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Making a Wooden Bicycle |
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When
I look back at the completed project, I realize
that building the chain caused the most problems
and also took the most time (nearly 40%). One of
the biggest difficulties was drilling a hole in
the spacers—the hollowed-out, cylindrical pieces
of wood that keep the two plates apart.
I attached a drill bit to our Shopsmith, which was
in the lathe position, and used a chuck to hold
the dowel. The job was difficult because the hole
had to be drilled exactly in the center of the |
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A detailed view of the chain. |
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dowel.
If it was even slightly off-center,
the dowel would explode. However, it was only after I
had successfully drilled some ten spacers that they began
to explode. At first I thought something had loosened
and the piece was no longer centered. I readjusted everything,
but even after doing so, the pieces continued to explode.
I then suspected that the drill bit might be getting dull.
I was correct—as soon as I sharpened it, it drilled
through nicely again.
Drilling the spacers alone took me pretty much an entire
day. It was a labor-intensive job, since each hole had
to be drilled separately and there were close to 100
pieces. It didn't help that I made a small miscalculation
and drilled nearly 1.5 times as many pieces as I needed!
Another challenge was drilling the holes into the blocks
of rock maple that held the dowels in place for the frame.
The difficult part was making sure all the holes were
drilled in exactly the right position at the perfect angle
to receive the dowels. This became even more difficult
because some of the holes had to be drilled with compound
angles. I used our Shopsmith and tilted the table to drill
the angles accurately. To make sure the angles were correct,
I placed a straight metal rod in the chuck and measured
them using a simple school protractor. |
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