Gimletbikes
Finally riding a big boys bike
I found a $50 1950 26" Schwinn straight bar. Some guys I've talked to on here have said it's a Hornet. Serial #G396084 - October 17th 1950. The fellow I bought it from confessed that he had made a big mistake taking it all apart and said he had no idea how to put it back together and it had been sitting in his barn for 30 years.
This one's rough and I don't have any sentimental attachment to it, so that gives me some freedom to get creative and just take my time and have fun resurrecting it. I intend to try and bring it back to a factory build, but might do a different color combo. I've got a set of painted tubular S-2s I'll add. I'm going to keep the inch pitch chain, I think, too.
It has been painted several times, most recently red, but I've wiped some red off to expose some of the previous colors and got down to the original darts, so now I'm pretty sure it was originally dark red with cream darts and then someone painted it blue. It has also been black and then gray for a while.
The seat post and the quill stem were both really stuck so I had to wrestle with those for a couple days. I finally got all the loose giblets off and tumbled the grit and paint off of them. I evaluated everything and laid out the parts on my floor that I will officially start with:
This one's rough and I don't have any sentimental attachment to it, so that gives me some freedom to get creative and just take my time and have fun resurrecting it. I intend to try and bring it back to a factory build, but might do a different color combo. I've got a set of painted tubular S-2s I'll add. I'm going to keep the inch pitch chain, I think, too.
It has been painted several times, most recently red, but I've wiped some red off to expose some of the previous colors and got down to the original darts, so now I'm pretty sure it was originally dark red with cream darts and then someone painted it blue. It has also been black and then gray for a while.
The seat post and the quill stem were both really stuck so I had to wrestle with those for a couple days. I finally got all the loose giblets off and tumbled the grit and paint off of them. I evaluated everything and laid out the parts on my floor that I will officially start with:


















