Balance Bike Easy & Cheap

I would like to share with you my first public project where I made a very easy and cheap wooden balancing bike for my son. The goal was to reuse parts from our household to reduce the price and make it rapidly. I can say I could keep the requirements as the cost is about 3 Euros and it took about 4-5 hours to finish from scratch.

The needed materials:

- some wood (I mostly used roof batten)

- screws

- 2 pieces of rubber rings (for hydraulic cylinder)

- lathe (optional, if you have small wheels you do not need it)

- belt sander machine to make the surface smooth

In the next steps I will show you how to build it.

In this picture you can see all of the parts needed for this bike.

(+ two pieces of rubber ring)

If you already have any used small wheels from kid bikes you can use that and you can skip this step.

But if you have the possibility to use lathe you can create your own.

I'm gonna show you how I made the wheels.

I have used 15 cm x 15 cm x 2.5cm wood for base of wheels, I draw a
circle and cut it by saw to make it easier to process in lathe. In the pictures you can see an iron pipe I made to extend the lathe head to avoid the conflict with tool head. With chisel I created the wood circle and made a groove to keep the rubber ring in place.Finally you can use sandpaper to make the surface smooth.

To create the center hole of the wheel I used drill (8mm diameter).

With the rubber ring the rolling is more comfortable.

With two holes on the forks you can create the wheel holder part of the frame, just use the furniture screws.

And make another hole for the axle of the wheel. Here you can use some oil to make the wheel to be more slippery.

I suppose it will be strong enough to keep the wheels, but if not I also have a scenario for that case. You can create a bigger hole in the middle of the wheel and create a plastic cylinder with lathe and fix it in the middle hole of the wheel with some glue and I think it should work like a bearing.

The handle is connected to the vertical part of the bike by two screws, in this way you are able to change the height position of the handle as you need. The wheel is fixed by a furniture screw.

Where the frame connects to the vertical part I used a reused hinge from an old door. I made a vertical cut in the wood and placed the hinge inside this gap and fixed strongly with a screw (and used screw washer to protect the wood). So this is strong enough to hold the weight of a kid. The other side of the hinge is fixed by three screws to the vertical part of the frame to ensure the flexibility.

By creating several holes on the frame you can ensure the adjustable seat distance and the height of the seat. To fix the seat you can use the usual furniture screws.

You can use paint to protect the wood (either to use lacquer to keep the pattern of wood visible or to use any colorful paints).

I shared with you this project to demonstrate that you can create easily (and cheap) great things, so I hope you liked my presentation, if you need any additional information please feel free to ask me, thanks for watching.