Artists caricature Mr. Bean:
A caricature artist has inserted Mr Bean’s face into great paintings and it’s... - Classic FM
A caricature artist has inserted Mr Bean’s face into great paintings and it’s... - Classic FM
Although I'm not climbing as many ladders as I might be at this time of year, I've noticed this has presented an opportunity to help out in other ways. I find myself doing shopping, errands and other things for those in our strata who need that kind of assistance more than ever.
I used to be the guy known for his 'snow rides' for those unable to get around when the white stuff covered the ground but now I am able to do 'green rides'. It's not near as fun as scaring the dickens out of my elderly neighbours while driving them around in the snow but just as satisfying nonetheless.
For the most part, they don't come with me but when they do I put them in the back row and tell them they are sitting on an ejection seat and to be careful not to cough or sneeze, as nowadays these things are activated automatically.
I've been busy but I've noticed I have few return clients.
Seriously though, I hope others are able to take advantage of this uh... 'opportunity' and feel like you have done your part and maybe then some when you go to bed at night.
I used to be the guy known for his 'snow rides' for those unable to get around when the white stuff covered the ground but now I am able to do 'green rides'. It's not near as fun as scaring the dickens out of my elderly neighbours while driving them around in the snow but just as satisfying nonetheless.
For the most part, they don't come with me but when they do I put them in the back row and tell them they are sitting on an ejection seat and to be careful not to cough or sneeze, as nowadays these things are activated automatically.
I've been busy but I've noticed I have few return clients.
Seriously though, I hope others are able to take advantage of this uh... 'opportunity' and feel like you have done your part and maybe then some when you go to bed at night.
I somehow wasn't following this thread when it swung through bicycles last month, but here's a snap of one of mine. Contrary to what some folks think when they see it, that's not a paint job, what you see is what it is.
Renovo was based in Portland, and built bike frames out of intricately CNC machined hardwoods. They used lots of different woods, including many fancy tropical varieties. This one was from a run of promotional frames they built for the Glenmorangie distillery. The lateral faces of the frame and the rear stays are made from Missouri white oak recycled from used Glenmorangie whisky barrels. The center portions of the main triangle are sapele. It's a more quiet look than the frames that used wenge, purpleheart and such. The main frame members are hollow, the stays are solid. The down tube is curved and tapered to suggest the shape of a barrel stave.
I ride this bike often and it rides well. I'm glad I put in a snipe on that ebay auction, it went for far less than I thought it would. Couldn't have justified it at list price!
Renovo went belly-up a while back, but the name and intellectual property were purchased from bankruptcy and a guy in Washington state is reviving the brand. I hope he can make a go of it.
Renovo was based in Portland, and built bike frames out of intricately CNC machined hardwoods. They used lots of different woods, including many fancy tropical varieties. This one was from a run of promotional frames they built for the Glenmorangie distillery. The lateral faces of the frame and the rear stays are made from Missouri white oak recycled from used Glenmorangie whisky barrels. The center portions of the main triangle are sapele. It's a more quiet look than the frames that used wenge, purpleheart and such. The main frame members are hollow, the stays are solid. The down tube is curved and tapered to suggest the shape of a barrel stave.
I ride this bike often and it rides well. I'm glad I put in a snipe on that ebay auction, it went for far less than I thought it would. Couldn't have justified it at list price!
Renovo went belly-up a while back, but the name and intellectual property were purchased from bankruptcy and a guy in Washington state is reviving the brand. I hope he can make a go of it.
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Probably, and it's visually beautiful. But wooden vehicle frames have a long and terrible safety record, first in horse-drawn wagons, then in automobiles, then in early aircraft. Wooden frames turn to splinters in a crash, and instead of protecting the vehicle occupants, injure them.
Here's another bike that looks better (especially with a cute model on it) than it is (or was, as it seems to have disappeared after 2016): First Look: Bird of Prey | Road Bike News, Reviews, and Photos
-Gnobuddy
I think it looks good, and of course looks are much of the appeal of the bike. It does ride smoothly, though much of the credit for that goes to using wide, low-pressure tubeless tires (38 mm @ 33 - 37 PSI, vs. most road bikes on 25 mm tires @ 90 - 120 PSI). The fork is built for cyclocross, so it's actually pretty beefy and stiff.
As to safety, I don't foresee any issues. I'm more concerned about sudden catastrophic failure of that carbon fiber fork than I am about the frame, and I don't use CF seatposts or handlebars. An impact that could crack a CF frame (perhaps invisibly) would likely only dent the wood and cause no structural harm.
Renovo built wooden mountain bike frames and used them hard in testing. They managed to crack a chainstay on the prototype after a hard jump landing, finished the ride, epoxied the crack together and continued to ride the bike.
One of the designer's inspirations was the DeHavilland Mosquito, reasoning that if a WW2 bomber could be made of wood, it should be possible to make a bike frame from wood too. Horse-drawn wagons and WW1 biplanes might not be the best comparisons to a wooden structure designed with modern engineering analysis and built with modern adhesives. I think more of a Pygmy wooden sea kayak, or a Riva Aquarama.
There are people who trust wooden ladders over aluminium ones, for similar reasons; they claim Al can fatigue and fail suddenly, while wood normally splinters and cracks and gives some advance warning.
However: properly used, ladders don't experience shock forces. Hit a wooden ladder hard with a big sledge-hammer, and the wood fails instantly and catastrophically. That's also what happened to early wooden-framed automobiles in minor impacts - the frame falls apart, leaving the unfortunate occupants completely unprotected.
...was an absolute marvel. It flew through air, where there were no rocks or potholes or curbs to hit. Maxium G-forces on an airframe are not much more than 1G except in highly aerobatic aircraft. Hitting a pothole or curb can easily put tens of G's of impact force into parts of a vehicle, routinely denting aluminum wheel rims, sometimes breaking steel suspension arms and ball-joints. And an actual collision can put much worse impacts into the frame.
Keep in mind too, maximum safety of the crew was not the highest priority in the desperate circumstances during which the Mosquito was designed. From what I've read, the original Mosquito concept didn't even have provision for armour-plate to protect the occupants. Wood was chosen for the airframe not because it was the best material, but because it was the only available material due to war-time shortages.
There are no rocks, potholes, or curbs to hit in the water. Typical impact forces on land are easily one to two orders of magnitude higher than will be experienced by a boat in water. A phone with a hard plastic case dropped from your hand onto a concrete floor can experience 100 G, which is why those soft silicone rubber cases (which reduce peak acceleration forces by deforming) can sometimes save your phone from impact damage.
The comparisons with horse-drawn wagons and early wood-framed automobiles are not out of line - like a wooden bicycle, in a hard impact, cars and wagons have to cope with peak impacts involving one to two orders of magnitude more G force than a typical aeroplane or boat.
I'm not picking on your bicycle - just looking at the wooden frame as an engineering problem. And what I see concerns me.
-Gnobuddy
The waiter asked, "Woud you like the bill?" and I replied, "I'm not that kind of duck ..."