#Woodys poly cut fingers trial

The layers were each composed of four pieces, one for each of the tubes that comprise the bike’s front triangle: top tube, down tube, seat tube, and head tube. The front triangle of the bike was made from 7 layers, each 0.3″ thick.

Some of this is that there seems to be more people actually doing this, and some seems to be that I’ve searched in more places, one of the most prominent being Instagram interestingly enough. I’ve found more and more sources in the year since I built this bike. Some information existed at the time: a video or two from Renovo showing their manufacturing process, a fantastic guide by Nick Cole at Ligneus Bikes, a post by epoxy works, and a few others. I did a lot of research into how one goes about the making of a wood bike. I’d never built a bike before, and I’d certainly never built anything out of wood this complex.

#Woodys poly cut fingers trial

The construction of the first wood bike was trial by fire, taking place over the course of 5 weeks during the second half of the quarter in which I took Single Track. The redish orange is Paduak, the white maple, and the stripey zebrawood. The planed woods I used to make the main triangle. I don’t know a whole lot about welding, and while I’d like to learn, the challenge of making a wood bike was too intriguing to me to pass up.

The main deliverable for the lab portion of this class was a functional prototype (read: rideable bike) based on Handling characteristics we decided individually. During my winter quarter at Cal Poly in 2018 I took a bicycle design class call Single Track Vehicle Design (henceforth referred to as ‘Single Track’). This post is about the first wood bike I made, and for that matter, the first bike I ever made.