Some very retro bike pics

[cludence]

I was lucky to score a tour of a storage area of a museum today and saw some great old bikes, not to mention some great old cars and things I had never seen before.

Anyway, I got some pics of the bikes. Here are pics of my two favourites. First one is a Carbine (love the wood rims!) and second one is an Edworthy Sprung frame.

Obviously I had a ball!

[X-wing]

Wow, those are great pics!

I was still amazed by the wooden rims (I had never heard of them before) when I saw the neat little curls in the middle of the second frame! Try doing that with carbon!

[cludence]

If you google 'edworthy bike' you should come up with some info on the story behind the family who made the sprung frames. Only 8 were ever made. Many people in aged 60 and above remember their shops as they had a sprung framed bike on display in each store. They had a store at Lidcombe, Leichardt and the other one, I cant remember offhand.

Karen.

[531db]

Nice!

Also for those vintage/retro types out there, check out Gary F's vintage track bikes posted on the fixed gear/singlespeed forum.

[GaryF]

I am totally amazed. two great bikes but the sprung frame is something else! Thankyou so much for posting those photos.

I'm also interested in the 'interesting' background - i'll have to visit.

[LuckyPierre]

The Canberra Bicycle Museum has a couple of bikes with wooden rims, but I don't think that I've seen anything quite like the sprung frame there!
Thanks for the photo's!

[triode12]

I wonder how wood rims were manufactured.

I shouldn't think they would be aren't cut from one solid piece of wood?

And if they were made from separate peices of wood, how strong would they be? I would think the areas of weakness would be at the joins.

[MichaelB]

From a quick google

In 1934 Silas built and patented a special bicycle frame which had two round loops, one in the cross bar and one in the down tube. He called his design, the 'Spring Frame', the idea being that the loops took the shock out of the rough dirt roads which the rider had to endure during long road races such as the Goulburn to Sydney. The problem was that the resulting vibration could lead to stress failure of the frame. Only eight of the spring frame bicycles were built and they never became popular. The idea was not considered successful and the patent lapsed. Nevertheless, it was rare and interesting attempt at improving bicycle design at the height of its popularity in the 1930s.


Apart from the Edworthy spring frame bicycle in the Museum's collection (formerly in the collection of Jack Hepher) only one other Edworthy bicycle is known to survive in a museum, a 1934 racing bicycle, in the collection of the Illawarra Motoring Museum at Kembla Grange.

[mikesbytes]

I've only seen wooden rims in a museum.

It would be a great to take them down to Dunc Grey

[cludence]

I had someone give me some wooden rims a few weeks ago and I almost had a heart attack as I know how uncommon they are and these have never been used. They ended up being trotting rims. (Same company made trotting and bike rims) I am sending them over to Harold Park for their museum as they dont have any there.

Here's a few more pics. It appears they now do organised tours of this storage place. I am going to speak to the person I know there to see if a group of bike nuts can all go at the same time. -Will let you know.

Many of the bikes there belonged to Jack Hepher which were auctioned several years ago. I have met him and he is a lovely man so it was nice to see his bikes. Especially his carbine.

And yes, there was lots of other goodies there as well. Some great old cars. (You can see some in the background). Dont ask me what they were called as I have no idea. I only know them as chitty chitty bang bang type cars which I saw in old movies as a kid.

[X-wing]

Hey, is that last one a prototype recumbant? nyuk nyuk...

[mikesbytes]

Hey, is that last one a prototype recumbant? nyuk nyuk...

Good pickup, that explains the aero position.

[GaryF]

That really was a great visit to the museum! Thanks for sharing your photos.

[cyclepathy]

Those wooden rims would go great with this bamboo bike!

[mikesbytes]

Those wooden rims would go great with this bamboo bike!

You can give that bike a caining

Notice that the tyres are flat

[cyclepathy]

You can give that bike a caining

Notice that the tyres are flat

It's from a Japanese bike museum. This one'll cane it any day however:

http://www.calfeedesign.com/bamboo.htm

[europa]

This one'll cane it any day however:

No it won't, it doesn't have pedals

The bamboo framed bikes are supposed to be pretty good, not just a gimmick.

Richard

[cyclepathy]

The bamboo framed bikes are supposed to be pretty good, not just a gimmick.
Richard

Yeah seen quite a few bamboo bikes on the net all with pretty positive review by the riders themselves, a lot of them are pretty ugly imho, unlike the calfee one.