Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 September 1895 — MAKING A BICYCLE. [ARTICLE]

MAKING A BICYCLE.

AN INTRICATE AND COSTLY PROCESS Five Hundred Parts in a Wheel. Bicyclo manufacturing depends for its success chiefly upon skilled labor. When you skim along lightly and rapidly on your wheel you are apt to think that it is the strength es the component parts that enables you to do this. The strength of the parts is one element, the putting of them together is a far more important element, and one that requires the greatest skill. The price of a wheel in every instance represents the amount of skilled labor in its construction. The materials themselves cost but little. Probably sls to 120 will represent the cost of material. The rest is labor. So when you buy a high-grade wheel you buy the best that intelligent artisanship can produce. There are but few, or possibly a dozen, high-grade wheels made. The cheaper grades are legion . The various parts of the bicycle must be absolutely perfect and capable of standing exactly their proportion of the whole strain. They must be adjusted with the nicety of a watch in order to get the most out of them. There are 500 parts in a bicycle, counting each spoke separately and the 150 and odd miniature steel balls in the bearings. The rivets of the chain, the links, nuts and bolts number 138 separate pieces. The old saying of a chain being only as strong as its weakest link holds good in the bicycle. The chain is naturally a most important feature, ranking in importance with the tire and the rims. The frame and most of the metal parts of a bicycle of the high grade are made of Swedish steel, on which, of course, Uncle Sam collects a good, generous tariff. There is an English steel which is also good, but the Swedish has the call. Both are made by secret process. This steel is imported in the form of tubing, and is cut into parts of various lengths, which are brazed together to make the frame. The brazing is all-im-portant to the rigidity of the frame. Without rigidity a wheel wiuld never stand cross country riding. The bracing is done under enormous heat, and the testing is repeated again and again. In a bicycle factory, spokes, rims, sprockets, frames, etc., are all tested before they are adjudged to be ready for use. Each of these parts sustains a strain that has been figured out to a nicety. The testing machine can exert a tension or compression of from a few ounces up to 100,000 pounds. When the full power is turned on its great jaws can tear apart a solid bar of steel as easily as a child peels a banana. Each spoke has to stand so many pounds, the frame must do the same, the rim, the chain, the sprockets, hub, the front fork, pedals, cranks, handle bar and even the ball bearings must show that they are absolutely right. The coasting ability of a bicycle depends upon the "true” character of the bearings. To show how finely they are measured it will only be necessary to say that in the largest factories there is a machine which makes all the parts "true” down to one-tenth thousandth of an inch. This is getting bicycling down to a fine point, but the race for precedence among the big makers is fierce, and seemingly out of keeping with the general hilarity of the sport. An interesting thing about a high grade bicycle is what is known in mechanics as the safety factor. Thus in the great high pressure modern guns the safety factor is twenty, or in other words, the gun is made twenty times stronger than the strain to be put upon it. Ordinarily guns have a safety factor of ten; boilers of six, bridges of five and other mechanical products about four. The bicycle of the old style weighed sixty pounds; the high grade machine of to-day weighs eighteen pounds, and the safety factor has been reduced to only 1.25. This extraordinarily low safety factor is in deference to the demand for lightness, which just now is being carried to an extreme. Another year the tendency will be to make fewer light machines. The figure 1.25 above means that if any part of the wheel is imperfect to the extent of one quarter of its calculated strength, the machine may be crippled suddenly and the rider may have a bad (all. It is doubtful if more than one or two manufacturers make the entire wheel. Some of them claim that they do, however. The fact is that the tires, the wood rims, the chains and the saddles, and also the lanterns are in most instances made by specialists. This cannot well be otherwise, because the four first mentioned require special knowledge, being really the most important elements of all good wheels. There are any number of tires, but a greatly less number of rims. The wood rim is one of the great discoveries. The wood is preferably white ash or hickory. Some firms use three or four pieces, glued and pressed together—laminated is the trade word—and then curved. The connecting ends are fastened in various ways. It has been found that wood rims have more resiliency—that is, power of resisting shock—than have steel rims. It took years to find this out. Now there is talk of paper rims. But whether made of steel, wood or paper, no rim over made is able to withstand a collialon if it is struck under speed.