'My little despot balance bike' - Talbot Frameworks

Learn to be ambidextrous when wiping.

These little wooden baba bikes are lucrative!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CHILDREN-KIDS-WOODEN-TRAINING-RUNNING-BALANCE-BIKE-BICYCLE-IN-BLUE-/230703993816?_trksid=p2054897.l4275

I would do anything to eat that wagon wheel in the first pic.

These little wooden baba bikes are lucrative!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CHILDREN-KIDS-WOODEN-TRAINING-RUNNING-BALANCE-BIKE-BICYCLE-IN-BLUE-/230703993816?_trksid=p2054897.l4275

O'rly?

2hrs left £26

The reasons why it is a massive steaming pile of shit, even among wooden bikes, are discussed in the concepts thread

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Grabbed some time at the end of the day, tiny columbus max forks.

Unfortunately, Due to the size of the tyres I will be using, I am going to have to modify the forks to take them. Not the end of the world, I'm going to cut a window out of the inside of the blade, and then braze in a curved piece of tube to follow the tyre profile, a bit like a cut out seat tube.

It should look ok when finished, if it doesn't I can always bin these and use a wider crown, but I would like to make use of the Max blades, as the look pretty cool.

Oh yes, I forget about the Rob English balance bike, Expand-as-you-grow bike, and the Smallest English.

There is clearly a rich tradition of frame builders wishing to make bikes for small people, interesting to see the various ways in which it is done.

ch - if you haven't got the measurements you need, I've got a rothan here you could check out, I'm only five minutes down from the triangle (in fact I think you may have shown me your first frame in there...). Could pop it up on Saturday?

Don't let her live in a fantasy world for too long. I wanted to be a police dog but soon found the crippling truth of reality, I didn't have the correct GCSEs for it.

Retard...

Everyone knows Food Tech is a must.

Porky pie, that would be fantastic! I'll be in on saturday between 9 and 5.30.

Not a worry, I'll pop up some time in the morning.

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/homemade-cncd-balance-bike-much-progress

Thanks porkpie, the front and rear OLD on rothan's are 84mm, annoyingly. (Written for posterity).

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Any news?

....and drives a remote control caterpillar truck

That's the good life man. That's the good life....

More photos to come tomorrow. Soon.

did this get finished on time?

Pictures of the finished bike please!

Christmas was cancelled.

I had actual frames for for real (paying) people to finish, and as such the balance bike didn't get finished. I'm still on it, and have been assured by wifey that it WILL be finished by February, when the next endo-foetus becomes an exo-foetus.

I was also put back by Isla bikes not wanting to sell me any spare parts. I'm on the hunt on fleabay for a bargain Rohan/rothan/whatever, and once I have that, we'll be in business. That is the only thing holding me back. That and the frame. And the paint.

As I have always stated, this bike was going to be a Chinese new year present for my daughter. Unfortunately, it is going to be a late one. I have however made some progress.

Isla-bikes didn't want to play ball, so I sourced some wheels from another source, a very kind person from another small bike making company. As this wasn't officially endorsed, I am not a leisure to tell you which company. They are just as good quality as the isla bikes, and even better, free!

I could not however, find any decent rubber that would fit both wheels. I have a Kenda tyre with what seems to be a decent compound and nice tread, but it wouldn't fit inbetween the max crown. After much searching, there was no choice but to:

Stanley off the nobbles and:

Dynafile the rest.

They now fit, and look pretty swish. The rear end went on nicely, I need to cut off the eyelets from the fork ends and clean up the fillets on the stays and its good to go, and most importantly is nice and straight. This was a lot trickier than you might imagine, as none of my alignment tools, or jig, would work on such a small frame. I ended up using the surface plate a lot, and swearing.

I chucked it together using some spare componentry, and it looks as I had hoped, although I am having trouble finding a shorter, railed saddle, and a decent quality, short stem. Any suggestions gratefully received.

I still have to fit the curved sheet I have cut for the inside of the blades, and braze it in.
Paint, pretty sure it is going to be orange/yellow fade. Componentry was going to be black black black, but the wife had an eppy when I bought child a black coat, shouting something about 'Children can't wear black, it's the colour of death' to which I said 'I'm colour blind, and I think it looks nice.' to which she said 'I don't care, you're colour blind, take it back, and what is this crap in the dishwasher?' to which I replied 'They're the old con rods from the car' to which she replied 'why I they in here, is that why the car doesn't work?' To which I replied 'No, that's because I took the ECU out and can't get it back in.' Preggo's are very unreasonable sometimes. The point is, she wanted to know whether I could make the components silver. I could probably swap them, but think it wouldn't look as mean. As has been covered, I am colour blind, so any advise will be listened to, unless you are my mother or my wife.

The final thing is that I have decided not to fit a brake. The reasoning is twofold. One, I want to paint the rims black/grey to match my carbon ones, and two, she can't use them yet, as her hands are very small (she isn't quite two yet.) And er, three, it is an excuse to build another frame in a year or so.

Going to see what I can get done after work tomorrow, may have this done soon.

Re stem, can you not use an old school bmx stem?

Try using a small BMX saddle, we always put those on kids road bikes.