Thanks! I’m still very new to welding and working with metal.
I do oxy-acetylene welding; arguably one of the toughest ways to do it, but it is a fairly cheap investment. If you look at the other pictures, you can see my setup:
Yup; we will be using these on the tour (I can’t wait!).
Getting rid of the seatbase! That’s an interesting idea and I’ll definitely experiment with it! The disadvantage might be weight; the 1/8" steel is required to resist flexing, and that is pretty heavy. I also opted to keep the original KH handle on; I find that position ideal for cranking up steel hills. However, I may leave that off in one of my next handle designs in favor of something else to grab onto that is more in line with one’s hand.
Nope! It is actual welding – the process of combining two metals into one by melting them. Brazing is using a slightly different metal (ie: brass or silver) as the filler, and lower heat. From what I hear, brazing can be very strong (especially silver soldering – apparently a lot of high end bikes were made with silver soldering). I use mild steel rods; I have two different thicknesses, and I prefer the thinner rods. The tubing steel is from old bikes (they are in some of the pictures on my picasa album). I didn’t do any of the bending – generally, I try to find the bend I want in the steel tubing that I have.
As Mike also noticed, I am getting better, but painting also tends to hide imperfections – take a look at the pictures for some close up of the welds before I painted them. It is something that just takes practice, and it is a new hobby that I’ve been enjoying.
I notice you’re putting this on a Nimbus 36. Have you tried the T7 handle? I’m curious because your handles look to have a number of advantages over the T7 (curved shape, much lighter and more compact, etc).
It doesn’t fit on a Scott Wallis seat base (which I have. I broke my Death V grip handle.)
It requires a rail adapter, which doesn’t work for short people (I’m 5’6", and my girlfriend is 5’2" – we cut about 1.5" off her N36 frame so the seatpost could go lower!). Steve-o also has the same problem I do (at 5’6").
It seems like it uses too much steel; I was hoping I could get away with a lighter handle. I still need to weigh my handles to find out if I succeeded, but I’m pretty sure I use less steel than the T7. A lot of my handle’s weight is in the stiffener plate, which I could probably shrink down a bit.
I’m also hoping to make a version of my handle that eliminates the need for a separate KH handle.
That’s interesting! I tried a little stick welding (aka: arc welding) in my metal shop night class; I found arc welding to be really hard! Of course, I was using an ancient helmet, and you couldn’t see crap out of it. The auto-dimming helmets are super nice, and would make it easier, but alas, I don’t have one.
I also tried TIG and saw MIG in the class. MIG seemed easier in the sense that you don’t have to hold a stick/rod. TIG was sweet and lets you do aluminum. If I had cash to burn, I’d probably get a TIG welder as it seems the most versatile.
I prefer not to use an Auto-Tint helmet, I tried one a little while ago and it didn’t react fast enough (I was told it was a higher end one, I also set it to quick tinting reaction)
MIG in my experience isn’t very forgiving, pretty picky on your angles and speed.
Stick seemed to adapt to my welding skill I guess, my first practice stick bead was perfect, then I kept getting the rod stuck, once I figured out the starts and stops, I was doing welds twice as good as my MIG, nearly flawless in quality, but a little wavy, hard to go in a straight line when you’re holding a stick a foot and a half away from what you’re welding.
I also hated stick at first, I thought it was stupid, I didn’t really see why anyone would use stick over MIG, then I really liked it for it’s pure simplicity.
MIG I find to be stubborn, if the machine isn’t set perfectly, anyones welds will look like ass. I find I read the chart on the inside of the machine a lot to setup certain MIG machines, where others I can do it by sound.
I really want to try TIG, looks fun yet challenging.
From what I gather, oxy/acetylene is like TIG with an actual torch instead of the electrode and a foot pedal. I also hated brazing, probably because I’ve only done it twice, never had the chance to get any good at it.
Oops! Sorry about that! for some reason my brain tossed in the -o instead of yo. steve-o, while a unicyclist, isn’t exactly someone i’d like to get mixed up with you :). If you peel off a few characters from your Coker, you could become steve-ok
I really like the curved shape of your handle; the corners on the T7 hurt when they hit me (occasionally) but they also dig into my hands when I’m riding slightly tucked (as I prefer to do). I think a curved handlebar would give a better range of comfortable hand positions.
Ah.
There was a long period when I had the T7 and longish cranks on my coker and had trouble getting the T7 to sit low enough. When dropped right down with the front tilted up it was just OK at the time.
You might want to consider using shorter cranks if you ever need some more slack height. If you find you like a shorter length, you gain a bit of extra adjustability (or space for a rail adaptor) - and short cranks can be nice in their own right.
This really depends on your preferred riding though, because if you don’t like short cranks it would be silly to have to use them just to get a handlebar And in any case, you seem to be doing just fine at making awesome bars yourself
I’d be surprised if you’d managed to pack more steel into that than a T7 has The T7 is great, but it is a fairly bulky thing. Your handles strike me as somewhat like a GB4 touring handle (in that they’re compact and close to the seat) but seemingly without the disadvantage of needing a CF base - is that right? Do you think it’d work with a plastic base?
