bennie222

From what I've read, the Pedersen is actually amazingly comfortable... In fact, I think every story I've read on the Pedersen, the rider claims it to be the most comfortable bike they have ever ridden.

Italuminium

I just mailed the guy today, turns out he has an office not far from my house. I'll keep y'all posted.

rhm

Judging only by appearance, I'm thinking the rider's posture on the Pedersen is very much like the rider's posture on a Strida. If so, it is very comfortable, but unusual. It's an extremely upright ride; almost like you're standing up straight. You don't lean and reach forward for the handlebars. But while it's not in the least uncomfortable, it is also not efficient. I found riding the Strida used somewhat different muscles and therefore was tiring on longer distances. 15 miles on the Strida is very tiring indeed!

Then again, the Pedersen clearly isn't quite the same as the Strida, so what do I know.

Machine Age

Here's one from Geir Anders excellent Flickr gallery. A photo by Swedish photographer Axel Lindahl of Norwegian mountain bikers in 1889. Nice bikes!



It's worth reading Geir's full explanation of the photo here

non-fixie 

What a great picture! Love the balancing act the two guys on the left are performing. Are they holding hands? This is one for reenacting at the next club ride, I would think.

rhm

Oh, cool!

Fixed gears, spoon brakes, and foot pegs on the forks. I doubt they took their feet off the pedals coming down from those mountains, though!

noglider 

It is an amazing picture. Notice the very narrow wheels and tires. That's quite a surprise given how rough the roads probably were.

Also impressive is that they wore ties while riding. I guess a certain class of people didn't feel properly dressed without a tie. The tie on the guy on the very left is very short, for practical reasons, I suppose.

I wore a suit and tie on my bike on Tuesday. I rode 22 miles round trip from Maplewood to Montclair. I got a lot of hoots and hollers in Orange.

Italuminium

Hi folks,

I emailed Frans de la Haye with the question if the frame might still be available, or where the tooling went after the construction shut down. His quizzical reply went like this: check the website, there is something on there that is coming soon, that's all I can say. My take on this is that he's working on a carbon frame, since there's a rendering of one on the site. I'll keep you guys posted.
(email, in Dutch)
"Beste dhr. De la Haye,

als mede fietsliefhebber en hagenaar ben ik zeer benieuwd naar het lot van de spanfiets - internet levert niet veel meer resultaat op dan deze site en een paar oude artikelen. Is zo'n frame nog ergens te krijgen? of te laten bouwen? Ik zou namelijk graag eens met een spanfiets de haagse lanen onveilig willen maken!

met vriendelijke groet,

C. *******
"Beste hr *******,

Kijk maar even op mijn website, daar staat iets afgebeeld dat "onderweg" is.
Meer kan ik nu niet zeggen.

Met vriendelijke groet,
Frans de la Haye"

jeebusaurousrex

I've been known to commute from Brooklyn to Midtown in a suit and tie (20miles round trip), but only the Brompton folding bike. It somehow feels right to do that on an English built bike.

No one hoots and hollers at me though.

Italuminium

haha well I ride my bike about twice a year (frat proms) in white tie, with a lady on the rear rack in a dress. thank god for the chainguard, fenders and the coatguards on my trusty old gazelle 3 speed!

noglider 

Do you have a ridiculous mustache?

Velognome 

First off, I apologize for the delay in post any updates...there have been very few!

Machine Age-Thanks for posting the Photo and link. The bike second from the left is a wire frame and not a Pendersen. Appears as wire-frames can be robust as well as light.

It's been a while since I've done any work on the frame; work, family, and the desire to ride has kept me away but tonight I began to tinker a bit. I've laid out string lines on the frame in place of the wires. The string lines give me the angles to make templates for the wire attachment harnesses.

The top and bottom tube wires will be triangulated

A little drilling made Road dropouts work perfectly and still leaves an eyelet for fenders

Next on the agenda is to make templates for the wire hangers, fabricate the hangers, and work out what type of braze-ons will be needed. Once the fork is built, the frame can get cleaned up and off to paint. Sounds simple except I spend more time riding than tinkering. All good things come in time. Thanks for following along and all the good information posted!

noglider 

Very nice. How will you keep the wires from slipping down from the seat-lug-site, down the seat tube?

Velognome 

Scotch Tape? The wires wont wrap the tubes as the strings do, that was just done to get the angle the wire will leave the tube so that I could begin to make some brazed-on attachments. I'm torn between doing someting simple, like a 1 inch wide piece of 531 wrapped around the tube with holes drilled to accept the wire attachment or fabricating something a bit fancy. I'll have more time in May to work on it.

noglider 

You mean after you recover from Holy Week?

Velognome 

Survive Holy Week and Easter then I just sit and stare blankly for a week, then I'll get to work.

thirdgenbird

subscribing. ive been wanting to see this recreated for a while now. so far it looks great!

Italuminium

any thoughts on what group you are going to run? The pics of the dutch concept showed it with a C-Record... so sexy!

Velognome 

I do have a set of C-record pat. 83 derailleurs that have lived their lives on a shelf...so that is one possibility, If those get used, then I'll go with an entire C-Record build.

But...............

The spacing between the rear wheel and seattube has to be worked out. I don't know if I'll be able to get a brake in. If I can't, I thought I'd use a SA drum brake hub with a cassette.

I really want to keep a consistant theme in the components so I quess I'll have to wait to see if I can get a rear caliper brake in before I commit to a group

noglider 

I understand!

The Sturmey Archer brake hub looks great. I got a Shimano one like it but haven't used it yet. The prices was irresistible. I think I paid $25.

Italuminium

and and and? Any progress?

non-fixie 

How's this project coming along? I remembered this thread when I cam across this 1974 bicycle study by Luigi Colani:

Italuminium

Colani and a bike

Mark Kelly 

Since this thread is resurrected now, here are some calculations.

As a simple estimate of tensile stress on the truss members, assume the truss bears all the load which is say 1 kN. The angle of the lower part of the truss appears to be about 20 degrees either side of the BB so the load borne by the truss will be 1kN / 2 *sin 20 which is roughly 1.5 kN. The dynamic load on a bicycle hitting a bump has been shown to be about double the static load so you'd want to have at least 3 kN of tension on the truss, that's 1.5kN per wire if using the double wire.

This means you are going to have to use a higher tensile wire. I'd suggest common high tensile strainer wire as used in vineyard trellising, this will easily take 2 kN of tension and has a guaranteed strength of 8 kN (about 1800 lbs). At a tension of 1.5kN, the wire will resonate at a pitch in Hz given roughly by dividing 140,000 by the length in mm. Example: if the wire between head tube and BB is 600mm the pitch wopuld be 140,000 / 600 = 235Hz, about B below Middle C (assuming Paris Orchestra tuning)

To save weight, I would wrap the wire around the bottom of the head tube, feed it past the bottom bracket, run around bolts inserted into threads tapped into the holes shown in the dropouts then back via the seatcollar to the top of the head tube. Make one side longer than the other, wrap the long one around the head tube and back to the short one, then join them with one of the wire tensioners used in vineyard trellises, such as a Gripple. The medium size will easily hold the tension required and they can be re-tensioned as needed with a simple tool. Undo the two dropout bolts, tension the wire assembly, tighten the bolts down.

Make sure the wire join is somewhere your legs don't reach when pedalling - this wire is quite stiff and it goes through skin with no problems at all.

RaleighSport

Can't wait to see this project done!