I'm blue, da ba dee da

All dressed up, and nowhere to go. Nowhere, that is, except Fiberglass City! It's like Paradise City, but stickier.


Swirly scene transition! *doodle de doo doodle de doo doodle de doo*
Oh look, Alton came to help us wrap the joints! Such a kind soul.
What? A betrayal! Nooo
And lo, the fiberglass had been completed. And it was good. And blue.
Purty!

Cuttin' the glass fibers

"Careful not to cut the wrong one, Jim!"
"What, why? *snip*"
"No! You fool! When cut in the wrong order fiberglass ex-" *KABOOM*

So we decided that plain ol' fiberglass strips just isn't enough overkill for our project. Thus came the idea for interlocking joint-specific shapes. Here we are, painstakingly measuring out specific numbers of each shape from the templates we've designed.

Mmm, glass fiber. I'll be itching this stuff out of my work clothes for weeks to come!

Hey, that's quite the sheet we ended up with! Now it's time to cut, hooray! Oh, that's only half of them? :(

The neatly arranged piles are our finished product, the unruly bunch in the corner are our scraps. The papers discarded vaguely into said bunch are the templates, once we had no more need for them.

Time to wrap some joints!

a staged design

here all most of designs i drew up before ending on a final bike design.
this trike would been a lot harder to build and a lot heavier. not mention the fact two of the three rider are out side the wheel base, which, would cause the trike to be unstable at high speeds. thanks Colin for pointing that out.




this is the same bike but with circus tent set up in the middle. in which a puppet show could take place.







another trike it is a lighter design using suspension for the storage racks.
still rider out side of the wheel base.







in this one i was trying to get the two rear rider back in to the wheel base








yup same old











here i am trying out the delta design of a trike
instead of the tadpole








and now four wheels?









ok..... i have given up on three riders









the fist design. months before all the others









and the final one. designed with the chosen material in mind bamboo.

Now it is almost a completed in the physical plain

FFFFFFFFFFFFF

..iberglass.

What?

So, we've (probably unnecessarily) covered all of the poles on the frame with fiberglass. Not many of the other bamboo bike builders out there are doing this but hey, it needs to ferry us across the country, right?

Isaac hard at work, unwrapping his present; is it.. it is!! It's Fiberglass, YAAY

So not only did we wrap it all with FG, we then wrapped over top of it with upside-down electrical tape to squeeze out any pesky air bubbles. It seems to have produced a reasonably pleasing aesthetic.

Shiny.. Anyway, now instead of ridiculously strong poles tacked together with crappy hot glue, we have ridiculously strong poles tacked together with crappy hot glue. Yes sir, we sure do know how to prioritize, I tell you what.

It's all starting to come together.. moo hoo ha haa

Pretty much finished the tacking togetherness. Aligning the back wheel has been a wee bit of a chore, but we muddled through.

Do you like the cantilevered support rod for the pedal housing? We know we do.

It's gaining width! now we could attach the two front wheels if we wanted to.. we just don't want to right this moment... (yeah we don't actually have the front wheels yet, they're still being shipped)

Ahh, Isaac, when will you turn from your foolish ways of sniffing fiberglass resin for a cheap high? Err, expensive high.. those bottles were $60.

Fiberglass test mark 001.00 completed!

...You might want to sit down.

So, here we are, inching ever-so-slightly closer toward an object vaguely resembling a bike. We're almost ready to do the fiberglass!

Hot glue gun is our friend. Tacking this thing together with bubble gum just would not do.

Thanks go to local apartment-dweller Rob for showing up with a bunch of zip ties for us, conveniently about fifteen minutes before we needed them. A little too convenient, if you ask me.

So.. some things have changed? REALLY?

Meanwhile, a few weeks later..

So we've been steadily working on the trike, it now has a name and a frame and is made of a fancy new material, perhaps you've heard of it? Bamboo, they calls it. Many plans have come and gone, as indicated by the massive e-stack of models we'll be uploading shortly.

So come hither, and read about the past, present and future exploits of the Bamboozler! We've measured, notched and tacked the main frame together with hot glue and have purchased the supplies for fiberglass reinforcement. We've also discovered that our apartment has enough of a temperature difference from the workshop to make the bamboo crack after it's been tacked.

On the menu for the next couple days; we have a delicious special entree of harvested metal bike parts, (you didn't think it was going to ALL be bamboo, did you?) an excellent stew of fiberglass resin and catalyst served on tightly wrapped fiberglass cloth, and a beautifully structured bike seat enchilada.

One of the many thoughts at the forefronts of our thinkin' parts is the consideration of using a combination assisting electric motor/regenerative braking system. We realize this is a massive feature creep, but it just makes so much sense. Especially if we were to purchase a solar panel or two to supplement the regen, but therein lies another problem. The cost may be somewhat prohibitive. However, we are looking into many options, seemingly best among them being brutally ripping the hub out of a broken-down electric scooter and hitting it with a hammer lots and lots. The alternative would of course be to use a drum brake with the gloriously amazing rear drive wheel, which we've additionally gotten a ridiculous deal on. Mighty Riders, we love you!