We’re looking for participants in building a self-propelled bicycle merry-go-round.
I saw one at the San Francisco Maker Faire earlier this year and it was so obviously a heap of fun, I thought it would be great to build one.
I immediately thought of two things:
It’s a Hills Hoist! Americans don’t seem to be familiar with the Australian icon that is the rotary clothes hoist. In fact the whole idea of exhibiting one’s washing in the backyard seems to appal some US citizens, who pass neighbourhood laws banning it! But we love our Hills Hoists and many of us can recall swinging on them as kids (and busting them as a result).
Most rotary clothes lines are too small for adaptation like this and we may have to extend it slightly.
We should use all the energy to power something. We could attach a generator to the central axle and drive something electrical that would make more lights/music/interesting effects the faster we went around. Or we could drive something mechanical such as a pump, a fountain, a wind powered organ, you name it.
It’s not so different from a horse whim or a capstan which was used to power all sorts of things before steam came along: mining equipment, mills, ferries etc.
I’ve written to the people at Cyclecide in California to ask them if it’s alright to pinch the idea. Cyclecide http://www.cyclecide.com/ are a bunch of ‘alter-bike mechanics and cycle crazed clowns’ who do brilliant things with bikes. Rudy, one of the big sprockets there, said go for it. So we should.
There a few considerations:
It will need to be reasonably safe and robust (we know from doing stuff for exhibitions that kids can destroy astonishing things) It will have to be reinforced as Rudy suggested there are big forces on the thing once it gets up speed with 5 or 6 adults . He also suggested getting an old car wheel as a bearing to go on the ground.
It should be dismantlable so that other people could use it at a later date.
We don’t really have any money so we are going to need to do a bit of scavenging. Luckily old bikes are everywhere and there’s heaps of old Hills Hoists about.
Judging from the line up of kids at Maker Faire it could be very popular.
If you’re interested in participating and live in the Adelaide region, please let me know.
Mark Thomson
mark@ibys.org
0419 865 821
https://www.facebook.com/backyardcarousel
Update late 2014: We struck problems with it here in SA due to very stringent (and ultimately costly) regulations around show ground rides, based on some tragic incidents at the Royal Show.
HOWEVER – this did end up getting built in Melbourne by my friends Liam Gerner and Autonomous Black under the name Backyard Carousel from some crap drawings I did. Good on you fellas! It still gets taken out and given a thrashing now and then.