The Frontend

The build has been lagging a bit of late, too many things to do!

Time to make the frontend though (yaay) and get it into a rolling chassis at the very least.  Looking at existing designs for wooden balance bikes they tend to use a sheet of ply, typically 24mm thick or so.  I think they look ok but for this i think it would spoil it a bit so am after something a little more realistic.

A trip to a hardware store and I found this.

£3.99 for the broom with a handle thick enough (from the looks of it).  I had to try a few of them though as they seemed to be randomly bendy or stiff.  This was the stiffest handle of the (identical) brooms.

I aim to use this as the fork legs.  I made up some "triple clamps" out of plywood.

They are the right shape but need finishing off etc.

The assembled frontend looks pretty neat even though they need a bit of tlc with the sander and some paint.

They feel stiff enough, I was a bit concerned about the bottoms but once bolted up they will be great!

Next up, how to attach them.  After a bit of deliberation we went with an alluminium tube with a plate welded down the center.  The plan is to channel out the frame and slot this in, glued and bolted to create a strong headstock that looks neat.

The metal headstock is shown here.  Tig welded, its strong and neat.

 The frame with a slot cut out to accept the plate section of the headstock.  To make it slightly neater still a hole was drilled and then the frame cut through the hole just forward of the hole center.  Doing this allowed a semi-sunken tube location rather than have it stuck on the end of a flat cut.

Here is the tube in place.  Even in its unfinished state it looks neat.  The surrounding wood will be sanded so it smoothly surrounds the tube.

Next up will be the engine, I have made the rough blank for the cases and barrel shape already.