tool time: make your own patches and save some money

(Below: My Sunday Parkways tool kit.)

Tool Time returns with a little tutorial on high-zoot cheapskating: make your own patches!

The average price for a regular (non-instant or glueless) patch kit is between $4 and $5 at your local bike shop. The price for a replacement patch is between $0.25 and $0.50. A replacement tube of patch cement (which is, basically, a sticker form of rubber cement) is around $3.

I now make my own patch kits, and the only thing I still need to buy from the bike shop is a can of patch glue.

The container is usually an old Altoids or Sucrets tin. They're sturdy and hold a lot of patches and glue, ideal if you're on an extended tour or you just like a Girl Scout level of preparedness.

Any strip of emery cloth will do; you can but a whole roll at a hardware store, or just beg a few inches from your local metal shop or auto garage.

As for patches? Make them yourself, from old inner tubes that have seen the end of the road (for me, that's a tube with twelve or more patches on it. Your Mileage May Vary).

Here's how I do it:

1. Cut up a dead inner tube into 1" x 12" strips.

2. Clean the INSIDE of powder and residue, then gently rough up with sandpaper. (Blow away the rubber "crumbs" afterwards.) The INSIDE of the tube will have no "seams" from the mold on it, making for better adhesion after the patch is buffed up and glue applied.

3. Cut into 1" squares. (buff the inside of the longer pieces before you cut them down this small.)

4. Spread out a clean sheet of tin foil on a smooth, flat surface.

5. Working in a well-ventilated place, apply a very thin coating of rubber cement to each square on the roughed up side. After applying glue, one at a time, lay the squares glue-side down on a flat sheet of tinfoil about 1/2" apart.

6. When the sheet is filled with squares, cover it with wax paper and weight it down with a couple of books to keep flat. Let dry for a couple days in the well-ventilated place. 
7. When dry, remove the wax paper, cut tinfoil into larger squares around each patch (I like to leave 1/4" of tinfoil around the edges of the patch for easier handling), and your patches are ready to use (or store in a cool, dry place). Use as refills for an existing patch kit and follow instructions as you would for a commercially made patch.

(Below: My patch kit with both homemade and factory-made patches, a strip of emery cloth I schnorred (Yiddish, begged) from an auto garage, and replacement tube of glue.)

(NOTE: I've found that I need to apply pressure for longer than the thirty seconds suggested by most patch kit instructions with my homemade patches, sometimes up to a minute. I'm not sure why but it seems to hold better when I do this.

Another thing: Homemade patches are best in a standard 1" size or smaller. If you try to make a large patch it may not hold evenly all around. For really big holes, use a factory-made oblong patch.

I patched this tube yesterday -- someone had forced a 26" tube into a 700c tire and I was swapping it out to patch and keep. When the patch was applied and dried, I deflated it, rolled it up, wrote the size and valve on the tube and stored it.

If you haven't yet signed up for #30daysofbiking -- consider doing it! All you have to do is pledge to ride your bike every day in April -- anywhere, any distance -- and take mental note of anything cool from each ride (even if it's just a cool cloud formation).

If you want to make it more formal, check out Thirty Days Of Biking HERE. You can sign up to make a frmal pledge, help raise money to World Bicycle Relief, and find other riders in your area.
And check out Joyful Riders Worldwide on Facebook, where folks from literally ALL OVER the world report on their joyful bike ride moments, in April and all year round. Occasionally, folks in the same region might meet up and ride together.

Happy riding! Rubber side down, kids!

Cheapskate hack: Porteur rack

I'd been wanting to try a real porteur-styled rack on my bike for a long time.
I liked the idea of a platform that sat close and low to the fork crown, allowing for larger and/or more oddly-shaped loads. But the cost of new, factory-made racks remains prohibitive, averaging over $150. Custom models start at around $200.

Inspired by a similar rack on a bike I'd seen several years ago, I decided to try making my own.

1. I obtained a canti-boss mini-rack cheap on craigslist ($18)
2. I mounted it on my bike. Then, I used hose clamps to install a miniature broiler grill (sans drip pan, about 13" x 9") that I'd found at Goodwill ($4)
3. Finally, I mounted a discarded rail from a very nice factory-made rack that I had scored at the CCC's Salvage Sunday for something like $0.50.
Additional hardware needed to put it all together -- hose clamps, L-braclets and various nuts a bolts -- came to another $6 and change.

Photos below show the basic assembly process.

After I'd installed the platform, I realized that carrying any load more than around 3 or 4 lbs. on a rack mounted on cantilever struts would break the rack. So to increase strength and triangulation, I installed additional full-length struts I'd salvaged from a WALD basket.

Hose clamps hold the platform securely to the mini-rack.



L-brackets (above) hold the guard rail securely. Front pair of bolts also secure the full-length Wald basket struts (bottom end incorporated with fender stay bolt, in fork eyelet.
Total cost of creating and assembling my porteur rack came to around $30 and change.
And it actually looks okay. My bag fits nicely in the rack, and with the addition of a couple of lashing straps it's sturdy enough to manage a short case of beer or a trio of growlers (something to keep in mind for summer barbecue season).
I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.

Riv-style cheapskate alert: Shoe covers!

Rivendell's Splats are one of their nicest offerings: a shoe covering that works on any style of shoe and comes in three different sizes for a good fit. The waxed cotton means they're not completely perfect in a driving Portland rain, but for most applications they're pretty good.
That said, before Rivendell ever made their Splats, people were making their own homemade creations from whatever bags they could find.

Here's my favorite pattern, which requires a sewing machine and some old nylon soft-side briefcases (usually handed out at conferences or found super-cheap at Goodwill).

http://www.cyclelicio.us/2006/12/diy-shoe-covers.html

A photo of the finished item may or may not entice you.
I think the price difference definitely will.
The instructions are pretty clear and useful, and the end result is smart.
When my Splats wear out, I may just make a pair of these.

carradice redux: all done!

