are you sure, he just built the damn thing with a sheet of plywood and a CNC machine AKA the original 3D printer.
RTFA. He did not use a CNC machine. He hand made a cardboard template and glued it to the plywood and cut it our that way. For his next version, he wants to use harder wood and cut the gears using a CNC machine.
And no, a CNC machine is the exact opposite of a 3D printer. You start with a chunk of material and cut away what you don't want. A 3D printer is an additive manufacturing process.
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Again, for a 15 year old kid, it's pretty interesting.
That sounds daming with faint praise. It's good... for a 15 year old.
Nah, it's just plain good over all. Actually, I've started woodworking for a hobby and it's actually both interesting and really good, for any one of any age.
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I didn't intend it to be damming in any way. The exact opposite , actually. At 15, he had to use the tools his father had in their shop. From what I read in TFA, his father wasn'ta mmaster carpenter. He had the tools needed to add a room onto the house.
At 15, with what my father had in the way of tools, this would have been a hell of an undertaking. For me as an adult, this would be ridiculously easier as I have a ton of tools and acquired skills. And I can afford to buy what ever I need for a pr
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I'd like to know what Bennett Haselton has to say about this.
Life imitates Minecraft? (Score:0)
Punch tree, make bicycle?
More seriously, why? If this was a 3D printed bicycle, I could understand it being here. If he was selling them for BitCoins, I could see why someone would post it to Slashdot.
Even the summary admits that there is nothing special about this accomplishment, it's just a bandwidth-eating video and a link to a woodworking blog!
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Dick goes in butt?
Re:Life imitates Minecraft? (Score:4, Funny)
Punch tree, make bicycle?
More seriously, why? If this was a 3D printed bicycle, I could understand it being here. If he was selling them for BitCoins, I could see why someone would post it to Slashdot. Even the summary admits that there is nothing special about this accomplishment, it's just a bandwidth-eating video and a link to a woodworking blog!
Then open your own website, and put only the "real" stuff on it that only your sort of nerd allows..
I'm a nerd, I enjoyed the article, the bike is cool looking, and the best part is that it really pisses you off.
Yup, sorta enjoyed that part.
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I disagree, the threshold for calling something "3D printed" is awfully low. How many "3D printed cars!!!" have we seen that consist of a perfectly standard factory-made car with a god-awful 3D printed shell on top? Is that really a 3D printed car? No!! You could remove the shell and still have a car! No one has 3D printed anything remotely resembling a full-size functional car.
It would have been the same with a "3D printed" bike: someone would take a perfectly standard store-bought bike and 3D printed a bo
Wooden bikes are cool (Score:4, Interesting)
I've also seen bamboo framed ones where jsut the tubes are bamboo. They're much like normal biles otherwise and I presume exactly as comfortable. There's at least one I've read about which is 100% wood. Getting the bearings and power transmission were apparently the harddest bits.
Can't find a link though.
Anyway props to this guy for making bikes out of wood.
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"They're much like normal biles otherwise and I presume exactly as comfortable."
Comfort comes almost entirely from the tire size and pressure relative to rider weight and road conditions. The frame is largely irrelevant, at least for anything made in the last few decades by any half-competent company.
"Getting the bearings and power transmission were apparently the harddest bits."
Getting alignment on these items is the hardest bit. Bicycles require an incredible degree of proper alignment of a couple of key
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Getting alignment on these items is the hardest bit. Bicycles require an incredible degree of proper alignment of a couple of key components in order for things to work right, mostly shifting, but also handling-wise.
I think on the wooden bilke the biger problem was doing it at all: getting a good sliding bearing out of wood is really hard. You can't have roller bearings and you can't precision ream a journal to the same degree because of the grain. Even the best wood is vastly softer than the carbon steel t
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Glue/epoxy in a sleeve with a rough outer face to bond to the wood and then the races and bearings?
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Interestingly there was at least one bicycle design which claimed that frame shape could influence comfort:
http://gajitz.com/riding-a-rou... [gajitz.com]
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I've been to Calfee and seen the best-known bike. Yes, the tubes are just bamboo. It's just that simple.
You should see how carbon fiber bike frames are prototyped. Cut and scallop your CF tubing, epoxy the tubes together into a frame shape, put it into a clamp and then wrap the joints with CF twine while brushing on the resin. When done, stick it in the oven and cook it. When it comes out you take a die grinder to the places where the tubes come together and just smooth it out and make it pretty, done and d
This is retro without the futurism. Why? (Score:2, Informative)
This is not a practical bike. "Even on smooth pavement, your vision goes blurry because you're vibrating so hard," Collin said to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter back in 2012 when he was only 15 -- and already building wooden bicycles. Collin's wooden bikes are far from the first ones. Wikipedia says, "The first bicycles recorded, known variously as velocipedes, dandy horses, or hobby horses, were constructed from wood, starting in 1817."
