Winter in the workshop

Scraper Bike Wheels

Our next project on January 8th 2011 at the SBW bike club: Scraper bike wheels

SBWC 2nd meeting at Mundy Branch Library

With bikes fresh picked from the Fowler bike giveaway this morning, we got to work. We tuned up, derusted, greased and cleaned them, so that they would look like brand new. The blue one is a trashed girls BMX that we repaired and customized today, removing the decals, adding some vintage white grips, and installing a recycled white banana seat on it. It is a present from the club to Maria, who is 8 years old, and didn't have a bike. Today we had two new members: Angel and Mikese.

Recycle

We live in a consumer society, which produces a lot of extra, unwanted, out of trend consumer goods. When you are in the business of making your own fortune bicyclewise, and follow only your own trends, it is easy to find the materials you need to build a bike for free.
Here is another English cruiser I picked up on the side of the road, and repaired with all 100% trashpicked materials:


I like the roadster effect with a fat cruiser wheel in the back. It was a front wheel actually, and I just replaced the hub with a back hub with a coaster brake. The handlebars are wrapped with leather tapes made from an old leather jacket, and an old wine cork.



Where to find free or cheap bikes to fix up:
- Trash night
- Dumpster behind bicycle shops (better to ask the owner)
- Flee market (near the Carousel Mall: map) nice bikes for $15/$20
- Garage sales
- Bikes giveaways (December 18th, 10:00 am, Fowler High School)

SBWC bike club's first meeting

Syracuse Bicycle Works moved from the digital world to reality. We had our first club meeting yesterday in the community room at Mundy Branch Library. The founding members are: Angel, Brian, John and Edward. Juan Cruz, artist in residence for the Salt District of the Near West Side also came to visit us.
We fixed up minor problems on Brian and Edward's bikes, and started working on building a path racer together.









English, Spanish and French were spoken, but mechanic is our common language. Some of the kids don't have bikes yet. So, as we talked about recycling, their first mission is to look around for a trashed or donated bike that we'll fix up and customize together.