General Cycling Discussion - What can I do with old cranks?

I have an old pair of cranks and chainrings from a 1980 peugeot U08, and I was thinking of doing something with them other than putting them in the aluminum recycle bin.

Ive seen candleholders made from a rear hub, but nothing cool and useful so far. What do you do with worn out or obsolete old parts?

Hmmm, lets see-

1. Ebay

2. Craigslist

3. Give 'em to a friend in need.

4. See if your LBS would swap you something small for them.

5. Put up an Ad at your LBS.

6. Parts bin

7. Clean 'em real good... I mean REAL good and put some nice wooden handles where the pedals normally go and have a seriously cool pizza cutter... 22-33T chainrings work best for this.

8. Have them dipped in bronze and make a nice conversation piece for your shop or living room.

9. Throw them in the garbage

Parts bin.

Weapon.

Big clock arms. Use a section of old frame (BB down tube, seat tube, stays) for the background. Use one crank for the minute hand and an old brake lever for the hour hand. WOW, I have my next art project. :o

I'd make a wind chime using other old parts hanging from the cranks/chainrings. Funky bike art.

Ear rings for someone with big ears?

My wife plays with my old crank.

I made a front lamp mounting from an old crank and sector of chainring.
I guess you could make a bottle opener.

My wife simply ignores me.

I was going to make a Shimano crank arm(drive side with spider) into a clock, a clear face over the spider and leave the rest hanging down to look like a pendulum.

Dirty Ape. Do you weld? Possibly you could make bookends out of them by welding on a base terry cycles sells interesting things made from old Bike parts.

You can use an old crankarm to seat spoke heads while building a wheel. See www.sheldonbrown.org.

a hat. make a hat out of 'em.

pull 'em, yank 'em, etc. :D

I do weld, thanks for the Ideas. I really like the idea about using crank arms to seat spokes when building a wheel, and the bottle opener seems ike a good idea.

Weapon.

:roflmao:

Boomerang

Imbed (or embed) them in trekkie820's roommate's skull.

You can use your chainrings as very large ninja stars.

Or coasters!

Or melt them down and turn them into pie tins!

Weapon.
Sharpen them up and plant them in someone's skull. That'll drive the CSI people nuts wondering what caused that kind of trauma / bizzare wound pattern

What can you do with old cranks? Banish them to the Politics Religion forum.

Rev.Chuck is on the right track with the clock idea. I've been planing on building a working clock using bike gears and chains for a few years now. Most likely a weight driven clock. Just think of all those gears and chains! And pieces of frame tubes for the chimes. The chimes would play Daisy,daisy... I've got it all worked out on paper. I just need the time and space to build it, and then someplace to display it when its done...