Treecycle – the amazing wooden bike
While most teenagers are content to kick a footy, 16 year old Marco Facciola was in the woodshop fabricating a bicycle entirely from wood – no metal or rubber parts – just wood, good joinery and a bit of glue. Even the chain is made from hundreds of wooden components and it all works – even down to the free-wheeling ratchet so he wouldn’t have to pedal down hills. As part of his International Baccalaureate studies he had to complete a non-academic project. In this case he recalled stories his grandfather told him of how during the Second World War, rubber was short, so kids made wooden wheels fo rtheir bikes. Marco took this a stage (or two) further and built the entire bike.
It may not be the first (although the one pictured in Leonardo daVinci’s Notebooks appears to have been a forgery) but it is more sophisticated than most others in having a working wooden chain and freewheeling ratchet.
You can read more about this amazing bike in Lea Valley Tools as well as Gizmodo
and in newspapers, like the Montreal Gazette
Cheers
Jerry
