Wooden Wedge Bike

Clean lines and minimalism
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.

Other bikes I've built
Videos (includes bike) from Maker Faire

Step 1: Start Design on the CAD system

Using a sophisticated 2D CAD system (Cardboard Aided Design) life size cutout of your foot/leg thigh/back and arm, pivoting on brads at the joints, you can design the bike on the ground to explore sizing and clearance issues.
My CAD system sometimes has a Gooey interface if I spill something on it while designing:-)
More seriously, like other CAD systems it has a GUI (Graspable User interface).

Make a cardboard cutout of your lower leg (with foot and pedal), thigh, torso, and straight arm (to a distance 2" back from your wrist). Use it to look for good riding position and clearances for knees to bars, heels to wheels etc. Use the CAD system to layout the riding position, cranks, wheels etc with attention for locating your hands, shoulder, seatback angle, butt, knees and feet.
For detailed instruction on 12 Steps to designing a sweet handling recumbent, visit Bikesmith Design

This bike is designed for the rider to have a vertical back and no seat back and no weight on the hands.

Comments

[naught101]

No, YOU'RE a Rear Wheel axle nut!

[Woodenbikes]

I prefer to think of myself as the "loose nut behind the handle-bars".

[CybergothiChe]

ha ha ha

[NamelessFrank]

I need one with Swamp Tires or larger front tire for Louisiana roads!

[zzoe]

Well, yes, and HILLS, where i live, it's all hills. This thing is a beauty, and good on flat, dry road, i'm sure... I just suspect that after vainly struggling (and mostly walking) to get to the top of a steep one, madness might win, and the intrepid rider, after a last, desperate attempt to crest the hill, would moments later be heard making the protracted 'clackety-thump' sound of the painful, repeated backward somersault to the bottom. Ouch.

[duct_tape_masta]

i too know your pain

[Leon Close]

Nicely done. I like how it fits any size person. Is gound clearance a problem?

[Woodenbikes]

The 2" ground clearance is good for smooth flat roads. The beauty of wood bike building is If you want more clearance for more practicality, you can trim an inch off the bottom edge. The bottom 4" of wood on this bike is purely decorative.

[craig1st]

The bike is gorgeous! Nice Instructable as well.

[likebike]

Fantastic Designs
These bikes are great. here's video of my 2-6 year old on a Buga-bike. I totally recommend them.
Buga-bike by Sabamba ltd 1999.
<a href="http://www.bugabike.com/video/sample2playlist/sampleplaylist.html">(VIDEO)Buga-bike bicycle for toddlers</a>
It really is the perfect bike for a toddler and I am constantly telling other parents where I got it!

link video: http://www.bugabike.com/video/sample2playlist/sampleplaylist.html

[whiteoakart]

Very nice. I like your wooden bikes website, too.

I especially like the driftwood bike (a true work of art), the lawnmower bike, and the slalom scooter design.

Keep up the great work of relieving the landfills of bicycle parts.

[Woodenbikes]

Thanks. I'm glad you like the others. I may post instructables on them in future months.
The precurser to the Wedge Bike is the
Scooter Bike
It has a bike seat used as a Crotch Chock Block (tm:-) to keep the rider from sliding down the ramp.
For different sized riders, the seat post is moved from hole to hole along the beam.

[charper]

Very interesting. Is it hard to stay on though? It seems like you would slide down the ramp.

[Woodenbikes]

It's easy to stay on the 40 degree sloped ramp. Your legs help hold you up. Ramps steeper than 42 degrees may require a Crotch-Chock-Block (tm:-) (like the nose of a bike saddle) attached to the ramp to keep you from sliding down.

[jbeale]

Is this the very same one I saw running around at the Maker Faire recently? I sat down and watched for a while, everyone riding it looked like they were having a great time! Looked to me like the one difficulty was grounding out when trying to make a sharp turn, which would be fixed by raising the clearance a bit. Or maybe that is a safety feature, to slow things down if you're about to tumble?

[Woodenbikes]

It is one of the bikes I showed and let people ride at Maker Faire. I only recall one aggressive rider grinding the bike by doing a sliding spinout stop. The low clearance is purely for aesthetics. I think safety (if one wanted more) would be enhanced with higher ground clearance.

[kishida]

Great/fun bike. I've got one suggestion: you might consider curving up the front tip (similar to how the front of a snow ski is curved up), so when you hit a pot hole, the sharp tip or small wheel won't dig in and flip or suddenly stall the bike. A curved tip should allow you to glide over it, provided that the bottom of the wood frame, in front of the front wheel is more flush to the bottom of the front wheel -- you should keep the clearance of the frame, behind the front wheel, as is.

[Woodenbikes]

Thanks, The beauty of wood bike building is I can make future cuts easily to modify the bike. I could even glue on more wood. Practically I need at least the 2" of ground clearance all around to handle banking duriong turns. Example of wooden bike thinking: My next cut if I wanted to gain more nose clearance and keep the triangle look (vs the quadrangle, ski tip) would be one straight cut from the back lower corner point to a place 1-2" higher up the nose. It would not be parallel to the ground, but it would increase nose clearance and still be a triangle. After riding and looking at that a while I might make a new cut parallel to the ground from the new higher bottom edge of the nose straight back and expose more back wheel also, but I would be restablishing a triangle parallel to the ground. Perhaps I pay too much attention to "Assthetics":-)

[TangMu]

Mmmm pointy - you should market these as cheese triangle promotional vehicles, possibly even trivial pursuit

[Woodenbikes]

Mmmm pointy good. It is really fun to watch people riding it because with the short cranks and hidden wheels they seem to just glide along. Maybe I will build a little fleet of vectors for kids to swarm in. Speaking of cheesy it reminds me of the first Star Wars film's funky Sand Runner vehicle. Some say it is 'the shape of things to come'.

[TangMu]

Making a small 4 wheeled sandcrawler with a hatch on the side would be awesome. Heck, kids are jawa sized ^_

[crapflinger]

hehe deffinitely video worthy!

[i make shooting things]

when you turn, do you have to lean or actually turn the handle bar. or is it like a normal bike? looks like theirs a lot of potential space for storage on the bike (like a box on the inside a kid could put walki talkies or little squirt guns or a flash light or teddy bear )

[Woodenbikes]

It steers like other bikes. That is, you start by a counter-steer away from the turn to lean the bike into the turn and then turn the bars into the turn to balance the lean and the centripetal force of the turn. It has very little trail so I don't ride 'no hands'. Yes there is lots of storage space for kid essentials. I'd add an apple with a PBJ sandwich as its cushion, maybe some Tang and space food sticks...

[rimar2000]

Excellent. Congratulations.

[HamO]

Most Excellent! Great Instructable, great pix, cool design and Green.
Well done. Thanks for sharing.