You know what else those early bicycles were called? "Bones [wikipedia.org]
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A hipster nerd would...
Nerdster.
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Hipnerd.
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Because a real nerd is interested in how things work, not in following trends to impress his peers.
You have a 3D printer, don't you? Yet I'll bet you've never made anything remotely useful, but refuse to admit it.
Meanwhile, you're perfectly happy to whip it out to piss on people doing actual work!
Boneshakers did not have pneumatic tires (Score:1)
They were boneshakers because they didn't have pneumatic tires. This is not true of a modern bicycle, and we also have far more understanding of mechanical systems and materials, including wood, now.
It is a widely perpetuated myth, mostly by bicycle frame makers who are attempting to get you to spend gobs of money on special designs, frame materials, etc that are "vertically stiff and horizontally compliant" (this phrase is now such marketing cliche it's mocked a lot)...that road bicycle suspension happens
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Bullshit. I'm a former competitive cyclist (road and cross), and now I just ride my bike for fun, but a great deal of the suspension is in your frame. That said, you don't need to spend a gajillion dollars on the latest fancy marketing fad. My favorite bike has a steel IF Crown Jewel frame, and I've been riding the same bike for over a decade now (because I'm in love with the damn thing, it's brilliantly balanced and nearly indestructible despite my treating it like a cross bike. kevlar tires are a big win.
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kevlar tires are a big win
Things have certainly moved on from when I was a kid, although quite how dangerous a school journey would have to be to necessitate bulletproof bike tyres I can't quite imagine.
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Kevlar tires are great because you wind up replacing them once every 6+ years. And that's after sliding the bike all the time and riding it on trails. They cost about $50-60 apiece (Michelon Pro Race series, currently @ 3), but they're well worth it when you ride every day and abuse your tires. It has nothing to do with riding to school and everything to do with pushing the bike to do things it wasn't intended to do. Like I said, I ride it offroad, with no modifications (no cross tires or anything), treatin
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s/Michelon/Michelin/
I need sleep. Also, for the confused (because I'm sure there will be some), the tread of the tire itself isn't kevlar. The trick with kevlar tires is that the bead is kevlar. After taking a normal tire on and off the rim a few times, they tend to wear out. You can take one with a kevlar bead on and off dozens of times before the tire will show any significant wear. The only downside is that the first few times are a real bear. Hope you brought your good tire levers and not some piece of
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Why would a nerd be interested in this news?
Because a 100% wood bicycle is a very hard thing to do because wood is just not very good at things like bearings. That makes it as much an interesting bit of hacking as a 6502 implemented in Minecraft.
I mean Jesus I know people have always complained about the quality of stories and dupes, but this is a completely nerdy topic even if it's not 100% pure comuter nerdery.
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Actually, wood can be quite good at bearings --- one just has to use the correct sort of wood. Lignum vitae was used for the bearings for steam paddle boats and submarines and is now being used for bearings in hydroelectric plants:
http://www.core77.com/blog/mat... [core77.com]
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How about this for retro futurism then: a bamboo racing "car" game controller [tomtilley.net].
Real Bennett Haselton here. (Score:-1)
Hey guys, just contributing, if Chrome had 39 balls and rode a wooden bicycle...other than annhilating each other on contact, these objects made entirely of antimatter would not be noticeably different from those made of matter, 39 balls or more: It is one of the principles of the symmetry of physics, the equations seem to show, that if a clock, say, were made of matter on one hand, and then we made the same clock of antimatter, it would run in this (exact same) way. He then adds the example of the left-han
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Hipster pick up line (Score:1)
Is what "I build wooden bikes" sounds like.
why is this on slashdot? (Score:0)
still more relevant that most windows related articles though.
A long and current history of wooden bikes (Score:5, Informative)
There has never been a time when wooden bikes weren't being made. As late as the 1930's, people were making bikes with wooden compression-type spokes, rather than steel tension-type spokes, and currently there are piles of amazing wooden bikes being made.
