​JulesStuff
Penny Farthing or High Wheeler
This project took me a year from idea to finish. it wasn't planed to be such a long project but a lot went into it, and I had other things to do as well. I love to show this off at steam punk events. It isn't an authentic victorian bike, but its very close. The seat is just above the height of the wheel which is 42inches. I could not get any higher as at 5'10" my feet would not touch the pedals.
This is where it began. The front wheel is really two wheels cut and opened up, then welded together on a round wooden former (see below). This took a long time to do as I had to use a bench vice and shaped formers to open it up very carefully.
Next came the hub or axle. This was drawn up and calculated to the millimeter (or thousanth of an inch in old money). As you can see it had to fit the bearings and then the pedals.
The 70 spokes are made from welding rods. The dye sat in my own hand made tool which was adapted from a nut (I have no name for this).
I used an on line calculater to work out the lenth of the spokes, which had to be very very acurate.
The tire is basically the tubing for petrol pump hose. The tension keeping the tire on comes from a wire threaded through the tube. I had to build a tensioning tool to do this then used two cable ties to hold it together. After cutting the excess cable off, the tube pulls together tightly and with a little glue and some sugru it is hard to tell where the join is. Normally the tire should be solid but this gives me a little more bounce. So far so good anyway.
Sorry I didn't take any pictures of the front forks being made. I took an old bike fork and extended it using some tubing taken from the remains of another old bike frame, then welded some ends to fit the bearing covers.
At the back wheel is the front forks from my son's old bike.
The curved tube was drawn first onto paper and I took this to a friendly black smith who bent it on his tube bender
The old head stock is welded on using a thick sheet of steel. (Shown here is the first one that bent and was shortly replaced with a much thicker and stronger one).
An authentic bike would have the frame going into the head stock and attached with a bolt. That would have been much to complicated and anyway I was given an old bike as a doner. Plus, modern bearings are great.
This is the athentic way to add a bit of comfort to your riding. I even used a period style saddle, all be it white and probebly from the 70s.
It's a good idea to put it all together just to make sure everything fits before spraying. The back wheel has a 1970s bmx tire (I said it isn't authentic). Although it seems they did have pnuematic tires in the 1800s, they reverted back for the penny farthings.
Masking all the moving parts first, I used three coats of smooth Black Hammerite spray.
The strieght handle bars are from a mountian bike with my wooden turned handle grips.
I couldn't resist adding my own touch with my logo on the front.
The brake was added later. I used an authentic design
Here I am on my second attempt test run. The first one ended very shortly with a bent part that I quickly sorted out for a thicker, stronger piece of steel.
