Tribute to the Columbia #48 a 1897 Tandem Bicycle

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Like always I have way too many projects going on. This one is in danger of being operational soon so I thought I'd make a post about it. I've been poking away at this for a year now. Off and on:eek:) It's a modern version of a old tandem bicycle. It will have Disc brakes, a 8 speed Sturmey Archer rear hub, and be welded up out of modern Chrome molly Steel tube.

Here is a page out of the catalog.

model47and48columbiatan.jpg


I started with a front hub. I want this sucker to stop if needed so we built a hub that will hold 2 disc brakes. Here is how they started.

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A little CNC time and the disc brake bolt holes and the spoke holes were drilled. I also profiled the ends a little.

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Back onto my lathe and I found this under all that aluminum.

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I took the hub over to my buddy and he polished it up for me. He's a pretty great guy:eek:)

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I think it turned out pretty good.

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The eccentric bottom brackets that we bought had a ton of clearance in them. We thought it was too much and I decided to machine some new pieces.

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A little cutting and a lot of filing and these appeared\o/

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Here it is with the eccentric installed.

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The outside will clamp on the eccentric to keep the chains tight. We made some little clamp pieces. Here they are tacked into place. Later I will braze them on. After I braze them on I'll slit the bottom bracket and they will become clamps.

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The drop outs on this will be the modern style. I turned these on my lathe and then milled a slot in each one. These are for the rear wheel.

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I made some extras for my buddy.

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The frame went went together pretty fast. Another buddy of mine has a frame table and did most of the frame for me.

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We made the chain stays out of 3/4" round tube. It is squished and dimpled so the tire clears it. The dropouts were tacked on. With the rear wheel we got everything close.

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My buddy has a jig to check to see if the dropouts were still lined up after welding. we were off a little.

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A little muscle.

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And we're good to go\o/

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Then we made the seat stays and welded them on.

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An action shot just because:eek:)

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I think this bike looks neat because it has a set of upper chain stays. We got them welded on. They were some fork tubes that were lying around.

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They turned out pretty nice:eek:) Here is the back wheel all laced up with the 8 speed and new shoes\o/

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Getting pretty excited now. She will be longer than the Queen Marry I think.

Columbia024_zps4da84bbd.jpg


Here is where I am now. I'm picking it up on Friday and it will be mine to finish. I still need to get seats and pedals. I have to figure out the steering. This will steer from both seats so I need to make a linkage. I'll be trying to get this done pretty quickly.

Thanks for watching.

~Wes~
 
Wow! Simply outstanding work!
I think your signature line sums it up perfectly: “Those that say it can't be done should get out of the way of those doing it”
Well done, cant wait to see it riding around!

Luke.
 
NICE :shock: very professional fabrication work and nice job on the machined hubs, will be watching this :)
i had a little vision : the girl says "lets go left" the guy says "lets go right" they end up going ..well ...not so straight :lol:
 

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