This past spring/summer has been a really interesting time for Ozon. There are more and more people attending to workshops. And bikes made in them are travelling around Europe.
Alex conquered Iceland. Atsuko and CharRie are somewhere in central Europe heading to Southern France. Their plan is to cycle and sell hand brewed coffee! Also, you can support the trip through CharRie’s Café.
Atsuko and CharRie ready to start the European Coffee Bike Tour 2013.
No wonder Stefan and Dan are happy!
It’s another sunny July day at the office. Ozon workshop is located in the Blo-Atelier next to Nöldnerplatz, Berlin. There are about 30 or so artists ranging from bike manufacturers (other than Ozon) to fireartists. In the garden of Ozon there’s also 3 beehives that produce honey for the hungry citizens of Berlin.
So I give to you honey and a bike made in the Blo-Ateliers.
It is done!
Finally!
The frame is ready. The parts are here! Now, just need to do some assembly work and sell my old bike!
The manufacturing process was completely new to me and there’s would be a lot to learn. However, I think I got the hang of it.
So the basics of building a bike are here:
Step #1
Choose the right frame geometry. For me this was simple. As I already have a MTB and a road bike I wanted to have something fast, smooth and simple. So my choise was a fixed gear track bike for city cruising and commuting.
One can successfully use basically any frame geometry. My frame is based on a certain track bike with slight alterations.
Step #2
Choose the frame material carbon-fiber, steel, aluminium or bamboo.
Every material has its own characters. Pros and cons. Titanium and carbon-fiber are superlight and stiff. They are also super expensive and I would imagine that you would have to have special tools for them. Steel, on the other hand, is to some extend easy to work with and it is cheap. I’m not the most experienced welder, but I could imagine I could have pulled it off. The down sides of steel are that it is quite heavy and surprisingy flexible. Aluminium is like steel only lighter and harder to handle.
To my complete surprise bamboo is the easiest material to work with. One would still need to be working accurately and carefully but other than drilling, sawing, glueing, and sanding there are no special skills/tools required. Of course, some techniques are better than others but in the end it is quite simple. Especially when compared to other materials mentioned above.
Step #3
The actual building process.
After planning there’s the actual building process. Sawing the bamboo rods to correct length, preparing the joints, sanding, glueing, sanding more, finishing, painting, clear coating. Simple, right.
Step #4
Accuire the other parts
Purchase new or second hand, rent, get donations; whatever suits for you budjet. But absolutely no stealing!
For the most part, I purchased my parts from CNC Bikes but there’s a abundance of bike parts stores. [I want to comment that CNC has really good deals for Focus forks!] I wanted to get the parts from one store to get it hassle free. (Of course it wasn’t totally without problems, but they were courtesy of the delivery service and typos on my part.)
In this project I could not spend too much money on the parts so I had to compromise. It was a case of money over aesthetics. I can upgrade the parts along the way, when my financial situation gets better. Right now the most important thing is to get the bike on the road.
So here’s the list of the parts:
Syncros FR Factory Steuersatz Edelstahl 1 1/8″
Lenker NC-17 Freeride CC2 Freeride/XC Riser 25,4/640 mm schwarz
Focus Road Straight Vollcarbon Gabel 1 1/8″ UD
Salt BMX Bremshebel rechts einzeln schwarz
Velo O-Zone Race Sattel schwarz
CNC Bahn SB Fix/Free Laufradsatz /CN 424/CNC HP 600 silber
Selcof Aero Sattelstütze 27,2x230mm -Montagespuren-
CNC Touring Vorbau 25.4/115mm silber-poliert
NC-17 CR44-Kunststoff Pro Pedale schwarz
2 x Continental Cross Schlauch 28″ 25/35 SV 42mm unverpackt
2 x Continental Super Sport Plus 28-622 schwarz
Miche Primato Innenlager BSA 107 mm
Felt BMX Griffe schwarz
Zoom Ahead Vorbau 25,4mm/90 mm/7°
Shimano Tiagra BR-4600 Vorderradbremse einzeln
Sram PC-1 Nickel Singlespeed Kette
[And, yes, I’m still missing some parts and I got two vorbaus.]
Step #5 & #6
Assembly. Ride
As the parts are sitting in a cardboard box on my living room floor I have not much to say on these.
