My Lastest Find! Riding and Reviewing an 1870 Bicycle -Also looking for Advice

[The Carolina Rambler]

Hello everybody, hope you are all doing well! I made a purchase recently, and I've just been dying to share it with yall. To start, I'm sure most everyone has seen member Kevin Crowe's "Collection Reduction" post. If you haven't, be sure to look it up and maybe buy something, because there is something for everyone. He had this bike for sale, and I absolutely love the reeeally old time stuff, so I couldn't help but buy it. This bicycle I believe was built around 1870 judging from some of the various aspects of it. It is larger than most of the other Boneshaker bikes built at the time, with the front wheel measuring 40 inches tall, as opposed to the 36 inches common on some other machines. It is built entirely of wrought iron, and weighs 80 pounds. The entire bike has only 5 nuts or bolts on it. The rest of the parts are jointed to fit together, and are held in place by small iron pins that were driven in while red hot. Included in the photographs below, is a 1963 postcard showing the bicycle when it was owned by the Stone Mountain Georgia Antique Car Museum where it remained from 1963 to around 2009 when the museum closed, and its contents auctioned off.

REVIEW- RIDING A BONESHAKER
As for riding this bike, I can tell you it was like learning to ride a bicycle all over again. Totally different from any newer bikes. It is very heavy, and you first have to get it rolling a little. Then you have to firmly brace your arms in place with the handlebars to control the bike, as each time you push the pedals it causes the wheel to veer left or right. Once you get going, you find that if you get going too fast, you are liable for your feet to fly off the pedals, and since this bike is not equipped with brakes, you must regulate your speed entirely using your feet and legs. She definitely doesn't turn on a dime! A bike like this is designed for and works best on old time country dirt roads. Even a slight incline in the road warrants a good deal of extra effort to keep the machine going at speed, and if it gets any steeper than just a slight incline you have to get off and push. I can definitely see how these got the name "boneshaker", because with all of the little dips and pebbles in a dirt road, eventually you find that the entire bike starts to almost ring like a bell, and your entire body from head to toe is vibrating and rocking, even with the seat suspension. It's pretty deafening, and you really can't hear anything other than the bike in motion. A safe speed to operate this bicycle is about 5 miles per hour, which although a far cry from newer bikes, when you consider how things were back in the old days, this really is a reliable and effective means of transportation compared to horseback or on foot. It really was like traveling back in time!

ADVICE NEEDED
I will be doing only three things to this bicycle. It may possibly be original paint, or a very old repaint. It has a pretty good layer of dust on it, and I can assure you I will NOT be cleaning it one bit! What I have done so far, is give all of the moving joints a thorough oiling. I am currently fabricating some Solid Oak pedals, one of which can be seen partially complete in the below photos. I will finally reupholster the seat, using a very nice piece of weathered finish goatskin leather, hand stitched, with genuine horsehair padding and bronze rivets, attempting to most accurately replicate how the seat would have been originally. This is the part where I could use some advice. I have restored several bicycle seats from 1920s seats, up through the 50s, so I can do what is necessary for this seat. If you have some advice about the stitching, or some good photos I can use for reference, this would be greatly appreciated. My intentions for this bike, is to actually exhibit it, and ride it, at our various local heritage and farming festivals we hold here in my corner of North Carolina, so that many people aside from just myself can see a real old machine like this demonstrated in action. This is also why is it important that I get the few missing components like the seat and pedals in line.

I will post some after photos when its done, and may even make a video sometime. Thank you for reading, and for your comments and suggestions. Happy Easter!

Stone Mountain, Georgia Antique Car Museum- 1963

 

[Phattiremike]

I'm surprised experts have not chimed in, my Bone Shaker was made with a much heavier metal, spokes and rims were like a wagon wheels, there was brass at most of the connections from frame to wheels etc. I like the built in spring below the seat. I know back in the day some bone shakers were made by wheelwrights and blacksmiths, is this what you have? What say those in the know?? BTW, I love the postcard photo.
There’s a website I think sterba, it’s a museum with thousands of photos you may find your boneshaker there, good luck!
-mike

 

[The Carolina Rambler]

I'm surprised experts have not chimed in, my Bone Shaker was made with a much heavier metal, spokes and rims were like a wagon wheels, there was brass at most of the connections from frame to wheels etc. I like the built in spring below the seat. I know back in the day some bone shakers were made by wheelwrights and blacksmiths, is this what you have? What say those in the know?? BTW, I love the postcard photo.
There’s a website I think sterba, it’s a museum with thousands of photos you may find your boneshaker there, good luck!
-mike

Yes, Mike, the wheels are one of the more unusual things about this boneshaker. I actually have 2 boneshakers, and my other one is, I think, a few years older, and appears blacksmith built. I would reckon by a blacksmith working for a carriage company or foundry that built small machines like stoves and sewing machines back in the pre industrial days. I almost wonder if this bike might have been built by a company that was also building farm equipment like hay rakes and other similar machines, because the wheels remind me very much of the early iron wheels found on such machines as that. No branding anywhere on it. A lot of the parts on it were clearly built probably in a batch, so maybe there would have been as many as 10 of these built exactly alike at a time. Some of the other presumably earlier boneshakers, like the one you have, I reckon are entirely hand forged, one at a time more or less. On my other boneshaker, you can see some of the aspects like you mentioned; thicker metal, less refined construction, and obvious signs of where each small piece was hand hammered and drawn out to shape from molten iron. On this bike in my pictures, you don't see much of that, which also lends to indicate more to the date of early 1870s instead of 1860s. You will also notice the frame is not too unlike that of the highwheelers built a few years later. That was my impression from the first time I first saw it. Thank You for your input, and for reading! Any ideas on the seat?

 

[Phattiremike]

No idea on your seat. Try the sterba bicycle museum website. I never found my exact bone shaker but a few close ones.

 

[The Carolina Rambler]

No idea on your seat. Try the sterba bicycle museum website. I never found my exact bone shaker but a few close ones.

Yep, on there right now. I think one reason I like the boneshakers aside from their beauty is because they are unique, in that literally no two are exactly alike. They're like snowflakes, big black dirty heavy snowflakes!

 

[GiovanniLiCalsi]

Yep, on there right now. I think one reason I like the boneshakers aside from there beauty is because they are unique, in that literally no two are exactly alike. They're like snowflakes, big black dirty heavy snowflakes!

It’s a work of art!

 

[AndyA]

Once you get going, you find that if you get going too fast, you are liable for your feet to fly off the pedals, and since this bike is not equipped with brakes, you must regulate your speed entirely using your feet and legs

As Mark Twain suggested, "Get a bicycle. You will not regret it. If you live."

 

[pelletman]

It is obviously old, but I don't think it is of the era. In other words, someone built it one off sometime after the velocipede era.

 

[The Carolina Rambler]

It is obviously old, but I don't think it is of the era. In other words, someone built it one off sometime after the velocipede era.

Definitely a possibility, but I have my doubts on that. There are just certain things about it, in the way it is built, the quality of the constuction, and other aspects that are seen up close, that make me confident it is genuine. Especially being as how it was exhibited in the Antique Car Museum in Georgia back in the 1960s. If it were a replica, it would have to have been built probably in the 1930s, and that's not something that is seen too often back then; it probably would have been easier just to find a real one in those days. But an interesting possibility for sure.

 

[The Spokemaster]

Wow ! ....now, that is a handsome 'wheel'