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A Designer Bike Made from Wood
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- The lack of a vertical post between the seat and the crankshaft means that the Waldmeister's wooden frame can flex to absorb shocks.
- (© Christian Rokosch)
The University of Pforzheim's Transportation Design department's graduates are the people who imagine the shape of cars to come - the sort of futuristic designs that debut at auto shows years before they take over the roads.
But what if the future of transportation doesn't have four wheels and en engine?
Instead of turning his attention to cars like so many of his peers from Pforzheim, graduate Marcus Wallmeyer applied his design skills to his own favorite two-wheel mode of transportation. Wallmeyer, 32, builds high-end bikes using wood for the frame. The result is impressive: a slick-looking feast for the eyes that's enough to make design aficionados' hearts beat faster.
Before creating his award-winning "Waldmeister" bike, the life-long mountain bike fan began honing his design skills at university by developing high-performance bike lamps to help finance his studies. While studying entertainment design in Los Angeles on a scholarship, he even created special red and blue lights for the LA police that included a powerful siren.
Inspiration through IKEA?
Wallmeyer was inspired to design the "Waldmeister" bikes by cantilever furniture --the popular designs seen in many modern chairs, that use overhanging structures without bracing.
This is reflected in the bike's frame, which is designed without a seat tube, giving it some vertical flexibility and enabling it to filter out vibrations more effectively than on a traditional diamond-shaped frame.
To make the wooden bike frame, 98 thin layers of beech wood are pressed into form and covered with four layers of varnish. Aside from being visually stunning, this also makes the bike environmentally friendly, as beech is a domestically grown renewable material. The glue holding together the layers of wood in the frame is water-based and ecologically harmless, and the production process is more energy efficient than the automatic production used for standard bikes.
The bike itself is made with minimalist design in mind. There is only one gear, no shock absorbers and no bike lamps or reflectors. Wallmeyer wanted a pure design that kept the wooden frame as the focal point. The 11-kilogram frame is supplemented by the usual necessary bike components such as the wheels, handle bars and a saddle, which are made from high-spec titanium and carbon. It's small wonder then that the bikes run from between 11,000 -- 15,000 euros ($14,200 - 19,500).
Around 60 man hours are put into the construction of one bike. Currently, he could produce 25 bikes per year at the most, says Wallmeyer, who has sold 10 bikes thus far, and uses a wood specialist near Munich for the construction of the frames. The frames are delivered to Gundelfingen, where bikes are assembled according to the specifications of the customers.
Is wood really strong enough?
While it may seem strange to use wood as a material to build a bike frame, Wallmeyer in fact believes that its flexible properties are underestimated. In contrast to metals where fatigue and break can occur after a comparatively short time, high-quality plywood can withstand the vibrations arising in a bike frame without losing stability. And the frame can easily be refurbished by a wood expert. "Basically, the problem is that people do not believe that it will last," he says. Yet he used a prototype of the bike for six years without problems.
The durability of his bikes is, however, a question that will not be of too much concern to the majority of his customers. According to Wallmeyer, most of them are not really cyclists, but design lovers anyway.
Source: Young Germany
