Jokke_A's endless stream of projects

Thanks, I'm noticing now that you may have a point. I'll do something if I notice it while riding and it starts to bother me enough.

Also, apparently there's a bike I've forgotten to post. A few months ago a friend of my wife brought us this:

It's a 12" Pyrkijä / Minor. Pyrkijä is an old Finnish brand, but my gut feeling is that this bike is imported from (possibly) The Netherlands. The bike is probably from the late '50's or early '60's. Seat, tyres and tubes were all from the continental Europe instead of the Nordics. Bike was in quite a sorry state when it arrived, but based on the components I don't think it's actually seen much use. I believe inner tubes and tyres were original. My biggest worries were the wonky Lepper leather seat and ripped chain guard.

Anyway, during the Spring I've slowly been servicing the bike. I was able to salvage the leather seat, leather was badly dried and front part of the leather part had somehow jumped out of place. I softened the leather by soaking the seat underwater and bent it back to its place. After it had dried I of course waxed it. For the chainguard I had all sorts of plans to make a sort of a bandage out of copper or brass plate, but because of time constraints I ended up covering the ripped parts with some epoxy for now.

All the bearings needed a good service. Non-driveside bottom bracket cup was loose, it's already been a while, but I'm pretty sure I removed one crank, greased the BB and adjusted the bearings. Rear hub was a Torpedo, it's been a few years since I've opened one of these, but the design is quite simple and service is rather easy. Rear hub was made in 1958. Old grease was already quite dry, so I cleaned the internals and regreased the hub.

Also, notice how the hubs are laced to every other spoke hole. I'll use this bike as an excuse sometime when pairing 36h hubs to 18h rims.

Old inner tubes were sadly past their prime and had to be replaced. I'm pretty sure these were original for the bike. Rim bands are pretty cool with stitched leather valve holes, I'm sort of surprised any American boutique brand isn't offering bands like these today. Oh well, I guess they're not exactly vegan friendly anyway. I cheaped out on tyres and tubes and got the cheapest, Chinese'st option locally available. Apparently there would have been a Finnish made tyre available in this size, but I decided to skimp on these as rider will most likely outgrow the bike quite soon. Tyres were a pain to install, I needed to take a pause and continue after my assistant had gone to bed.

In addition to tyres, handlebar grips were the only part in need of changing. There a Finnish option by Herrmans was luckily available for a rather reasonable price.

I did'nt address the patina of the bike, other than rubbing some rust of the handlebars & stem with steel wool. I think I'll try to at least wax the frame as this will likely spend most of the summer outdoors. All in all, I think this is one of the prettier bikes that have gone through my hands. Before handing this over to its owner, I'll need to replace one of the front wheel nuts due to stripped threads.