How to Turn Bike Parts Into an Awesome Table

Brooklyn's 3rd Ward, a New York City—based creative space for artists and handy people, teaches a course where students learn the basic concepts for creating useful objects out of recycled and found materials for little or no investment. "Give new life to a boring Ikea cabinet, fix a hand-me-down night stand, or turn a bus window you found on the street into a coffee table," the description says. The class is called "How to Make Crappy Stuff Awesome." How could we resist trying our hands at that? Here, a step-by-step project that takes some seriously crappy parts—three bent forks and a pancaked wheel—and turns them into a truly awesome table.

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First and foremost, "How to Make Crappy Stuff Awesome" is an exercise in diagnosis. After lugging a bent bicycle wheel through two rush hours on three different subways to the Williamsburg home of 3rd Ward, I still only had a faint notion of what I wanted to do with it: Namely, build a coffee table that spun like a Lazy Susan. Tim Dowse, the mastermind behind the class, told me to start by looking at what I couldn't change (the spokes) and what I could work with (the post). "You don't have to keep an object intact," he said. "You want to keep the idea of the object."

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To maximize the table's bicycle essence, I decided to use clear plexiglass for the surface, resting it on the center bolt and supporting it with plastic spacers around the rim. A smaller round of plexiglass underneath the wheel would anchor it to the legs: three bike forks. It was at this point that I realized artistic vision doesn't necessarily align with the amount of crappy stuff at hand, so I had to liberate the third fork from a bicycle clearly left for dead, yet still chained around a tree, on the main avenue in my Brooklyn neighborhood. While I would have preferred to do this in the cloak of darkness, time constraints necessitated I place my morning coffee on the sidewalk, pull an allen wrench out of my handbag, and pilfer it in front of the 9am bagel crowd.

But any damage to my reputation was ultimately worth it. After four weeks of utilizing the maximum justifiable number of power tools in 3rd Ward's metal and wood shops, my recycled creation is not only level and sturdy but also full of character. As Tim said when he set a PBR on its surface and then stepped back to look at it with a critical eye: "There's a lot of crappy stuff in there that's now awesome."


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* 3 bicycle forks, donated or acquired through legal means

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* 1 bicycle wheel--in my case, slightly pancaked

* 1 10-inch-diameter, 1/2-inch-thick round of plexiglass

* 1 26-inch-diameter, 1/4-inch-thick round of plexiglass

* 8 flat-head Phillips machine screws, 8-32 thread, 1-3/4-inch length

* 3 threaded inserts for thermoplastics, 3/8-inch-16 internal thread, 0.625-inch length

v3 flat-head Phillips machine screws, 3/8-inch-16 thread, 1-inch length

* 3-4 rubber washers, 3/8-inch screw size, 1-inch OD, 1/8inch thick

* plexiglass tube

* 8-32 tap

* tape measure

* Smooth Cast 300 quick setting urethane plastic or epoxy putty

* Plasticine modeling clay

* various power tools (I used a band saw, metal chop saw, grinder and drill)

(1) Your three forks all need to be an identical length, so figure out how high you want your table to be and then subtract about 4 inches (the height of the table top). Measure and mark that length on the necks of your forks and then cut them down to size (mine were 18 inches). I used a metal chop saw, which was nice and quick, but the ends will be jagged, so smooth them out with a grinder. A hacksaw would also do the trick.

(2) Using a 5/16-inch drill bit, drill a hole through the center of each plexiglass round. (To save time, I had the plastics store laser-cut the plexi to size and drill a starter hole in the center of each. If you've never been to a plastics store, you should put any environmental reservations aside and go immediately--it's a wondrous thing.) This should accommodate the bolt in the center of your bike wheel. Practice on wood first, and when you drill into the plastic apply even pressure and drill slowly.

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(3) Measure the distance from the center bolt of the bike wheel to the rim, where you will be drilling holes to attach the wheel to the plexi. This is the part that has to be precise--the holes in the plexi and on the metal rim need to match up exactly. Because I'm obsessive, I used a piece of scrap wood just longer than the diameter of my wheel to make a marking device. (I drilled a hole in the center so that it fit onto the bolt in the wheel, and then one on each end that was the distance to the rim. By spinning it over the plexi on the wheel, I could mark eight evenly spaced holes.)

(4) Using a 13/64-inch drill bit, drill out the eight holes for your screws. Then use a countersink to ensure that the heads of the machine screws sit flush with the surface of the plexi (just below the paper backing).

(5) Place the plexi round on the center bolt in the bicycle wheel--with a rubber washer on either side--and then slip a 1-3/4-inch screw through one of the holes. Mark the place where it touches the rim with a Sharpie. (Granted, a punch and a ball-peen hammer would be more precise.) Take the plexi off and, using a 1/8-inch metal drill bit, drill out the hole in the wheel.

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(6) Thread this hole using the tap. Hold the tap steady with one hand and twist it with the other. Thread it all the way through the hole until it feels loose.

(7) Place the plexiglass back on the wheel and screw it to the rim. Using the same method, mark, drill and tap the hole in the opposite spot on the wheel. With those two points affixed, you can mark the next six holes and drill and tap them all at once.

(8) There should be about 1-1/4 inches between the rim and the plexi once you have it screwed on. My wheel was slightly bent, so one spot was 1-1/8 inches. Cut the length of plastic tubing into eight spacers to match those distances. (I used a band saw, because it's fun.) Now, slip them over the screws between the wheel and the rim and tighten everything down.

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(9) Now, time for the legs. On the smaller piece of plexi, measure and mark the three spots where the forks will attach to it. (They should form an isosceles triangle around the center hole.) Drill pilot holes using a small bit (11/64 inch), then drill out the holes with a 3/8-inch bit. Use a countersink to make sure your screws will sit flush with the surface of the plexiglass.

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(10) To hold the threaded inserts in the ends of the forks, I used thermoplastic molding (Smooth Cast 300, a quick-setting urethane plastic made by Smooth On), but epoxy putty would probably also do the trick. First each fork needs to be plugged from the bottom with clay to create a small cavity that contains the plastic in the neck. Make sure you cover any holes opening from the neck into the rest of the fork, or the plastic will drain onto the floor in a quickly hardening mess--as it did on my first try. Oh, and you should clean out any gunk inside the forks first.

(11) Anchor the forks in a clamp or vise so that they stand perfectly upright on their own. Then, screw three of the 1-inch machine screws into threaded inserts, and smear a bit of clay over the bottom of the insert so that the plastic doesn't mold to the threaded area. Now you're ready for the thermoplastic molding: Mix equal proportions of the casting fluid--you don't need much. It starts to harden fast, so at this point act quickly: Pour the combined fluid into the neck of one fork, not quite all the way to the top. Then, holding on to the head of the screw, suspend one of the threaded inserts in the fluid so that the insert is almost even with the top of the fork. It's an exothermic reaction, so you'll feel heat as it starts to set up. Hold this position until the plastic turns white and has hardened.

(12) At this point, you should be able to extract the screw from the insert. Which means that you can attach the legs to the small round of plexiglass, and also the bicycle wheel (again, a washer where the bolt meets the plastic is advisable). Set a beer on your new creation to prove it is level.

(13) Now take it all apart, peel the paper backing off the plexiglass, and reassemble. There you have it: crappy bike parts turned into an awesome table!

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