Finished repairing and restoring the Carradice Campe Long Flap bag I scored for a song.

All the photos of the entire process can be found HERE.

Here's a couple to whet your appetite. It's on my Bridgestone and we'll see how well it holds up.

 

coffeeneuring challenge 2015:4 -- the official cheapskate ride

I decided that I could spare a little change to actually buy coffee on today's ride, as long as I spent as little as possible. Knowing that the foofy shops would charge me in excess of $7.00 for a cup of shade-grown, fair-trade coffee and some artisan pastry, I opted for the cheapskate route.

I went to Plaid Pantry, Store # 22 (N. Killingsworth and Denver, Overlook neighborhood)

 

 (for non-Oregonians, it's sort of like 7-11 but a little less multi-national corporate.)

The sign in the window does not correlate with the prices. I would avoid the "cappucino" machine and just get coffee. I filled my cup for $1.35 and it was hot and fresh. It wasn't, well, artisinal; but what-the-hell-ever. It was way cheaper than the $3.75 that my local foofy shop would've charged me.

Amazingly, it did not totally suck.

And it went rather well with the generic baked item I also got there (see below).

 From Plaid pantry, I rode around the Overlook neighborhood.

Here I must digress a little. If you're not a fan of TMI (Too Much Information), scroll down a bit.

I have Crohn's disease. It's considered "mild to moderate" which means I can actually leave the house and function most days. I manage it with medication and avoidance of certain foods (every person with Crohn's has a list of foods to avoid, and no two lists are exactly alike.)
While elsewhere in Coffeeneuringland, you will read about folks doing metric centuries and/or other ambitious rides in the beautiful countryside, you won't find much of that here at my blog. The simple fact is that with age and other factors, it has gotten too hard for me to ride distances of much longer than about ten miles on average and twenty miles tops without experiencing some difficulty related to my gut.So I listen to my body and ride within my limits.

(Note: Please DO NOT respond at my blog with suggestions on how to treat my symptoms. I've lived with Crohn's nearly my whole life and have become something of an authority on my body; plus I'm working with a great GI doc who is very helpful. Thanks in advance.)

I did dabble in Randonneuring for a year and a half, and enjoyed five seasons of mountain bike and cyclocross racing before my gut told me it was time to hang it up and just ride my bike for pleasure and transportation. I'm not sad. I can still ride a bike today, just not very far or fast, and I still get a lot of joy from riding.

However, when I need a bathroom I need it yesterday. So my riding around in circles in Overlook was for the sole purpose of finding evidence of the ongoing gentrification that dominates the Portland landscape these days. It took exactly eight minutes of riding from the time I left Plaid Pantry until I found what I needed, six blocks away: a construction site.

Another beautiful factoid: I was blessed from birth with an almost complete absence of olfactory capability. I can't smell much of anything at all, including farts, kitty litter, Camas, WA (mill town with a legendary odor) -- and porta-potties.

Life is good.

From here, I enjoyed a longer ride along Ainsworth Street, tree branches hanging low with brown and red leaves, all the way back to my favorite bench in Peninsula Park, where I stopped to sit, enjoy the last of the summer's roses still in bloom, and read a little Torah in advance of meeting with my study group tomorrow morning.

The late afternoon air felt good on my skin, cool without being chilly; and I enjoyed the sights and sounds of folks walking and biking past. In the distance, a young woman was getting ready for her Quinceañera, or coming-of-age party, slipping the enormous dress on over t-shirt and shorts for formal photos, with two friends helping her and all of them laughing happily.

 

I started to feel a chill after about half an hour, and decided it was time to head home. Along the way, I stopped at a couple of "Free" piles to see if there was anything worth claiming either for my use or for resale; I found a couple of nice vintage thermoses and a busted table knife. The thermoses will eventually get cleaned up and sold; the knife went in the recycling when I got home so some kid wouldn't hurt themselves with it.


All in all, not a bad ride. I probably managed around 7 1/2 miles or so, enjoying a nice loop and beautiful early fall weather.

Being on the lookout for work, I've decided not to worry about the rules quite so much this time around. If I find myself with some free time I'll go for a ride and try to remember to bring a thermos along. If it's not the same two days each week, I won't worry about it. Bicycling also helps my depression and anxiety, two things I've decided I'll no longer hide or be ashamed of. I'm happy to dispel myths and stigma whenever I can. The bicycle is a great way to help with that.Some days it's the only way.

Additional photos at my Flickr page.

Happy riding!

diy cheapskate bikes - it's a thing

In a fit of rebellious pique, I went ahead and created a new Flickr group.

For everyone who loves the aesthetic of bikes like Rivendell, Alex Singer, Pereira and the like, but who could never afford one in a zillion years -- or whose sensibility is offended by the cost of such bikes -- DIY Cheapskate Bikes is for you.

Have you found a bike on the super-cheap and applied component and design choices to it, to make a cheap bike that rides like a dream without burning a hole in your wallet? Share it with the group here:

https://www.flickr.com/groups/diy_cheapskate_bikes/

The guidelines are simple and all spelled out at the group.

I was inspired to create the group by a fellow on FB who found a super-cheap department-store mountain bike and who turned it into a smooth-riding  roadie country bike with some thoughtful -- and affordable -- parts upgrades. He reports the bike rides beautifully, like no other road bike he's ever tried.  That, and my own efforts to build up an affordable light touring bike that fit me without requiring contortions of either body or wallet, led me to wonder what else people have come up with in this vein.

So check it out, and if you have done this sort of thing, follow the guidelines and share some photos of your DIY solutions. Think of it as something bikey to do when the weather turns really, truly foul.

Happy riding.