However, if your happen to do a workshop at Ozon. Don’t bring the greasy parts upstairs… 😉
-J.
First of all, sorry for the long pause in blogging.
My bike is almost done. Just a little bit of sanding, painting and buying parts! Should be done during next week. Or one after that. I’ll be posting more on this.
DMY is an “International design festival” in Berlin. There’s a wide variety of design artifacts but the thing that surprised me was the abundance of bikes and recycled bike parts. So, here’s a quick run-through of cycling at DMY.
FeraBikes is a polish (Poland, by the way, was this years theme country) bamboo bike manufacturer. They have a really good looking product! They use different and more conservative method of sealing the joints. Like Ozon, Fera seems to pay a lot of time and effort to the details and finishing.
In addition to bamboo bikes FeraBikes also uses traditional materials.
Another bamboo project was Lodiboo by Florian Tolksdorf. Lodiboo is a “long-distance bike for one person and luggage”. Highly interesting part was the use of bend bamboo which apparently was not bend but grown into the shape necessary. Tolksdorf used pipe clamps to secure the joints for easy repairs. Potentially this could be very efficient and ecological mean of transportation. I wonder what would happen if one would combine the technology used in Boosted Boards and Lodiboo!
Althoug still at early stages (?) of development Lodiboo seems like an interesting idea!
3D-printing is here for bikes (well I guess it has been for a while, but this is the first time I saw one). Designed by Stanislaw Juszczak “Let’s sprint” is basically a futuristic looking track bike.
3D-printing is making a big impact in the aerodynamics of bikes. Will, for example, all pro tour teams use a 3D-printed bike in five years?
Electric bikes or e-bikes are often seen as the next big thing of biking industry. Well, why not. For a commuter this may be an answer to sweaty mornings.
Smart were offering test bikes to the DMY-visitors (actually since they are located outside the entrance you don’t even have to buy a ticket to test drive). The smartbike surprised me positively. The people at Smart have really done their work properly and they have taken the ebike consept long ways of the early models. Motor is completely silent, really efficient and helpfull. But I don’t want to seem too excited as there are still many things that needs improving. Specially the weight 26.1 kg (the battery is 3.3 kg). The price tag is also quite hefty: almot 2900€.
The control panel is clear and easy to read. However the controls in handle bar were somewhat flimsy.
In addition to bike there was a lot recycled bike parts used in furniture.
This is the first post regarding to my own bike building project. I’ll be posting more and regularly on this.
I’ve finally finished the first crucial steps on my own project. I’ve chosen the right pieces of bamboo rod and frame geometry, sawed everything to the measure, drilled, and sanded. Finally, I’ve glued everything together. Now, the bike is off of the jig and it’s ready for further working.
The first – and to me at least the highly important one – step is choosing the bamboo rods for the frame. For my top tube, I chose one with a slight bend on it to have a little curve. Also, I wanted to pick one with as solid natural pattern of bamboo as possible. It’ll be darkish brown frame with some lighter spots.
In addition to the curves and patterns another thing is to have the bamboo wide enough. For a safe frame the rod needs to be about 40 mm in diameter. The wider the bamboo is the stiffer the frame will be. Some builders like to use a really wide down tube (80mm and up), but I chose to build everything from the same rod. Another safety issue is that the bamboo must not have any cracks in it. You wouldn’t use rusted steel for your frames either.
The next phases were sawing and sanding. With accurate measures and a good quality japanese saw this was just a quick step. Sanding. That was another deal. Naturally there’s sort of glossy and waxy outer layer in bamboo. To form secure joints that needs to be sanded off. All of it. Sounded like another walk in the park. I’m so greatful to have modern tools, but still it took me quite a while to have a nicely sanded surface.
After preparing the few metal parts (i.e. bottom braket) everything was prepared for the assembly of the bike. Once every part was set up on the jig I could start the glueing process. This is the most time consuming part of the whole building process. Well glueing must be done quite rapidly as there’s only about 20 minutes to work with each patch of epoxy. But it takes hours to dry properly. The positive thing is that after the first layer I could remove the frame from the jig and start to make some real progress.
So in conclusion, my bike is now assembled, off the jig, and ready for the next round of work. Which will mostly include glueing and sanding. There’s still a lot of work to do before finished bike.
-J.
