Gwyn's daily commuter. Note the custom aluminum rack mount. He is tall!
Cross-cut saw collection...and you thought antique shaving equipment was cool! Gwyn explains the advanced metallurgy (like a Japanese sword) and construction.
Early (and very rough) MIT human-powered washing machine prototype. Designed to be constructed with local materials and technology in Central America to ease the life of poor farmers. The functional drivetrain allows both tumble-wash and spin-dry cycles. The human powerplant sits in a chair. There is a plastic rotating inner drum inside the outer blue drum.
The inner drum rotates on bicycle bottom brackets at either end, cut out of a broken frame and supported in the wood frame. This end has the drive-side flange from a pressed-together steel hub welded on to the end of the BB spindle. The flange provides freewheel threads cheaply and easily, and allows mounting of the freewheel seen here.
Gwyn's spare-time hobby from several years ago! This guy is my hero...he picks up something, kicks ass at it, and then moves on. He built this wooden Norwegian-style rowboat, loosely based on a plan he purchased-beautiful!
Dutch cargo bike. He traded something for this at Interbike years and years ago. It is the obvious inspiration behind the cargo bikes now built in Eugene. Note the linkage steering, commercial weight rating, 12-gauge spokes, and beefy moped rear tire.
It took a few feet to get the hang of it, but it is quite easy to ride as long as you don't need to make a tight U-turn.
Prototype Merlin full-suspenion bike. They used a Girvin/Pro-Flex (gasp!) swingarm to try it out quickly. Note the rising-rate linkage at a time when such thoughts were black art for some bicycle manufacturers.
Rows and rows of Ti sitting and gathering dust!
British Pace mountain bike. A bit rare in the States, they were supplying Merlin with forks for a while, one of the first with a reverse crown. They used square aluminum tubing because it was much easier to do the stress calculations with their computer at the time. Note the external butting!
Despite being without saddle and behind some drying corn stalks, this is Gwyn's most used Merlin. I chuckled at the arc bar (he swears by it) and the thought of those Japanese craftsmen hand-hammering the fenders. Hopefully we can all be so cool when we are cyclists of advanced years.
Funky brakes on an old Merlin road bike, the exact bike which apparently won a Tour de Trump stage!
Ah, Sweet Wings. Sweet welded cro-mo steel! The idea of two-piece cranks with a hollow tubular splined spindle doesn't seem so radical anymore, does it?
Wow, this mountain bike is a great rolling heyday of MTB innovation museum. Not only the Sweet Wings, but also some of the first long-arm brakes with these Pauls.
Another prototype Merlin that didn't make it to production. Note the softtail suspension combined with E-stays...interesting! But not quite as interesting as the Magura hydraulic rim brakes mounted inside some aluminum bolted inside the rear of the frame...wacky!
Further proof that Gwyn is the man! He couldn't find a commercially available boat trailer designed to carry loads as light as his wooden rowboat (about 150 pounds) so he built one. However, he didn't want to be limited to carrying the boat empty, because sometimes he fills it with heavy gear, and he also uses the trailer for other things....see the lumber he is hauling here? He built his own trailer with air suspension so he can fine-tune the ride for each load!
Closeup of the air shock; one of the more creative uses of bicycle components I have seen.
Here is THE BIKE. The Interbike show bike. The Mountain Bike Action cover bike. The one and only Merlin full-suspenion linkage softtail mountain bike! It was buried in his attic! The long thin front-to-rear tubes are welded to the seat tube and flex for suspension at both ends!
Whoa! Look at those elastomers! Gwyn admitted that it had been sitting a while! This bike was not only very light, even by modern standards, but Gwyn says the steering feel was divine...he doubts that there will ever be a dual telescopic that will approach this bike for steering feedback and feel.
One-piece bar/stem. Also note how heavily ovalized those flexing tubes are.
Rear end minus the rotted-away elastomer.
A jumble of roadbike parts, one-piece rigid MTB bar/stem/fork, and Ti racing wheelchair wheels.
I bet this is really lightweight if it fits your headtube and stack height! Kinda bike specific, though.
What's this cast-off? A Fuji Ti road bike with hydraulic brakes? Yup.
A study in contrasts. This tractor was really cute, 8hp and given to Gwyn's parents by his grandparents when new! Gwyn uses it for plowing the driveway. Note the snowshoes on the seat!
Gwyn's snow commuter. Despite the rod-actuated rim brakes, he swears that there is something about the geometry, tires, and oversized 700B (28x1-1/2 or ISO 635mm) wheels which makes this bike invincible on ice and crusty snow.
Basement of MIT's mechanical engineering building. This is a human-powered corn mill, also for farmers in Central America. This unit can be built with angle-iron, rebar, plywood, a couple of used bikes, and a readily-available handcrank mill. This one uses rebar welded around and around the rim as a flywheel, but sometimes they use concrete. The design is universal, but parts are rarely interchangeable between two of the machines.
Most Guatemalan farmers don't own mills and are faced with a choice of spending most of the money they would make from selling the corn to have it milled, or spending 5-6 hours a day milling it by hand. Considering that much of the corn is destined for animal feed rather than for sale, the choice isn't an easy one, and this machine is affordable and cuts the milling time down to something like an hour a day.
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