cudak888 

Not long ago, I posted some pictures of a room that I renovated to display some of the favorites. At the time, I was still short any wall displays to clear some room on the ground.

Not anymore.






These brackets took way too long to dream up, given how simple they look. Somewhere in the pinball of my brain, I came up with the idea of cradling the rims on two separate brackets, but from the top of the rim, not the bottom. This ensured that whatever the final product would be, it would be complicated enough that nobody could have possibly mass produced it. I was also dead set on finding something with a clean mid-century flair to it, oodles of chrome and capable of supporting any bike on display without contacting a painted area of the frame. Any one of these requirements are a tall order on their own, and "mid-century" usually brings up wood. That's fine for furniture, but I'm approaching this room as it was a styling exercise handed down from GM's Bill Mitchell himself.

I got lucky finding the above 16" brackets on eBay for a floating bathroom vanity. The seller claimed they were chrome, but they turned out to be stainless. No arguments there - no chrome to chip when drilling out the holes. Granted, the stainless has a slight yellow tint in comparison to the chrome plated bits, but I can't ask for everything. They're also dirty and as-delivered in these pictures; they cleaned up a lot better.

The cradles are half of a fork mount clamp for a motorcycle turn signal off Amazon.



....an adhesive rubber strip makes it look as if it belongs there.



Also note the nut cap cover, also a motorcycle part off Amazon, though definitely from the cheap-o bin unlike the clamps. It looks good though.

Unfortunately, the stainless brackets are a bit on the thin side, and so tend to deform under the pressure from the wedge anchors - no welded-in anti-crush sleeves here; rather a disappointment. I drilled the bottom holes larger - only on the front - allowing me to install a split sleeve as a pseudo shear bushing. In reality, the nut and washer on the bottom (not installed here) is pushing against the sleeve bushing, which is pushing against the backside of the rectangular stainless tube. It's more than "secure enough" though, so I'm pleased.



I would have done the bushing trick on the top as well, had I been able to get both the drill and drill bit jammed square in the triangle - but I couldn't, so didn't.

Here's the victim, Leo the Bottecchia (speaking of which, I somehow lucked into identifying it while posting this - the brand and badge hails from the Leo Chlorodont team). The bike is slightly twitchy up there, but I account a bit of that for the lack of a BB or crankset to help weight it down. The Nexus 7 and Dynohub do more than enough to ensure it stays there though, and I dare say I could help snug up the fit with 3D printed rubber inserts instead of the generic rubber pads.





Now I just need to luck into another pair of those brackets for the other wall. Back to finding a needle in a haystack...



-Kurt

AdventureManCO 

Yes!

pastorbobnlnh 

Well done Kurt!!! A perfect addition to your bike cave.

iab

Excellent work!

I don't want to hijack, is it OK to show other diy wall brackets?

cudak888 

Quick note: For anyone curious why I fitted these to the wall with wedge anchors: There's no drywall in these 1940's-era Florida rooms. It's straight to CMU wall.

Ah, but true celebration would require hanging a Huffy on these.

Thanks, Bob! Also a relief too - I need to finish a number of small things on most of the bikes below for a show at the end of February, and the Racor freestanding bike rack I had in the room took far too much space. Now I can get to them for a change.

Please do, @iab - I found very few inspiration threads as I was coming up with this design and would love for this to become one.

-Kurt

AdventureManCO 

Ah, not true! I think one of those little 1960s Moult...err, nevermind - same thing!

iab

So you all have probably seen this pic of my basement.

Frejus by iabisdb, on Flickr

This is the mount. 2-inch diameter aluminum tubing, 1/8-inch wall. 2-inch diameter dowel. Scrap 8/4 cherry, but anything will do.




I don't have a lathe, so I manually "turned down" 3 inches of the dowel to the ID of the of the aluminum pipe, pounded it into the the pipe, a tight fit. Made a fixture to clamp 2 pipes with inserted dowel and used a 1 1/4-inch hole saw to make the cutouts. Since they were clamped together, the hole saw drilled "1" hole. It was easy. I used wood because the paint rests on wood, no real worries about marring the paint.