This Owen was used as a triathalon bike, with some very respectable finishes (race finishes, not varnish finishes): https://www.flickr.com/photos/... [flickr.com]
Satoshi Sano has been building spectacular bikes using traditional Japanese boatbuilding techniques: https://www.flickr.com/photos/... [flickr.com]
and
http://sanomagic.world.coocan.... [coocan.jp]
Note internal cabling in steam-bent frame elements, and a wooden seat on a steam-bent seatpost.
And since bamboo is wood, there are at least a dozen companies using bamboo as the primary frame material.
Calfee started it, as far as I can tell:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/... [flickr.com]
But there are many others, like Panda and Boo.
Bamboosera makes a great Cannondale-shock mountain bike:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/... [flickr.com]
and Hero Bikes make work and utility bikes:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/... [flickr.com]
Hero (and at least two other companies) go so far as to offer classes, where over a weekend you start out by harvesting bamboo, and end up making a complete ready-to-build-up frameset.
http://www.herobike.org/collec... [herobike.org]
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I've seen some modern wood frame bikes on a few organized rides in california.
They resemble any other modern CF bike, except they look fucking amazing. They're probably heavier, but like any other composite material they're just fibers soaked in epoxy.
More of a novelty than anything else, but not impractical at all.
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well, but those people are sensible enough to make the bike useable by using some rubber on the wheels UNLIKE THIS GUY.
but this project is not about practicality but just about making a dangerous to drive all wooden bike(except for the glue in the plywood??).
I guess the editors have already gone full hipster. it's like going full retard, but to usability. and in them going full hipster they mistake that being impractical and having gears means that it's nerdy. stay tuned for some free energy videos next wee
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well, but those people are sensible enough to make the bike useable by using some rubber on the wheels UNLIKE THIS GUY.
but this project is not about practicality but just about making a dangerous to drive all wooden bike(except for the glue in the plywood??).
I guess the editors have already gone full hipster. it's like going full retard, but to usability. and in them going full hipster they mistake that being impractical and having gears means that it's nerdy. stay tuned for some free energy videos next week as they go not just full hipster but full retard.
You are such a miserable twat. Maybe you could just respect that it was a challenging and fun project for the kid who built it, and he never really intended it to be practical.
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yeah, sure it was for him challenging and fun.
but if they're going to go around making video articles, why not do one about the lego cnc machine(equally pointless, but involving computers), rather than a woodworking project?
I mean, this isn't burningmannews.com or like that.
I'm not dissing the project as such, just dissing the editors for choosing it to include it on the site. add insult to injury that it's under "transportation" on the site. and that they used significant time to create this.
and I maintain
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Improved wood-working skills? (Score:0)
Those wooden sunglasses don't show much wood working skill at all. It's 3 pieces of wood and they don't appear to fit together extremely precisely as it is. That's a high school shop class level project.
Traffic signals (Score:2)
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The AJC article mentioned the weight and the rough ride. I'd guess that yet another disadvantage of a wooden bicycle, at least when sharing the road with motor vehicles, is that it's impossible to trigger a green traffic signal [pineight.com] without enough metal surface to disturb the flux in the induction loop beneath the approach to the intersection. At some intersections, even a metal bicycle has a problem with that.
While an all wooden bike (including wheels)might have problems tripping lights, I almost always can trip the lights with my Carbon Fiber bike with aluminum wheels, I just have to careful where I stop. I don't think an all-wooden bike (including wooden wheels) would be practical enough for much riding around town - the road vibrations noted in the article would make long rides unpleasant.
Re: Traffic signals (Score:2)
Even with my metal recumbent trike, position is a huge thing when tripping stop lights. This is one of the "discussed to death" topics on sites like http://www.bentrideronline.com... [bentrideronline.com]. A lot depends on the sensitivity of the loop and the circuitry it triggers, and a lot of the detectors are specifically set to be triggered only by a metal mass lots larger than a baby stroller, wheelchair or bicycle.
Irrelevant (Score:1)
"I'd guess that yet another disadvantage of a wooden bicycle, at least when sharing the road with motor vehicles, is that it's impossible to trigger a green traffic signal without enough metal surface to disturb the flux in the induction loop beneath the approach to the intersection."
1)Inductive loop sensors are much better than they used to be, and many can detect aluminum bike frames, metal in the wheels (almost all spokes are metal - carbon fiber spokes are very rare; many rims are still aluminum), or t
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Inductive loop sensors are much better than they used to be
And a lot of cities lack the funds to replace old sensors with better ones. Or they intentionally turn down the sensitivity so as to reject a tractor-trailer in the adjacent lane.
Many traffic lights now use camera-bases systems.
