Hardwood Single Speed

I've lusted after some of the amazing frames that Renovo Bikes produce for some time now. Particularly this one

I don't have the wonga to shell out for one of these bad boys so i thought i'd give it a bash myself. I'm keeping a record of the build on my blog http://ligneusbikes.wordpress.com/hardwood-single-speed/ and here are some pics of how it looks at the moment.
/attachments/50307 /attachments/50308 /attachments/50309 /attachments/50306
The wood is maple centre, wenge middle and bubinga outer layer. I'll post updates as it progresses.

Queue wood jokes..........

4 Attachments

Chapeau! What an amazing project.

Really lovely work, will look amazing when done - though perhaps heavy with the bubinga - how did you select woods for it? Because they are pretty or because they perform in certain ways. I confess though, wenge really upsets me....its the wood equivalent of the snow leopard and will become extinct in our lifetime unless logging stops entirely.

What tools are you using for shaping the frame? Can we have WIP pics?

what an awesome project.

well done mate.

you're barking up the wrong tree using wood for a frame ?
woodn't it be more sensible to use a traditional material
i myself pine for a nice bit of titanium
i think i should branch out and maybe try a few more unusual bikes myself
i've just twigged about laminated wood being very strong my bad
i thought about those calfee frames myself but i was a bit bamboo-zled by the design

etc etc.

No problems many years down the line when someone wants to find out what vintage the retro bike is. Just cut the frame in half and count the rings.

Looks amazing!

Wooden frames - that old chestnut eh? Can I ash you a question - would yew concedar that it's not a locust (low cost) material? Probably good for a beech cruiser, but not fir a racing frame. Is the ride oakay? Mind you, traditional framebuilders shouldn't rest on their laurel; alternative frame materials are increasingly poplar - perhaps mainstream manufacturers should teak a leaf from Renovo's book.

is it laminate or billet wood ?

this is really beautiful

Awesome work.
Not sure I'd like to ride it, but it looks like a great project to get your teeth into.

How much does the frame weigh out of interest?

Also made of wood:
http://www.convertiblecarmagazine.com/wp-content/gallery/morgan-roadster/morgan-roadster-001.jpg?5ff238

The woods were essentially a copy of the woods that Renovo use but i did do plenty of homework first to make sure i was making the right choice. They are essentially the hardest/ stiffest/ densest woods I could easily lay my hands on. Its all hollow on the inside and i'm using a decent Trend router to do all of the shaping work (with plenty of elbow grease thrown in for sanding!)

It's certainly not a cheap way to build a frame. I spent over £200 on the wood alone and planned the order so finely that I have less than a foot of each wood left over at the end!

I've written some of what I've learnt about using wood on this page http://ligneusbikes.wordpress.com/why-wood/ with the geeky bits in here http://ligneusbikes.wordpress.com/why-wood/lets-talk-numbers/

All the construction pics up to now are on my blog and i'll keep adding them as i go. If anyone knows how to make the pics appear smaller when i try to add them to these posts then I can link some here.

^ that's a really interesting blog - make sure you keep it regularly updated.

Just read straight through the blog. Bloody brilliant! Last thing I made out of wood was a toy car in Des. Tec. about 30 years ago. It was rubbish.

There was a wooden bike in the design exhibition at the V&A a couple of months back, it looked beautiful. Looking forward to following this one.

Another day's work over the weekend so I thought I'd post an update.
/attachments/50310 /attachments/50311
Here are a couple of shots just before I stuck the 2 halves of the frame together. No going back now! It's a lot heavier than I was expecting as I got chicken and I've done a lot less lightening around the corners than I was planning. I think i've also generally been cautious when cutting and shaping and at 5mm thick an extra 1mm thickness is 20% extra weight. All up I think we're looking at about 2.8kg for the frame. It looks and feels better than I was expecting so I'm not losing any sleep over it.
There are a few more photos and description on the blog
http://ligneusbikes.wordpress.com/hardwood-single-speed/construction/page-2/

2 Attachments

Building as a singlespeed or geared?

If the former, it's possible to get to a sub-8kg overall weight with decent component choice.

Really amazing work. Do you mind if I ask what you do for a living?

Building as a singlespeed or geared?

Clue is subtly hidden in the subject line.

Building as a singlespeed or geared?

If the former, it's possible to get to a sub-8kg overall weight with decent component choice.

I've got some really light unbranded carbon forks, sugino cranks, stronglight chain ring.... so not looking bad.... untill the DP18's on Quando hubs wheelset which I got dirt cheap off Ebay. They weigh a ton so I really need to find something better considering the effort i've put into the frame.

Really amazing work. Do you mind if I ask what you do for a living?

I'm a structural engineer. Primarily steel and concrete buildings, so not much to do with bikes or wood! I just like tinkering. In fact, I hadn't used a router before when I started this project over Christmas.

Contemplates a concrete bicycle... Ed's interest in the thread becomes clear.

Contemplates a concrete bicycle... Ed's interest in the thread becomes clear.

You're going to think i'm fully mad now. But, in the not too distant future, it's a distinct possibility that you could produce a mould and run off concrete bike frames at a rate of knots using UHPFRC (ultra high performance fibre reinforced concrete). It certainly looks like it has the possibility of outperforming a wood frame if you could cast it thin enuough, although i've only ever seen it used for bridges and roofs and it's still very specialist stuff.

Not at all. When I posted, I was remembering a demonstration of how certain concrete mixes, when purged of almost all moisture, could be quite plastic.

The idea of making frames from some kind of fibre-reinforced moudable material is really cool. Chopped 'forged' carbon fibre is much cheaper than traditional lay-up techniques, for example, although it doesn't have the same performance. It could be cheaper than aluminium - it certainly would require less labour to put a frame together.