I mentioned a couple of months ago that I was looking for a new flatbed trailer to augment my BOB Yak for use in the city.  Armed with my requirements, I headed down to Urbane Cyclist, fully expecting to ride away from the store with a new Burley Flatbed or equivalent. But after considering the options and talking to the staff about my needs, they recommended that I either get a DIY trailer kit from Wike and build my own trailer, or call Wike and get a custom trailer built to my specifications. I opted for the former, and am really happy with the result.

It’s done duty twice so far: its inaugural trip was ably carrying three Rubbermaid totes crammed full with much of the equipment and materials required for the Ward 29 Bikes meeting two weeks ago, and it pulled 80 lb of cat litter home last weekend. It’s big enough to be used for flats of flowers, bags of soil, and many other large or awkward loads that would have overwhelmed or overflowed my Yak.

Read below the fold for more details about the construction.

Requirements

My requirements were actually fairly simple: I wanted a large flatbed trailer that could take virtually any odd-sized load that I’d want to throw on it. The two specific applications I had in mind were carting home a rain barrel from one of the city’s Community Environment Days, and hauling a good-sized load to the local Goodwill. A larger trailer would also be handy for many other regular tasks: fetching bags of cat litter, bringing home flowers and plants at the beginning of gardening season, and carrying most large purchases that I’d otherwise have delivered. My BOB Yak can do some of those things, but it’s better suited to long-haul riding rather than carrying random loads of stuff around the city.

All of the flatbeds I saw at Urbane were smaller than I would have liked. The Burley Flatbed was closest, but it still wasn’t quite what I was after. So I ordered the Wike DIY kit the next day and started work.

Design

I considered a few layouts before picking my final size: 2′ x 4′. That’s big enough to hold three of those ubiquitous Rubbermaid Roughneck totes. I’d originally hoped for a trailer big enough to hold four totes, but it would have been huge and far less practical for smaller loads.

Materials

In addition to the Wike kit, I used the following materials:

1″ square aluminum tubes:

• 3x 48″ for the sides
• 1x 53″ for the side piece that connects to the tow bar
• 3x 24″ for the crosspieces

5x Red oak slats, each roughly 5/8″ x 3″ x 48″

3x Red oak crosspieces, each roughly 3/4″ x 1″ x 20″

50x pop rivets (could also have used bolts or self-tapping screws)

6x #10×1-1/2″ self-tapping screws

4x 160mm aluminum bar handles for front and rear tiedowns

Tools

Power driver (optional, but it’ll make your life much easier)

Drill press (optional)

Screwdriver, rivet tool, and/or wrench to drive your chosen fasteners

Gotchas

Building the kit is fairly straight-forward, but I’ll offer tips based on my experience:

• The documentation with the kit recommends making the arm that connects to the tow bar 8-’12″ longer than the others. About 3-5″ in addition to the supplied tow bar is more reasonable. Do a dry fit and make sure that your rear wheel as adequate clearance.
• If you don’t have a drill press, just use #8 or #10 self-tapping screws instead of pop rivets. I wanted the cleaner look of rivets, but I’m not sure about how durable they’ll be. If they start shearing, I’ll replace them with self-tapping screws.
• I had to grind down the tang on the tow bar supplied with the kit so that it would fit into the tubes that I bought.
• 1″ square aluminum tubes should be available at any halfway decent hardware store. I got mine at my semi-local Metal Supermarket. They cut your order to length for free and I didn’t need to make any adjustments to their cuts.

Depending on the material and finishing touches you use, you can have a large custom cargo trailer for under $200. The kit saved me many hours I would have needed to spend in the shop if I was building the trailer from scratch.

Here’s a partial gallery showing the building process and result.

Ever get the feeling that one of your vendors is trying to tell you what they really think of you when they deliver a quote? Maybe it’s just me, but doing a turkey installation doesn’t seem like that professional a service.

(The quote is littered with other errors as well, including the name of the product itself. It sure inspires confidence.)

This house is really enjoying the sunny summer afternoon.

The next time I’m in a meeting and feel the need to (figuratively) open a can of whup-ass on someone, I’m just going to warn everyone that the Valcano is about to erupt. Watch out!

