Tour De Force

Inspired by the world’s biggest bike race, Rick Uttley recreates a classic cycle in wood

I am a time-served joiner and carpenter. I was born and still live in Halifax, West Yorkshire, having spent much of my working life on joinery projects in most parts of the country and overseas, including Algeria, France, Ireland, Isle of Man and the Falkland Islands. The Falkland Islands is where I did my first carving – a block plane carved from rosewood in 1988. The rosewood was given to me by a Falklands resident who worked with us on the site at Port Stanley. He told me it was from the cargo of a ship called Bertha which was shipwrecked off the coast of the Falklands in 1892.

After finishing the block plane, I didn’t carve another thing until I retired in 2014, when I started making one-off, bespoke wooden items including jackets, bags, shoes, boots, cartridge belts
and clocks.

The bicycle

I was looking for a bigger challenge, and after watching the Tour de France come to Yorkshire, and seeing all the different types of bikes on display in shop windows, people’s gardens, hanging on buildings, old bikes sprayed yellow, some made from metal, plastic, plywood and even cardboard, it gave me the inspiration to build a handmade wooden bike. The bike I made is a copy of my old road bike, which has a Reynolds 531 frame, Campagnolo Veloce gears, San Marco Rolls saddle, Cinelli handlebars and stem, and Mavic CXP-30 rims.

The bike is made from Brazilian mahogany, walnut, oak, beech, maple and wenge and took 12 months to complete. I worked on it most days, and if not, definitely thought about how I was going to make the next part. It presented numerous technical problems that tested my woodworking skills.

The wheels

I started with the rims, which are made from Brazilian mahogany 9mm strips bonded together. Once dried they were cut to shape, cleaned up and bevelled, using a ring fence on the spindle moulder, drilled and countersunk to take the spokes. The tyres are made from walnut strips, 3 x 18mm, boiled then bent to a smaller circumference than the rims once dried. They were then glued and laminated together and, once the glue had dried, dressed off, sanded up and rounded on all four corners with a hand-held router.

The hubs are made from beech and mahogany and, after several breakages, I had to use steel repair washes to enable the wheels to be spoked up. The cassette is made from 3mm-thick pieces of oak and walnut with 3mm spacers. The cassette was stripped down to individual cogs and degreased, then, with a hot-melt glue gun, attached to the oak and walnut. They were then trimmed to shape using a router with a 5mm straight cutter with a bearing on the bottom which ran around the outside of the cogs.

The chain is beech. I cut blocks 30 x 30mm square, drilled two holes in the top of each and used the split link as a guide for the router with a straight router cutter and a bearing on top to form the shape of the link. I cut the links with a Nobex saw, and turned the pins for the chain. I used to do batches of 50 links at a time – I made approximately 400 to allow for breakages and there were plenty of them. When the chain was finished I only had a few spare links left.

The brakes

For the front and back brakes callipers, one is made from maple, the other from beech and the brake pads from wenge. The springs on the back of the brakes are made from the small dowels out of a used dif fuser. Once boiled they can easily be bent round a jig to form the springs.

The brake levers are made from walnut and mahogany. All the cables on the bike are made from 4mm walnut, dowel boiled and bent to shape. Once dried they were ready for assembling to the bike. All the cables on the bike are made from 4mm walnut, dowel boiled and bent to shape. Once dried they were ready for assembling to the bike.

The final components

The pump is made from mahogany and wenge, which is spring loaded to hold the pump in position. The crank set is made from oak. I stripped down the crank set from my road bike and used it as a template, as I did with most of the components on the bike. When I couldn’t use templates I used to measure and copy them. The seat post is made from walnut and the saddle from Brazilian mahogany, as is the bike frame.

The rear derailleur is made from walnut and Brazilian mahogany and was one of
the trickiest parts of the bike build as it all had to be working mechanically. I didn’t know what gear I was going to select the chain in and I needed to thread the chain around the two cogs and the rear cassette.

The frame and assembly

Once all the components of the frame were finished, I made a timber frame template to help me assemble the frame. I purchased a bike workstand at the beginning of my build which helped greatly with the assembly of the bike as I could hold the frame vertical, horizontal and even upside down. Once the bike was completely together I made a couple of stands out of oak, mahogany and wenge to support the bike at the front and back wheel, which I had engraved with the Tour de Yorkshire logo.

It was displayed for the race in the window of a flower shop called A Little Bit of Eden, in Sowerby Bridge, Halifax – originally Cyril Sands bike shop which I used to visit for spares and repairs in my youth. It was also displayed in the window at Blazing Saddles, a bike shop in Hebden Bridge, Halifax. I currently have it on display in my dining room and I am now thinking about selling it. My contact details, if you’re interested, are woodwithatwist@gmail.com. 

Further reading