Another cool handle could be a Reeder-style muni handle that mounted between the saddle and the seatpost - thus again avoiding the need to have a CF base just to support the handle.
I’ll be intrigued to see what you build in to eliminate the need for the KH handle. I use the seat handle on my T7-ed uni for some stuff, but it’s awkward getting my fingers into the gap. I guess if the handlebar incorporated a “hopping grip” of some kind that might be better.
I’m with you there! Please post whatever you make next, it’s really cool to see.
Yes they’re strangely similar. I learnt gas when i was 12 and did some TIG only last year but the concept of a torch for heat and a seperate spelter crosses oer well. Did find it tricky to contorl the power, getting it high to start the arc and then backing off for the duration of the run. Brazing is way easier than welding, it’s what they taught at my school for that reason, and you can get the most beautiful run, a good braze needs almost no dressing to be entirely invisible. Also easier to get apart if you cock it up.
Good welds are sexy even after painting or anodizing without doing any grinding.
Ventana creates TIG welds they market as “electric-sex welds” on their aluminum bike frames. They are very sexy welds. Oh so very very sexy welds. If Ventana made a unicycle frame I’d tickle the welds before every ride. Imagine a KH Pro frame series welded by Ventana. Sweet dreams tonight.
Well – I still have the same problem. The rail adapter won’t work with a Wallis seat base. For Louise, she is just too short at 5’2". She can’t use a rail adapter. She’s used 125’s and 152’s. Both of us switch back and forth a lot, depending on the riding. We use 152’s for really steep climbs (think Mt Diablo, Danville, CA), and offroad (think stuff we previously did on muni’s 2-3 years ago). Personally, I prefer to use 125’s whenever I can.
I haven’t seen the GB4 touring handle; I’ll have to dig up some pics of it. The red handle I made was designed to work with the plastic bases; the bottom bracket extends all the way to the front seatpost bolts, and bolts into them. Without this, I am positive that the forces applied by such a long handle would quickly snap the plastic seat base – heck, I’ve broken two of them already with a regular plastic handle! (one on my muni, and one on my trials).
One of the reasons I want to eliminate the plastic handle is due to the crappy way it works for steep hills. For really steep hills, I prefer to grab the plastic handle with both hands and crank up the hill. Having your hands out too far in front doesn’t work as well, since the force isn’t directly in line with the crank arms.
I’ve settled on 114mm cranks for now, but 125mm were more comfortable. With 150mm cranks my legs are just long enough - but my main problem on the 36" is the total lack of free seatpost space to mount lights, reflectors, cyclometer, etc on - not a problem I had with my 29er. That’s actually one of the major advantages of having a handlebar for me.
Have you seen the “short person’s Coker frame”? Roger at UDC UK designed it, and it’s on the UDC UK site. It’s like a standard coker frame but telescopes at the legs of the frame rather than at the seatpost. The seat attaches to a tiny seatpost stub at the top of the frame, which presumably reduces the need for a significant length of seat tube. You could also set the crown really close to the tyre. I don’t know how stiff it is, maybe it wouldn’t be suitable for your or your girlfriend but it might be worth knowing about.
Right, that’s good news then; even though I’m happy with the T7 it’s nice to see development in this area. It’s frustrated me in the past that I’d need to buy a CF base, drill it, etc just to fit a handle - one of the things that made me delay upgrading until the T7 was available.
The GB handle is described here. It has a nifty little mount (optional) for a cyclometer so that it’s visible between the horns of the handlebar. The shape is similar to yours but it’s angled, not curved. Maybe a little smaller as well… Anyhow, it requires mounting directly to the base so you either needed a CF base or a Miyata base so that you could add the GB stiffener plate.
The Reedr Handle is a George Barnes handle too. pdc modified his to get support from the brake lever mount on the KH rail adaptor, so that he could use it with a plastic base. So the GB handle could probably use this setup as well, but it wasn’t really ideal (and, obviously, required a rail adaptor in the first place).
Both of these handles seem to have been quite popular amongst serious riders but they’re now difficult to get hold of; I don’t know if George Barnes is making uni bits anymore.
Both hands, wow… Well I only use one hand on my plastic handle, but even so I find it flexes when I do hops on my 29er and 36er. Presumably that’s because of all the extra weight and hence larger forces involved. It’s also annoying to have an extra handle in the way when I’ve got a nice shiny metal handlebar there; it’d be good to eliminate the plastic bar entirely.
I sometimes find I can use the handlebar horns to apply power, but it’s not as effective for either cranking hard or hopping as something closer to the centreline of the uni.
That’s good to know; I’ve been thinking about getting an N36 frame for my Radial but I’ve been a bit doubtful whether I’d be able to run a range of crank lengths.
That’s interesting; I can see why that would make a difference. Maybe an ideal handle would combine the two somehow. Did you see mouse’s T7 with “drops”? He’s just used an mtb stem there; it seems to me that if you took off the front handle and flipped the stem back (so that the “drops” became the new seat handle) it would be like adding your T handle to a more conventional handlebar. I think it’d work well for my purposes, except I’m not sure I have room for a stem with all the other stuff I’ve stuck on there…
And in any case, you seem to be doing just fine at making awesome bars yourself 