Excluding the materials used for the joints this is everything that it takes to build a bamboo frame.
Curved top tube and drop-outs.
I really like these drop-outs.
The jig
All set to go.
The frame is taking shape.
Every step needs to be filmed.
Another angle to the geometry. The smaller bamboo rods support the frame while applying the first layer of epoxy.
First layer of epoxy.
Stefan making final adjustments using a precision tool.
My own bike is coming along quite slowly as we have made video of every step and measure every material used. I decided to visit a real profi workshop which takes place on weekends.
Basically it’s like this. You pay for the tutorial and materials. If one works fast and efficiently it takes about 4 days from start to finish. For me the workshop was a good way to see future steps for my own bike building project. Most of this weekends builders were on the finishing stages. So, there was a significant amount of sanding going on.
People were really focused on their tasks at hand but the mood was still quite nice. No rushing just working hard. You build your bike for days making the best possible base for nice finishing. In the end it is the finishing that maters. The nicely finished details makes the bike unique and ones own. That’s the difference when working either full weekend or four. One will have so much more time to the details and finishing.
Funny thing happened. I was suppose to bring my own SLR camera to get some photos taken. After about 3 shots I realised that I didn’t have a memory card in the bloody machine. Sorry about the picture quality!
The first picture is from my own bike. The other photos of the bikes of workshop attendants.
I must admit. This post is going to be a bit colorless. Too many numbers too few bikes, but I promise there wont be too many of these.
One of the first things I did for Ozon was a market analysis for bamboo bikes. It is always good to know who is the competition out there and what are they doing. So here’s the highlights.
As a whole, the bicycle market in German alone is huge. There are about 4 million bikes sold which makes about 2 billion €. The 9% increase from 2010 numbers are due to quality awareness and e-bikes. Germany makes about 20% of volume of EU27. In value 60%. The special thing about Germany is that specialist shops makes up to 70% of all sales. It’s the QSA [yeah, I just made that up]: Quality, Service and Advice for Customer. Therefore, it is not a surprise that the avarage price for a bike sold in Germany is 500€. Only in Netherlands the number is higher (750€) while the EU27 avarage is 350€/bike.
So that’s the big picture for bike markets. It’s a different story for bamboo.
There’s about a dozen different bamboo bike manufacturers. Most of them are specialized to high end products. Most of them have both workshops for frame building and full bikes. Selection for frame options is the same as for any more traditional material: road, MTB, tandem. Most popular one seems to be fixie/single speed urban bike. The biggest shortage is that only one or two companies offers a mixte frame for ladies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Step-through_frame).
Almost every manufacturer advertises their product the same way. It’s ecological and smooth ride. There are videos and lists of benefits of the material. One major sales point is the DIY spirit. Bamboo makes bike building very easy for basically every body who can hold a saw and a sander. Some of the companies make ready-to-ship kits.
The cheapest way to build your own bamboo bike is to sign up for a workshop. Prices and quality for workshops vary a lot(you can look them up, I wont go into detail). After a long weekender of hard work you have a fully equiped bicycle. On the other end of the workshop scale are the “professional” or “masterclass” -courses where you’ll spend 8 or more days (that’s at least 64 hours) working. And the difference is visible in the end product.
Full bikes, on the other hand, are without an exeption very high-end bikes. Every manufacturer have mastered their own technique. Which lead to a certain degree of variation.
In the end, bamboo bike market is really small. Niches don’t come much smaller than this. My quess would be that annually there are about 100–300 bamboo bikes/frames sold world wide. For growth there needs to be more bamboo bikes out there on the roads. There’s a good coverage in press, but the bikes need to be shipped out to stores where potential customers can test drive them.
-J.
Some links:
http://www.ozoncyclery.com/
http://www.bambooride.com/
http://www.bamboobikestudio.useful-arts.com/
http://www.calfeedesign.com
http://www.bmeres.com/
http://grassframes.ca/
http://bamboobicycleclub.org/
http://districtbamboobikes.com/
http://threepennybikes.com/Home.html
http://www.bamboosero.com
http://www.bamboobee.com.sg
http://nbda.com/articles/industry-overview-2011-pg34.htm
http://issuu.com/coliped/docs/european_bicycle_market_edition_2012/21
http://www.bike-eu.com/home/news/
http://www.bike-eu.com/Sales-Trends/
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