Homestead mailing list

["Jerry W. Shepperd" <shepperd AT austincc.edu>]

At 01:05 AM 3/1/2008, Don Bowen KI6DIU wrote:
> I have a wheel.  A friend bought a home made powered wheel.  It used an old
> washing machine as the base and turned the large diameter stone.  He wanted
> the base and gave me the stone.  I need to build an angle iron or wood base
> for it.  While repairing a certain backhoe a few years ago we replaced some
> very worn swivel joints and I threw the old ones in my tool box.  They will
> be used on the pedal linkage.

I have my grandfather's sharpening wheel which is on a frame with 
seat and pedals.  The pedals are long boards attached at the back 
with a type of hinge and with the wheel's pushrods attached to the 
front of the foot pedal.  It doesn't pedal like a bicycle, but more 
like a treadle sewing machine, if you can imagine a sewing machine 
with two treadles, one for each foot, operating in opposite sequence.

A strength of the old sharpening wheel is it is easy to hold the tool 
being sharpened against the stone -- there is a metal support on 
which to rest the tool, and one can't pedal fast enough to be off 
balance.  A limitation is the seat is fairly low and it is hard for 
my 6'7" 250 pound body to sit that low while bending my knees at an 
extreme angle and pedaling comfortably.

I also have a hand-crank wheel, but one needs two hands to hold the 
tool being sharpened, thus it is almost necessary to have a second 
person, one to crank and one to hold the tool.  That second person is 
not always available.

Although I have never seen one, I have often wondered about the 
possibility of reworking an exercise bicycle, with the chain driving 
the sharpening stone, rather than driving the front wheel.  I don't 
even have a good picture of that in my head, so am not going to build 
one today.

I have seen pictures of exercise bikes with a generator attached,  to 
run a variety of household appliances.  These were popular to talk 
about a few years ago - I don't know how many were actually put into 
use, when parents were concerned about their children watching too 
much television and not getting enough exercise.  Here is a website 
with some discussions and plans:
http://www.los-gatos.ca.us/davidbu/pedgen.html

Jerry S.