I've got wood

The wooden rungs may bear a lot of weight, but what about sudden impact at, say 25 mph? I can't help but feel that there are sound reasons why wood is not a popular material for bicycle components.

Having said that, carbon fibre proved an expensive disappointment, when push came to van...
how many miles per hour does a cricket ball travel at when it hits a handlebar diameter piece of ash that is a stump-90-100mph perhaps.I think it's more about greater expansion and contraction due to temperatures and moisture, and also and perhaps more importantly finding a coating resilient enough to prevent ingress of moisture which at very least would cause unsightly irreversible staining.My guess anyway.

    ^

I'm starting to sound like an even more opinionated twat than normal -someone please tell me to STFU

A wooden handlebar would be far heavier than any ali/carbon bar. It would almost certainly be solid and weigh as much as my uzi (about a tonne).

Like fuck would it be too weak (with consideration to approriate wood type/construction). Stop this nonsense now.

Wooden bars are fine. you just have to make them out of cricket bats.

Big hands are a must.

I doubt any road bike manufacturer takes crash worthiness into consideration when designing their bikes. All bikes are relatively fragile, many would fold in a 25mph collision.

Wood isn'y much good for bikes because it has a low strength to weight ratio compared to metal and composites. However, if you're willing to sacrifice lots of grams (and get max hipster points), it'll fucking do!

Ye Gods.

Guess I'm probably right then ,maybe ;)
Maybe, maybe not. At least empirical evidence points to even a soft wood like Sitka Spruce being strong enough: look at the sweeps used by oarsmen. The neck of the grip, where it meets the loom, isn't much if any bigger than an inch (25.4mm) through.

I think a layup of 3 mm veneers, particularly if sourced from live-edged stock and resawn to follow the grain as closely as possible, avoiding runout, with a single layer of 6-ounce unidirectional E- Glass through the middle, and glued with a good epoxy (West marine, System Three, Silvertip, Raka) would be overkill for strength. You'd want to finish it with a good spar varnish to avoid UV degredation of the epoxy, but you'd want to do that anyway. Why paint something nice like that?

I've thought a lot about this, but haven't been able to act on it since my vacuum clamp sucked epoxy last year. I believe that a person should be able to do this in two steps:

First, make a clamping jig, with the bends and sweeps and rises exaggerated by about 10% to allow for springback. Saw your veneers out as described above (n.b.: the thinner your veneers, the greater the waste to the blade. Veneers as thick as the blade will give 50% of your stock going away as sawdust; but the more plies in your glueup, the greater the strength. Choose your own compromise.) and then pop them into a steambox. Pull then after 20 minutes or so, stack them in the jig, and tighten the clamps. Walk away for four or five days to let them dry in their new postion.

Second, release the clamps, get all stickified with the glue, and clamp back up. A vacuum press is the tool of choice here, you don't want to starve an epoxy joint with too much clamping pressure; good, even contact is all that's required and necessary.

When the glue's dry, about a day, sand and finish with spar varnish. Ther'es an opportunity here for aero shapes and fancy face veneers of exotic woods for extra bling.

I want to try this with spruce inner veneers, quartered white oak face veneers, and brass fitments to go with the steel Specialized Allez frame I gun-blued last week. I think it would knock the eyes right outta yer head.

Too much pissing around for little (or no) advantage, IMO. What's so wrong with these bars?

Ugly as a war wound, for one. For two, they cost the eyes out of your head. For three, unless you're a Cat 1 racer, they're for poseurs. For four, they're ugly as a war wound.

Lastly, you'll never get any sort of warm-n-fuzzy feeling knowing you're controlling something you power with your self with something you made yourself. Something doesn't have to boil an egg or dig a hole in order to be useful.

Ugly as a war wound, for one. For two, they cost the eyes out of your head. For three, unless you're a Cat 1 racer, they're for poseurs. For four, they're ugly as a war wound.

Lastly, you'll never get any sort of warm-n-fuzzy feeling knowing you're controlling something you power with your self with something you made yourself. Something doesn't have to boil an egg or dig a hole in order to be useful.

Fuck off Swampy...

