Make a Wooden Balance Bike

build a balance bike

  

  In Europe balance/glide bikes are fairly popular.  These bikes allow a child to develop their balance  early on.  I've seen this sort of bike being used by two year old  children.  My Grand daughter in Sweden started out on a balance bike and graduated to a proper two wheeler without training wheels by her third birthday.  Her balance was well enough developed that she didn't need training wheels.  My Grand children in Canada didn't begin on a balance bike and so spent a season with training wheels before moving to two wheel pedal bikes.

wooden balance bike

    These two videos show some ideas for making your own bike.  This would be a wood working project that somebody would love. If you have a large enough play room a balance bike can make a good Christmas present for a little person.

   Bikes are on my mind lately.  I was able to get away for a couple of days bike riding and today my wife rode her bike 100 km. That is pretty good for a member of the Ancaster Senior Achievement Centre or anybody else for that matter.  She took up riding about 15 years ago and has written thousands of miles.  

 

  cheers, ianw

  


 

Shop Work, but not Woodwork

  If you know enough people, and ask around amongst them you will find all sorts of things laying around, looking for a new home. A friend of mine has many leftovers from his days raising two kids, and several of their old toys have found new life with Kieran and Clara. The latest is this Follow Along Bike, seen here all cleaned up and ready to go.

 The bike came to me pretty dirty and covered in surface rust. My shop is mostly a woodworking shop but as a home owner and an Opa I sometimes find myself working with metal, leather or plastic. Whatever the project I really like to have the right tool for the job.  

  If you are building up a small home shop there are a couple of tools that I strongly recommend you add to your general tool box.

FAT MAX 110 inch Adjustable Wrench

 I know that serious mechanics hate adjustable wrenches, but for my purposes I have three wrenches, an 8, a 10 and a 12 inch. These save me from having to imagine whether the nuts and bolts are imperial or metric and since I almost never work on a big mechanical project these three are my go to wrenches. 

  Another group of tools that get lots of use are my wire brushes.  I was able to clean off nearly all of the surface rust on the bike with out driving myself crazy trying to do it by hand. There was some work with polishing compound and 000 steel wool, but not much, thank goodness.

brass wire brush

 I used a brush like this to sneak into the spots around the spokes and so clean up the rims to almost shiny new. 

   The workshop is certainly a favourite place to be but if you've been following along you have seen that our garden gets attention in its season too.

This is a photo from our garden yesterday.  That bee was so stuffed with pollen that it didn't care how close I got with my phone to take its picture.

 Get out and enjoy the nice weather, we sure waited for it for along time.

cheers, ianw