I was under the impression that a lot of cities shied away from these for two reasons. One is cost; though they may be cheaper than an induction loop under certain circumstances, it's still greater than zero. Another is confusion with the red light cameras that have led to increased rear-end collisions as motorists attempt to compl
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I have issues with traffic lights seeing me on my motorcycle. Not often admittedly but still often enough to be noticeable. It tends to be on 2 lane roads which have been subjected to heavy traffic. I'm not sure if the loops have been damaged or if it is me using a different position due to the damaged surface but they cant sense me. (Bike is a Honda CBR1000rr)
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One of the tricks I've heard for that is to put your kickstand (usually steel) down near the sensor loop. Of course, some bikes will have kill switches that are triggered by kickstand down switch, so it may be worth a test.
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My bike will cut the ignition instantly if it is in gear and the side stand is put down. That is pretty much standard on every modern motorcycle. The only variation I have seen recently is the one that kills the ignition when you start to let the clutch out. I prefer the one that cuts as soon as you put the bike in gear as you aren't expecting the bike to move forward when it happens so you aren't shifting your weight around.
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Is it different in the US because you have a lot more infrequently used roads that require manual triggering?
That rather prompts the question of why you bother having lights at all at junctions where traffic is so infrequent.
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"weight and rough ride" Those are both due to this dude's ridiculous artistic design. There's no pneumatic tires on the wheels, and the thing has obnoxiously large cogs off the crank, and unfortunately made wooden designs look like they would share these qualities on a materials basis.
Self slashdotted (Score:2)
Here's a curious fact about wood. (Score:2)
While a piece of steel is obviosuyly much stronger than a piece of wood of the same dimensions, if we stipulate equal *weights* rather than equal dimensions, the piece of wood may be stronger. The "specific strength" (or "strength to weight ratio) of some woods like balsa are greater than most steels.
That means that the applications of wood overlap the applications of steel somewhat. Some places where you need a little steel you can use a lot of wood and the result will be equally strong and weigh about
absurd generalizations (Score:2)
I'd take your post more seriously if you didn't make absurd generalizations like "steel is very stiff and wood is very flexible." From that alone it's obvious you understand nothing about materials.
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I'd take your post more seriously if you didn't make absurd generalizations like "steel is very stiff and wood is very flexible." From that alone it's obvious you understand nothing about materials.
Alright then. Woods have a Young's modulus (along the grain) of around 3-12 GPa. Typical construction steels have a modulus of around 200 GPa. Therefore a steel beam will be stiffer than a wooden beam of identical dimensions. However, I do realize that *some* wooden objects will be siffer than *some* steel objects. For example an oak beam with a 10x10" cross section will be stiffer than a steel bar of the same length with a 0.25 x 0.25 inch cross section.
There, is that pedantic enough for you? Or do I
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Yes, it's certainly true that steel has a higher Young's Modulus.
However, you pointed out that the specific strength is similar, so for an equal strenght and weight structure you'll either have a little steel or a lot of wood. That Young's modulus is now spread over 10x the area, which evens things up a lot.
There's also some dimly remembered knowledge about beams where the distance of the area from the centre of bending matters so that would favour the larger beams made of wood.
There are also some very, ver
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You probably already know all this, but for what it's worth, Gary Klein's realization that you can build a stiff frame out of anything if you just increase the diameter enough is completely apropos for wooden bike frame design. The problem, as the Renovo guys have found, is that you need like 5" diameter tubes to get even acceptable stiffness, since stiffness rises as the third power of diameter for tubes. But at those diameters, for a competitive weight, the walls have to be like sub-millimeter in thickn
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I certainly remember when Klein's bikes came out; he was a few years ahead of me at MIT. I don't know if the larger tubing idea was actually his; he was part of a group of students working on an aluminum frame. The relationship of diameter to stiffness had neen known for centuries; I think Euler originally worked out that the bending stiffness of a beam is proporitional to the moment of inertia of its cross section. I expect a lot of engineers realized the potential of aluminum. What stands out about Kle
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Sorry, Renovo doesn't do: "5' diameter tubes"..., 'incredibly delicate bikes" or "sub-millimeter thicknesses walls" A millimeter = .039"
The comment you replied to said that they don't do that exactly because it would be ridiculous.
Bit rude (Score:2)
And not all wooden bicycles made today are as crude as Collin's.
I'm sure you could have found a nicer way of putting that.
Why don't you get a haircut, (Score:0)
Bicycle Wooden (Score:1)
excessive uh um uh (Score:0)
It's hard to listen to this much "uh" and "um" the whole time. Let's learn how to speak along with other things we can do.