Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Finally, a useful wooden fender!

Over the past few years there have been quite a few people making wooden fenders. For the most part I've ignored them all because they were less functional that the standard plastic/aluminum/steel fenders. All the wood ones were flat as opposed to curved to fit around the sided of the tire. Google "wooden fender" and you'll see several examples. All these wood fenders all look great and some have excellent craftsmanship with all those wood and inlay options, but a fender is supposed to stop all road spray which is something a flat fender isn't that great at (seriously try one though a wet sloppy Wisconsin winter).

A few months ago this random guy Ben wandered into the shop. If you've been to the shop or are familiar with the location you would know someone just wandering in is a rare event. Ben was looking to see if I needed any help, which I didn't need but we chatted for awhile anyway. On his way out his last words were "check out this cool curved wood fender prototype". What?! Thats like the holy grail of cool fenders and I'd been thinking of attempting it someday when I find the time (i.e. never!) and Ben just mentions it as an afterthought, pulling a sample out of his pocket as he walked out. I expressed quite a bit of interest and encouraged him to pursue the project further. As it turned out he wanted a custom rack for one of his bikes and Leah(the rack builder that hangs out in corner) wanted some wooden fenders.

Today Ben stopped by the shop with the fenders:




I am very impressed. If your interested in some of your own you should contact him via e-mail - Lbrk@hotmail.com, we need to get him making some more of these.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are these wood fenders made in the morning?

Anonymous said...

these are indeed very nice. I'm surprised nobody has really commented here on them!

fenders are the single biggest problem when trying to put together a bike that wants to be something other than normal, especially in the ETRTO 559 size: they are wide, and black or silver, that's it. a lot of companies do painted metal fenders/mudguards these days, but Velotraum over here in D is the only company i know of that does a special line of SKS fenders, which for all purposes are still the standard others should aspire to (Velotraum do a RAL 7005 mousegrey set to match one of their RAL frame colors: looks great!).

good luck to you, ben, hope you continue to make these!

Anonymous said...

- alex here again

- and the color of the Velotraum SKS fender is molded in: it doesn't scratch, peel, flake, it's grey through and through. a lot more companies should do this . . . Velotraum also paints their Tubus racks in the frame color (not unlike other firms).

Unknown said...

I am so impressed! I totally want them on my bike... how do I get hold of them? I tried the e-mailing stuff, but that didn't work.

I am living in The Netherlands, that might be a problem.

cheers,
Ronald

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