(Oh, and Valcano was so my nickname in high school. Don’t ask.)

There’s a lot to see on Dufferin Street before you get to the end of the road. Once you get out of the city and past the worst of suburbia, the street progresses through several distinct and varied phases as it marches north through horse farms and wooded valleys before running out of space in the heart of the Holland Marsh.

I started my trip (two trips, actually; one in a chilly rain and the other in glorious warmth and sunshine) at the TTC’s Downsview station, riding through a quiet industrial area before hopping onto Dufferin at Steeles and riding as far north as I could go.

Until I made this ride, I’d only ever seen Dufferin north of Steeles a handful of times, and always on my way to or from Pardes Shalom Cemetery (and once almost 20 years ago when I went to Eaton Hall for a wedding). I wasn’t expecting much, but was pleasantly surprised to find that the worst of the sprawl is, for the moment anyway, contained to the south of the cemetery and that the countryside really opens up to the north, allowing Dufferin to retain its rural feel.

I’ll also add that we must have had a really good spring and summer so far because all of the vegetation—whether wild or farmed—was greener and lusher than I remember seeing in a long time. I wanted to stop for pictures almost constantly, which isn’t exactly the best way to get home on time.

I ride outside the city fairly frequently, but this was the first time that I stuck to a single road to its end and documented the journey. I’ll be doing it a few more times as the summer progresses. The gallery below contains the highlights from the Tour de Dufferin. Enjoy.

[Note: the gallery images may not display properly from an RSS reader. Please visit Dodgeville directly to view the gallery. I'm looking for an elegant solution to this, but I'm not sure that there is one.]

A version of this article originally appeared on Torontoist.

From the Who Knew? files comes Ontario Sawdust, distributors of quality sawdust from a variety of wood-based products, according to their web site. I always thought that sawdust was a waste material that, while useful for many things, didn’t require any kind of specialized distribution. After all, you can pretty much make your own for free.

Ontario Sawdust says that they pick up (and pay for!) raw material, but I wonder if they’d come all the way down to Toronto for occasional donations from a home workshop. It would nicely solve the problem of what to do with the waste from my shop. The City of Toronto won’t collect sawdust as garbage, and some kinds of wood (like Walnut) will kill everything if you use them as mulch.

If you visit Dodgeville directly rather than through an RSS reader, you may have noticed that the site has gotten a minor redesign. The old theme, originally based on MistyLook, had served me well, but I thought it was time for a change. The new look is based on MagicBlue, a fully GPL‘d theme. The layout remains basically the same, but less dead space at the top of each page means that more content is visible on first load.

There are still a few kinks to work out, but I doubt that most people will notice. Please let me know if it displays hideously in your browser. Among other things, the new theme supports tags and makes posting galleries much easier. You’ll be seeing more of them in the future.

Dufferin Street stretches from its start at British Columbia Drive all the way past Graham Sideroad in the Holland Marsh before ending its 55 km journey at a rubbish pile.

Coming up: a tour of Dufferin north of Steeles.

Update: I’ve posted the complete tour.

But I took a pen-turning seminar anyway, and made this pen at it last weekend. It’s made of bocote. It came out far better than I thought it would. It has flaws, but as its proud father I’ve naturally chosen to overlook them and declare it the best pen ever.

I’ve been interested in turning pens for some time now, but have always been a little confused by the process. And despite being quite comfortable in a wood shop, I’ve never really used a lathe before. All that talk of mandrels and gouges always leaves me confused. The seminar was a learning experience on both fronts, making me more comfortable on a small lathe and with the process of making a pen.

Fair warning: if you’re reading this and I normally give you a Christmas (Hanukkah, Festivus, etc.) present, chances are pretty good that you’ll be getting a one-of-a-kind pen this year.

I’ve begun spending more time in the shop again and will have another post about a slightly bigger, bike-related project soon.

My Tilley Hat looks out on the world disapprovingly.

At Doors Open last month, Risa lost me in a crowd at the TTC’s Greenwood Shop. She told me later that I blended into a large sub-species that all but dominated the location that day: middle-aged men wearing Tilley Hats and carrying cameras. And we’re damned proud of it, too.