This week I designed and built a quick bike rack to store my young children’s custom bikes from two 2×6’s. You can check out the two bikes in the DIY Bike Build.
This project uses the table saw, miter saw and impact drill. A very basic design, it uses a number of my favorite “great-to-have” materials, such as 2 1/2” exterior wood screws and 2x pine for quick construction.
Continue reading “This Week in the Shop: The 2×6 #Bike Rack”
Every few years, I find an excuse to engage in one of my favorite old-school projects, rebuilding and repainting a kids bicycle.
Let’s paint some flames.
I mean, dragons. We will paint dragons.
This project is approachable for middle-school and high-schoolers. High-interest elementary school kids can definitely accomplish parts of this project with help from an involved adult. This project does involve dangerous fumes, so great ventilation and respiratory masks are a must. Be prepared to give over your work space for a three days to a week and a half to this project.
This project teaches basic competencies in graphics software, cutter plotter use, mechanic’s tool usage – wrenches, ratchets, etc., and paint prep and execution. These skills are directly transferable to manufacturing, automotive and graphic arts fields (for my fellow CTE/Shop teachers out there). Bike mechanics earn about $12 per hour nationally, offering a student an entry point into the skilled trades.
In school, I began with donations from student families. I then taught my students how to use tools and the basics of gears, force, torque and work. We fix’m up and get the bikes running. At the end of the experiment, we would give the bikes away to kids who need them. Workshop Houston began with a similar model and Cycle of Houston has given away 100,000 bikes in just over ten years of existence. Bikes can and do change a child’s world by offering opportunities to develop balance, judgement and freedom in the wider community.
Update: I’ve since found my write up from 2011. This is my second or third version of this project.
Continue reading “Home #Makerspace: #DIY Custom Kid’s Bike with #Maker Tools”
We recently got half a roof put on the bike barn. The students fixed up fifteen bikes and laid out a roof in three long hours. Excellent work ethic, if not visuals. I’ll be getting out and fixing up the barn throughout the spring semester. I hope to add a waterproof holding bin & tool rack to it in the next service day. Continue reading Putting a Roof on the Bike Barn
The 16″ childrens’ bike project has cleared my outbox. I’m busy in reflection mode with the students, examining all the different parts of our work for ways to improve the product, teaching and quality next time. I thought the bike itself came out well:
If you’ve followed the blog over the past two months, then you’ve seen some of the progress. If you haven’t, or are interested in doing this yourself, the I’ll recap the project after the jump.
Continue reading “This Week in the Shop: Refurbish A Children’s Bike”
It’s that time of week again – I’ve had some personal living arrangements wetness and have been living out of a dufflebag and a smile. Reminds me of college, but at that time I didn’t have two in diapers… At … Continue reading This Week In the Classroom: Quadracycle In Progress & DIY Wood Bongo Drums
It’s been quite a week here on the range. My sawing post made Make Magazine’s Blog. Traffic soared. My father finally subscribed to my blog, which is intensely gratifying. He taught me most of what I’m passing along. At work, we had some great stuff happen. The kids worked very hard and made great strides working on the Rose Garden and Apprentice Bike projects, despite early closings, late openings and cold, cold weather. Word came from above that we would delay digging out the entire bed – we’ve gotten roughly halfway and for the moment, we will focus on planting … Continue reading This Week In the Classroom: The Garden & Experiments in Wood
Good week for struggles and not-quite-there-yets in the woodshop this week. Three projects left the floor complete. The first, chalkboard that has been wind-blown, vandalized and otherwise destroyed three times. We’ll see if it sticks this time. The other two projects I failed to take a picture of. On Mon or Tues, I’ll put up a picture of those two projects. I spent a majority of my time this week networking with the community-at-large and negotiating class objectives with other teachers. I have a few interesting classes being put together: Two Art Car themed classes. One focuses on building … Continue reading This Week In the Classroom: Curriculum Plan for Spring of 2011
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