Building adhesive bike

[ThomasWhitwell]

Hi guys,


I’m a year 12 (equivalent to Grade 11 in the US) student who has recently developed an interest in bicycle construction. To this end for one of my assessed projects I have decided to see whether it would in fact be possible to build a Ceeway’s steel-lugged bicycle out of industrial adhesives similar to those used in the world of Car and Yacht manufacturing, as well as drawing on similar principles to those used in Raleigh Dynatech carbon fibre bikes in the 90’s . I was planning to use either the adhesive Loctite 638 or Dow Corning® 7091, any advice on which would be the more suitable choice or in fact another adhesive would be greatly appreciated, as well as any advice on the construction itself would also be very helpful. I am planning to use a standard sized tube set and pressed lugs from Peter at Ceeway.


Kind regards,


Thomas Whitwell

[Eric Estlund]

My advice would be not to do it. Commercially available lugs are designed to have a gap and contact area for brazed applications. If you want to glue a bike together you will need to make lugs with an appropriate bond surface. None of the regularly available lugs for brazing will fit this bill.