Do you value your time so cheaply as to think that creating wooden handlebars (good luck with the drops) would be a productive use of your time?

You could be saving the planet...

you own a litespeed? They're shit! :)

You should've got a Baum.

List time!

Those who are starting to love Captain Blight.

1. Bobby Dids
   
2. Platini (come on, you know it)
   

I would advise against wooden bike parts in much the same way that I would advise against a wooden car.

knob-thorn / legume / 1.19

arf!

List time!

Those who are starting to love Captain Blight.

1. Bobby Dids
   
2. Platini (come on, you know it)
   

3.blodnik1(maybe)

It sounds like Bobby Dids is gagging for it. Lookin' fer a good time, Thailor? ;)

Is it a productive use of my time? Certainly. I am, in addition to a Merchant Marine deckie, an owner of a small business, developing and marketing specialty tools for the riverine tugboat industry. My fiancee is a welder-in-training, and we are always looking for ways to integrate our skills and expand the business. In the Northern Midwest of the USA, oak and ash are a drug on the market; I can buy quartersawn white oak for about a dollar US per square foot, green, from my cousin the independent sawyer. Ash runs about 20% less. So for me to try this idea out in my fairly well-equipped shop doesn't cost me anything but my time, and I'm out there half the time anyway. If nothing else, it would show me what doesn't work, and helps me hone my steambending, jigmaking, and glueup/lamination skills. And I can always burn my mistakes for heat.

Drop bars? Sure, why not? Actually making them wouldn't be that hard. Setting up the jigs for the bends, that's the tough part. That would create lots of little plywood scraps, I think, while I figured out how to do it.

As far as strength goes, consider this. Remember the Olympics? Remember the parallel and uneven parallel bars? Wood laminate. Consider further that wood fails progressively; carbon explosively. If a stack of laminates starts to break, each ply fails before the one beneath it fails. Plenty of warning, and how much weight do you carry on your hands and wrists around the city anyhow? How often do your elbows and shoulders start to ache under the strain? Hardly at all, that's how often.

Nothing, nothing can take as many load cycles as wood can. Not ally, not steel, certainly not CF. Never crystallizes, never rusts, never corrodes galvanically.

Wood is an excellent material for some engineering applications. To get a better strength-to-weight ratio, one can't do better than Sitka Spruce or Douglas Fir (I believe you lot call it Oregon Pine) with a layer of fibreglass over it until you start getting into the true exotics like CF. So yes, weight is an issue (though I can't help but think wood bars would really help absorb the high-frequency vibration and might even flex a little over the big bumps) but not as much as you'd think. The Mosquito bomber was built of plywood and solid lams; I don't anticipate pulling 6g with a ton and a half load at 400 mph with my handlebars. The Fairey Swordsman race boats were plywood, and they won the Round Britain race several times.

Nothing on a bicycle turns fast or takes heavy loads, by aerospace or maritime or industrial standards. Wood handlebars would actually have a pretty easy life. As far as crashworthiness, what profit it a man if his handlebars hold but break his wrists?

To get a better strength-to-weight ratio, one can't do better than Sitka Spruce or Douglas Fir (I believe you lot call it Oregon Pine) with a layer of fibreglass over it until you start getting into the true exotics like CF. So yes, weight is an issue.

coughs

QED...

how many miles per hour does a cricket ball travel at when it hits a handlebar diameter piece of ash that is a stump-90-100mph perhaps.

If the stump was firmly clamped into the ground, preventing it from falling over, the result of the impact would be very different...

It sounds like Bobby Dids is gagging for it. Lookin' fer a good time, Thailor? ;)

Merchant you say? I would never sully myself with such a roustabout.

Well, perhaps. Any port and all that....

Wooden bike, for sale right now in Slovenia. It would look much better fixed IMO.
Link: http://www.bolha.com/oglas383554161/leseno-cestno-treking-kolo-unikat-

2 Attachments

Sorry, I didn't know how to attach photos. Now I do now.

that is way cool

Want one.

DAMN THAT'S HOT

DAMN THAT'S HOT

Luurvly. Would love it more if it didn't have cf stays.

I wouldn't be seen dead on that sled ^