@freiheit you're lucky, then. I can't test ride most of the commercially available bikes I'm interested in, in the country I'm in. If I got into materials it'd be flat out impossible "something like the M5 high racer, but with an aluminium frame" would mean a lot of work from someone to build one, then compare to the existing options.

Once someones specifies materials it gets ugly, because it's rare to find two bikes that are almost the same except for the material. Even when it's Reynolds 753 vs 731, let alone carbon vs magnesium

It's also hard to distinguish quibbling pedantry from actually answering the question :)

I guess the thing for me is... I have a selection of good bike shops in my city and I only care about getting a bike that works well for me.

@freiheit yeah, that is what I suspect the underlying question actually is.

The flip side is that for me, the question is often "can I get this, but in steel", because I care about being able to repair it in the middle of nowhere.

But if you want to repair it in the middle of nowhere, you might want bar-end shifters instead of brifters, and di2 is right out...

;)

@Móż Paper is out ...? Sounds like a challenge ... until it rains :-)

@andy256 hence the dude with the perspex bike, for example. He made a laser cut plywood design then looked at it and went... "what other sheet materials can I use" and it was all downhill from there. I suspect cardboard might work as well. I am not, I think, going to ask

I worked on the Sydney Uni cardboard house assembly project. That was just standard corrugated cardboard, then varnish to make it slightly water-resistant.

Which was much less fun that the Chch cardboard cathedral, IMO

abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/txt/s1343212.htm Col, sadly, died a couple of years ago. He was quite an entertaining guy and pushed some boundaries in useful ways. Making remote area housing for the users, rather than at them, for example.

@Móż ...which is actually made of concrete and steel, poured inside dozens of cardboard tubes.

Even the walls are made of shipping containers

And, its not really that big inside

@Criggie yeah, you'll note I said "fun" not "useful" or "practical"... although as a symbol the cathedral did work fairly well (I tought, at least from a long way away)

Col's "cardboard tent" thing was a bit like the pure-wood bicycle - it was an entertaining stretch for the material, and he did design quite a nice house with it, but it wasn't at all practical. It was a good learning exercise for the students, though.

No pianos on the first floor, then ?

@Criggie no, but interestingly 6 or 8 people wandering round up there seemed to be fine. Were fine, whatever.

It wasn't public access AFAIK when the thing was open to the public, but when we were assembling it at one stage we had more people than should have been up there, up there.

I suspect you could get really tick wall cardboard tubes like they use in rolls of newsprint and make a bike out of them. Actual paper might be harder, maybe lightly rolled sheets of newspaper and strapping tape holding it into the lugs... but once you go composite, why not just epoxy the whole thing into a solid lump.

the straight pipes would be fine. Its the joints that will be hardest

and dropouts etc

Which reminds me: bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/23632/…

I think a thin metal frame wrapped in layers of paper would be better

@Criggie as long as there's a chocolate core I'm all in favour.

chocolate bike frame?

There's an annual bike event here called CHOCBAR

its for cargo bikes

which can carry chocolate quite well.

Now that is a long handled teaspoon.

you calling me a stirrer ?

I got sick of losing teaspoons in my cup, so I bought some proper ones.

Nah - its a thimble-espresso cup with a normal teaspoon.

@Criggie observing that you are, calling you one, whatever.

nothing there to give scale.

I should have left my finger in the shot, you think?

But then I'd just get accused of having presidential hands.

-grin-

@Criggie can you do the dis/advantages thing on the gold bike? Please?

ok - it'll be a summary of the other thread.

Glass bike

bike frames that use tension in wire as a structural element, like a barrel saw

@Criggie slingshot, the other one :)

the last one uses a wire stay with spring for suspension

There's also a motorised tadpole with that name for the less able among us.

You've all heard of pycrete ships from WW2 ?

ice boats with refrigerators

I wonder if there's an Ice bike

cos a water bike would be stupid.

@Móż howzat ?

@Criggie youtube.com/watch?v=5iA5mbNOats

Also, if you just post the link on a line by itself then the chat backend will thumbnail it

It would be Colin Furze wouldn't it.

That chap defines "Bonkers"

right - night!

that single line thing is a bit weird

would be nice if you could have a mention or whathaveyou

So... Stack Exchange is discontinuing the community blogs, like ours. The way they're doing that, the current content will stay up (minus ability to comment, add new stuff, etc). If somebody is interested in continuing the bicycles.se blog on some other platform, let one of us mods know and we can see about getting a data dump.

@nhinkle @PeteH ^^^

@Criggie cool!