Friday, October 08, 2010

How To Make A Bicycle Sail

What You'll Need:

An aluminum beach chair
Plastic yard sign with "H" shaped wire frame
Hacksaw, Duct Tape and Scissors
Broomstick

Step 1) Dismantle beach chair with hacksaw. Take "U" shaped tubing from seat and backrest and slowly bend them to desired shape.

Step 2) Cut yard sign in half, place inside the tubing and attach/fill in the gaps with duct tape.

For standard bikes simply tape the sails to the sides of the wire frame, using duct tape as the hinge. Bungee or tape the wire frame to the rack and seatback. Broomstick/crossbar should be bungeed/taped on the front of the rack just in front of the sail. Attach sail edges to crossbar with bungee cords or duct tape.

For Recumbents the proceedure is the same except the wire frame ends should be bent at right angles and then extended with ballpoint pen tubes or aluminum tent pole pieces to accomodate sail height. The end result should look something like this:


(recumbent style shown - standard bike sails should have a thinner gap)

Attach wire frame to seatback crossbars and backstays with duct tape. Sail crossbar should fit in between sail and seatback.

Obviously there will be differences in beach chairs, racks and bicycles, but the beauty of bikesail technology is that it can be designed, built, modified and repaired using little more than duct tape, tubing and wire. So long as you have panels that you can fold out when there's wind and fold back when there isn't, you're sailing.