Wooden bikes

Over at Street Use, Kevin Kelly surveys the use of handmade wooden bicycles around the world. (Photo from Harry Palangchao's Flickr stream.) Link

Previously on BB:
• Wooden motorcycle Link
• Africa: building bikes from bamboo Link

[#1 posted by JSG , June 2, 2008 9:42 AM]

Flintstone's, meet the Flintstone's....

[#2 posted by SamSam , June 2, 2008 9:53 AM]

I've always thought that a bicycle would be one of those "what would you have the knowhow to invent if you were zapped back into Roman times"-type things.

I'm not sure how comfortable riding on non-rubber tires would be, though...

[#3 posted by Enochrewt , June 2, 2008 10:41 AM]

Rubber tires? Bah, I don't know how comfortable I'd be riding on a non-pedal push bike in bare feel like those guys.

[#4 posted by JSG , June 2, 2008 10:42 AM]

Looks like they are going down hill, I imagine it is a bitch to go uphill.

[#5 posted by a random John , June 2, 2008 10:48 AM]

In college I built a wooden bicycle modeled after Leonardo Da Vinci's drawing of a bicycle for a class project. I rode it around campus for about a week. At the end of the year I locked it to a bike rack. I'm told it lasted a few months before going away.

[#6 posted by Anonymous , June 2, 2008 11:01 AM]

The vehicles pictured here are actually velocipedes. The velocipede was a precursor to the bicycle that had no pedals - you had to push it with your feet on the ground.

[#7 posted by Dillenger69 , June 2, 2008 11:41 AM]

These look more like the pedal-less velocipede pictures I've seen.

[#8 posted by Santa's Knee , June 2, 2008 12:21 PM]

"They see me rollin',
They hatin',
Patrollin',
They tryin to catch me
Ridin' dirty"

[#9 posted by OM , June 2, 2008 1:16 PM]

...And we always laughed at the various stone-age contraptions seen on The Flintstones!

[#10 posted by Frank_in_Virginia , June 2, 2008 6:32 PM]

Yabba-dabba-doo!

[#11 posted by Dean Booth , June 2, 2008 7:04 PM]

Aren't those the same guys who were shooting arrows at a plane in Brazil?

[#12 posted by ROSSINDETROIT , June 2, 2008 7:14 PM]

Oh to heck with propulsion. I don't think they've got steering!

[#13 posted by Amplifier , June 3, 2008 6:27 AM]

You just walk the thing uphill, it's not much more hassle than walking without it and all the downhills are free rides. The joys of the scooter in a hilly
location.

Those friction brakes look a little lacking. I imagine they get ground down quite a bit. Beautifully made machnes though.

[#14 posted by SamSam , June 3, 2008 10:34 AM]

From what I can tell, the friction breaks make contact with the wheel, not the road (the one image with the break on the road could either be different or broken). You push the pedal forward and the stick pushes backwards.

Since its rubbing against the rubber of the tire, it would be the tire that would get ground down first.