Back to basics for Back From The Dead this month, with a zero budget restoration on a bike that originally was destined for the scrapheap. But first, as teased last month, we’re talking hammers!
Toolboxwars is an Instagram account dedicated to showcasing the finest toolbox setups in the world. Along with this, they also regularly feature the latest shiny, shiny tools from all the big names and more importantly tools from an amazing array of smaller bespoke tool makers. Folks making tools with incredibly niche uses, designed to fix ever more specific problems. Or tools so beautifully over-engineered and finished that it would almost seem a shame to subject them to the rigours of daily workshop use.
In addition to all this they’ve also built an awesome community of mechanics from all over the world, and they re-share all kinds of tips and tricks that people tag them in. Spreading the knowledge further and helping make better mechanics across the planet!
The combination of seeing beautiful things built by professional makers and and the collective ingenuity of a worldwide community of like minded individuals led to people starting to tag the page with tools they’d built themselves. Hammers were definitely the most popular ‘home-brewed’ tool with one or two popping up every week or so, built to various degrees of professionalism. It got to the point that they’d had so many home-brewed hammers posted that they decided to run a competition at the end of the year to decide the ultimate hammer.
I’d already got in on the home-brewed hammer action a few months earlier (check it out here) however I came into work one Tuesday morning to be greeted with a fresh donation of a BMX shaped object of a bike, straight from the pages of the Argos catalogue or a sports shop owned by Mike Ashley. Does Argos still have catalogues? Is it all online now? What do children spend weeks poring over, working out how many weeks they’d have to save their pocket money to buy the object of their desires? Anyway I’m getting distracted, this BMX shaped thing. The bike itself was thoroughly unexciting however a good wash and a couple of new cables and it was good to go straight out in the £20.00 rack outside giving someone who just needs a cheap bike for their kid an absolute steal of a deal.
The exciting part of this bike for me though was the tiny little pegs attached to the rear wheel axle. Knowing toolboxwars were running their competition soon, my making brain kicked into gear and all I could see in those little pegs were the perfect heads for a couple of little hammers, perfect for little whacks.
The other bonus was that there was two and seeing as I have an apprentice that I’m supposed to be teaching, this presented the perfect opportunity educate young Jack on some of the more creative aspects of bicycle mechanics, the kind of stuff you can’t find in a big blue book or get a recognised qualification in.
If something at Happy Days is beyond repair, before it’s consigned to the recycling bin first it has to be processed through the entirely metaphorical upcycling (I hate that word) bin in my brain to see if its constituent parts hold any future merit. This set of Raceface handlebars had unfortunately fallen victim to an overzealous mechanic whose idea of correct torque is ‘tighten it up until it starts getting easier, then back it off half a turn!’. Even Raceface’s much vaunted ‘anti crush zone’ can only stand up to so much Clydesdale action, and the deep gouges in the clamping surface of the bar rendered it totally unsafe to use on a bike anymore.
Never one to let a scrap bike part go to waste though, especially one as non recyclable as this, the making part of my brain saw the potential for three different handles in this one handlebar. A handle for both of our future hammers, and then a third very pleasingly shaped handle created from the offcut in the centre of the bar. Teamed with only a few spacers and a couple of long bolts it makes a perfect, ergonomically shaped handle for my workbench drawer.
The remaining pieces of the bar were the ideal length to make both Jack and I a sweet handle for each of our hammers.
I won’t go into the build of the hammers too much, it’s detailed in this Instagram post, because I still have lots to talk about this month and look how much I’ve rambled on already about bloody hammers!
When the hammers were finished I posted my entry in the toolboxwars competition and kept my fingers crossed!
After a few days toolboxwars had received so many entries that they decided to split them into categories, one for hammers that are professionally made and one for home-brewed efforts like mine. In the end I was blown away to end up in second place and when you see the hammer that won in my category I’m sure you’ll understand why I feel no shame in coming second to this insanely beautiful creation made from repurposed Kashima stanchions. How amazing that parts that were essentially just trash can be reused in such an awesome way and create something entirely different to their original purpose yet still totally practical and efficient for their new purpose.
Much more fulfilling than almost winning the competition though was Jack’s excitement at making a hammer of his own! He built it entirely by himself on a day when I wasn’t in and was buzzing to show it off when I got back to the shop. It only got to sit on display in his box for a few months though as he got a real fancy little PB Swiss hammer for Christmas which, while masterfully constructed and very nice to use, definitely lacks a bit of the charm of his homemade one, at least in my eyes. It sure does look fancy in the front of his box though.
Anyway that’s more than enough about hammers for any reasonable person to write or read so let’s change track a bit, but sticking to a similar theme of keeping things that most people would maybe throw away in service in some form or another.
Case in point this Raleigh Lizard we received as a donation. I will always have a soft spot for an old Raleigh. My first ‘proper’ mountain bike was a low range, early 90’s Raleigh Jackal. However this old Lizard was very close to extinction! We don’t take stripping down a donated bike lightly at Happy Days, every bike we get was someone’s favourite bike at some point and that they choose to donate them to us demands a certain level of respect to each one. Sometimes if a bike is damaged or worn out to the point that any attempt at repair would be throwing time and money at something that when all the work has been done and parts have been repaired or replaced, wouldn’t even make half of what it cost in parts and labour then we’ll make the decision to strip the bike for recycling. Any parts that are still in serviceable condition are removed and added to our spare parts boxes, to one day, perhaps, save another machine from having to meet the same fate.
Back to the Lizard though, this thing was rough! Steel rims, rusted beyond any redemption, totally seized hub bearings and derailleurs and a chain completely rusted solid. The handlebars were in the same state as the rims and there wasn’t a cable on it that ran smoothly. We discussed it in the shop and came to the decision that it would be best to scrap it rather than fitting a load of replacement parts to a bike that when it was finished probably wouldn’t even sell for the cost of the parts fitted to make it work.
I even started to strip it down, but once I had those awful wheels and bars removed I just couldn’t bring myself to resign this piece (however low end and insignificant) of handbuilt British bike history to the big bike graveyard in the sky. I hatched a plan to breath new life into the dying Lizard, but in the most cost effective way possible. The Lizard would live again rebuilt entirely with parts harvested from other bikes whose unfortunate demise hadn’t managed to stir up as much feeling in me as this had.
Our parts boxes filled with second hand parts, whilst being an absolute pain to search through, always seem to have something that will at least provide a stopgap solution to just about any problem we’re presented with, and once again they didn’t disappoint in this case. I was soon equipped with a fresh set of alloy wheels with a proper freehub body instead of a screw on freewheel, a pre-loved 7 speed cassette and chain that I’d kept together after removing them from their previous bike, ensuring that the gears meshed together correctly and matched in level of wear.
As it’s going to be living its next life as a pub bike/canal cruiser there’s not really any need for it to have a triple ring setup and the fact that every pivot on the front derailleur was seized entirely solid sealed the deal for a 1x conversion. I did however really like the chainset that was fitted so I decided to get a little creative with the Dremel and make the Lizard its own one off single ring chainset with integrated chainguard.
This took way longer and used way more Dremel cutting discs than I would have liked but I was stoked with the result.
The spares boxes provided everything else that was needed and I even used cables that had been donated keeping the cost to the shop bar my time to zero.
So now the Lizard lives again, ready to start its new life with a new rider, and even if it only sells for twenty quid I’m a thousand times happier than I would be stripping it down for its final journey to the furnace.
Read more Back From The Dead here.
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