On the back I had my local welder add a piece of 1-inch x 1/8-inch flat stock to the pipe. I think he charged me $30 to do 12 of them. This allows the addition of the keyhole slot and a means to add the decorative cherry. It also may increase the load area onto the wall, but it may not and probably doesn't need to. Then, with a single screw driven into a stud, drop it on using the keyhole slot.

cudak888 

I thought of mounting the Moulton on the other wall. The center of gravity of a small wheel bike means it'll flip over and fall off

-Kurt

cudak888 

Those are gorgeous. Did you use any particular method to crown the wooden caps? The shape and bevel is beautifully uniform.

-Kurt

AdventureManCO 

And the wall with it if we're talking Huffys. But then again, why play w/ fire trying to break the universe? Mine lives squarely on the ground so as to not upset the space-time continuum

iab

Rounded it on the belt sander after fitting to the pipe. Just eye-balled it.

Reynolds 

Very nice! Being such a cheapskate, I used A/C brackets and a recycled gas pipe to hang my bikes

AdventureManCO 

I like the way you think. I as well, use gas pipe to secure my...gas pipe

sced

Utilitarian, but these Stalwart Bike Wall Mounts work great. I have three in my garage and they work pretty well for fiddling with drive trains.

Chombi1 

Just be aware that if you display your bike in front of a window, do it where the sun will not shine through the window because the UV rays will eventually fade your paint and dry out the rubber and plastic parts on he bike. A north facing window will be best.

Jeff Wills

Here’s my setup for showing off my favorite (now defunct) frame by itself. It’s a plank of maple with a couple stainless angle brackets to hold it to the wall. The stands for the axles is chunks of maple enclosing conventional QR axles with bolt-on skewers to hold the dropouts. The stands aren’t quite right- I carved them up with a handheld circular saw before I had my table saw set up.
(Don’t hate on the recumbent. It’s 25 years old and I broke it behind the head tube. Unsalvageable but still pretty.)

cudak888 

Only two rooms in the house are concrete slab. The Moulton hasn't broken through the joists.

I do have to show you the Bad Idea Cranbrook (modern) that I'm converting into an e-bike. I didn't want the thing, but a really rough Bafang rear hub fell into my lap concurrently with this frame and some other unwanted parts. The hub was gladly purchased, but the rest showed up against my wishes (long story). The e-bike conversion is the most obvious way to get rid of everything without a loss, and it will involve the MIG welder.

Spot on perfect. Lovely work.

Curtains on order, curtain rod has arrived, and I'm going absolutely nuts trying to get the following chrome curtain rod bracket in chrome. It's available everywhere on Amazon for $18 for a pair if I were to stoop to a brushed nickel finish (nope!). If I want chrome, almost nobody has it (except in the UK) and they're all $22-28...each.




I've noticed that shopping for decent "polished chrome" home goods is next to impossible, bathroom accessories included. It's as if the ban on chrome plating has expanded to a ban on chrome plated imports (though just to be clear, that's not the case, there's no ban on importing chromed goods into the US).

Beautifully executed. And it is pretty.

-Kurt

qcpmsame 

Okay Kurt, you have me at “ involves a MIG welder”, you have to post this project here. Pretty please🙏

Bill

pastorbobnlnh 

Kurt, the only cause for the lack of chrome plated fixtures in that designers and consumers want us to only purchase nickel fixtures. If you wait long enough chrome should re-emerge. You might try some salvage or antique shops. Of course you won't find that style, but you shoul be able to find something in chrome.

cudak888 

It has to be cheaper to plate the product with nickel only, rather than nickel followed by chrome. I can also see more rejects given that chrome will be less forgiving to nicks or errors.

I wound up finding a US source, finally. $130 for five of those suckers. Ouch.

-Kurt

mpetry912 

Very nice trick with those "motorcycle turn signals"

never would have thought of that !

/markp

tiger1964 

Possibly as bad as finding anything in polished brass. Which could also be an interesting motif from bike-display stuff.

cudak888 

Haven't tried, but now that you mention it, I have seen precious little of that in my search.

Side note: The US source for those curtain rod hangers just sent me this:



​​​​​​​Here we go again.

-Kurt

iab

To be fair, curtain rod holders get zero wear/abuse. Chrome plating certainly isn't needed, Whats wrong with polished nickel? My 1939 Paglianti is polished nickel.

iab

And just my .02, an inset roller-curtain is the way to go for that window. Just sayin.