My father-in-law, Craig, is one of those crazy weekend Makers that gets a wacky thought in his head and actually makes it happen. Here, he took an old wine barrel and an unused bike stroller and made something quite *ahem* intoxicating to ride around in.
In his own words:
First, I got a free Burley child trailer that my daughter used a few times and then left outside over the winter. As it was tearing apart, due to the decay of the cloth parts, I was going to toss it out. Instead, I decided to have a little fun with it.
I bought a full wine barrel at the local hardware store. (I later found out it was a whiskey barrel).
I decided to mount it on the frame of the stroller. In order to do that, I needed to cut all of the cloth off the stroller and dismantle as many parts as I could.
Since the top frame, which held the sides and sun cover, was not needed I cut the frame using a tubing cutter when the parts could not be unbolted.
The axle posed a problem. The barrel was wider than the axle would allow, and if I simply mounted it atop the axle, the barrel would ride too high and would be unstable, so I decided to cut the axle with a tubing cutter. I drilled two holes in the barrel, inserted an electrical conduit pipe through the holes, put the cut off axle ends over the pipe, and held them in place with a self tapping screw.
I used ½” electrical conduit pipe, which is used for shielding electrical wires, because it just happens to be close enough in diameter to fit inside the cut off axle ends. This way I could adjust the length of the axle to make sure the barrel was seated the right way and low enough to be stable.
The front was another challenge, as there were two cross pieces. One was going low, but was not low enough to accommodate the barrel, and the other one was not only too short, like the back axle, but too far forward to go through the barrel. So, I decided to chop them both off. The lower drop-down cross piece was chopped just enough to hold the barrel at the chopped ends, and the higher piece was modified with setscrews like the back. I’m going to put conduit clamps to hold the front pipe in place and stabilize the barrel later.
The entire frame was now widened for the barrel to ride well and not spread the wheels. I also put a strap under the front area to act as a safety.
Cutting the hole in the barrel was easy, but remember to drill and set a screw into the wood before cutting the metal band or the band will pop out. A self-tapper will do for a while, but it will eventually work loose, so through-bolt it soon after cutting the hole.
The last thing I did was sand it with a belt sander to get at the oak. I then applied a polyurethane finish. The seating is up to the maker.
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