 This video is brought to you by KiwiCo, more on that later. First, let's lay out some of the main materials and tools we have at our disposal. At the roughly Bronze Age era we've gotten to, we have acquired a decent toolkit of tools and materials at our disposal. We have a variety of axes for chopping, probably the most useful tools. A set of knives for cutting, a set of chisels and hammer for carving large holes and notches, a pump drill for drilling smaller holes, a small but not the most effective saw that can cut small pieces of wood. With the tools, we've been able to fell and shape a variety of trees, shape softer stones, cast a metal that is the namesake of the era we are in, bronze metal which we've produced from the raw minerals and used for all of these tools. Building a full bicycle will actually be one of our largest and most complex builds so we can actually do this in stages. With our first goal being the very first form the bicycle took, the Lafmasin, Lafmasin, Laf, Lafmasin, the Lafmasina, or Dandy horse. Which can be seen here being operated by Buster Keaton. Invented by Carl Dreyas in 1817, the two-wheeled human-powered vehicle is propelled forward by the rider pushing against the ground as if running. The momentum created propels the entire thing forward, faster than the person can run on their own with less physical effort. So this is our first goal, a Dandy horse. Elements like gears, pedals, brakes will be added later on as we further develop the bike. The main challenges we face are making two sets of wheels and axles, a solid frame that can hold our weight, and a pivoting steering column. All these things were mastered by civilizations like the Egyptians and the Bronze Age as they were able to make pretty complex vehicles like the chariot. So making a Dandy horse with their tools seems pretty achievable, but one thing that they have that we don't have is a generational knowledge of how to use these Bronze Age tools. We'll see how we do. But first, for a little engineering inspiration from today's sponsor, I've been interested in how things work since I was a kid. And now with the help from KiwiCo, you can help give your kids ready to assemble monthly projects that will get their minds going. These hands-on projects and toys are designed to expose kids to concepts in steam, science, technology, engineering, art, and math. Each monthly crate is designed by experts tested by kids and teaches a new theme through hands-on learning and fun. Each DME viewers get 20% off site-wide by going to the link in the description. KiwiCo offers eight subscription lines, each catering to different age groups and topics. Each box comes with all the supplies needed for that month's project, detailed kid-friendly instructions, and an educational magazine filled with content to learn even more about the crate's theme. Turn your kids into makers with the help of KiwiCo. To split up the tasks, I took on the biggest challenges of the wheels and the central base piece of the bike, while Kate took on the other remaining portions. The biggest challenge will likely be making some effective wheels. To give us a head start, I actually had one that I had made earlier out of stone, originally intended to be turned into a grindstone, but never ended up having the time to complete it yet. Given the very flintstone nature of the dandy horse, and that we'll also be using our feet as the brakes for this one too, it seems fitting to make at least one of the wheels out of stone. Historically, there is some evidence of stone being used for wheels in regions where wood was a little bit more scarce. However, as the wheels involved, wood came in most common material, so let's get some wood for that. I also went out to the woods and found this down tree. It's already been cut up into a few pieces, and thankfully it's not too rotten, so I think it's going to be a good source of wood that we can repurpose. I think I can get a few planks from this and this one to make the wheels, and then this will be the main body of it. So next I'm going to take the bronze Ajax and start hewing it and squaring it up and getting it into shape. There, a nicely squared base to build the bike off of. So what we're doing today is making our seat cushion for a dandy horse using some leftover wool, and basically I'll just be building up layers, thin layers, by crisscrossing them like this. And then I've got some soapy water with some of the leftover soap from that episode and sort of sprinkle it on as I build up the layers and then press it between these two mats and try to gently agitate it somehow. I'm going to stop myself right there because this technique did not work and we very quickly switched over to a different technique, as you'll see with a sheet of leather, some twine, and a lot of rolling. I'll just make a bunch of these little layers and eventually probably sew them together, stuffing them with more softer material to create some nice soft little layers for Andy to sit on and see rides as dandy horse down the street. Now back to chopping the wood for my other wheel. Unfortunately, the hammer finally broke, so just need to melt it down and cast it again with the wheels starting to take shape. Kate started to build off of the base piece I had hewed. Spent a day trizzling all these holes in here for the steering pole and the chest panel to slot into. So it's starting to look like a bike. So they've got our base here that Andy spent a whole day queuing down into this nice rectangular shape. I need to take my steering pole and shave that down a bit more so it will go smoothly all the way through and then secure it somehow, binding of leather or rope or something so that it doesn't fall completely through. Then I have to stay there. I've got my chest panel here, slots in there nicely. It curves towards you and there'll be a cushioned flat bit that you press against as you're propelling forward. And I spent a few hours chiseling the slot into here and then chiseled off these ends. Slide it right on there. Secure that with probably a bit more pine glue as well. And now we've got one of our two panels of wool that I felted which I'll drape nicely over there and secure somehow. You've a nice little cushioned effect as he rides. So it's a bit flintstones. Now for the bronze. As a fairly expensive metal for the era, I made sure to use it selectively in the bike. So only for the axles of the wheels and a variety of rivets and nails to hold everything together. After a lot of work, I have the three pieces all chiseled out to the proper shape with the kind of elliptical center. From what I've seen, it's a middle evolutionary point between the solid piece of wood for a wheel to spoked wheels. This is pretty early form and has a clear advantage over a solid piece of wood that you can make it out of smaller pieces. And I think eventually they learned that they could kind of remove the middle one and put spokes instead. And then eventually it turned into a fully spoked wheel. Just trying to find a large piece of wood was hard. It was hard to find pieces of this size even. And even then these are starting to fall apart. It was hard to get a good slice of it. Actually I had to redo one of these halves got right here. And overall the whole thing is kind of shrunk inward as the tips are pretty fragile. I have one piece that just broke off. So we're there. So the whole thing right now is a bit oblong. So you need to fine tune it and round it off. But first I'll have to figure out the center, put it on an axle and spin it and start sanding it down into a perfect circle. So I chiseled out these grooves for the boards and then put some rivets through. And I just got to pound them in, tighten everything up, douse it with glue, and hopefully we're ready to take it for spin. Take off some sweet jumps. Already got all the holes drilled. We just basically just need to attach all of the pieces together at this point. So I've got these two uprights that I made that'll attach basically like that with some rivets going in here as well. And then this is where the axle will go through. We've got our bronze rivets which we're gonna cut down a little bit more so that we can shove them right in there and then hammer them in. So then that will attach to our wheel which we have an axle that goes right there. I took inspiration from our little KiwiCo car here and see those little rubber bands right there that keep the wheel from moving back and forth since the bronze cast axle is nice and sticky on either end can wrap some leather nice and thick. And then final, final aesthetic touches will be attaching my little seat. Nice little cushion. Now we wrap up building our early form of the bicycle. If the base technologies were really pretty much there since the invention of the wheel, why was the bike invented when it was? Well, a combination of the devastation of the Napoleonic Wars a couple years prior followed up by the year without a summer in 1816 caused by a volcanic eruption in the Dutch East Indies. Crop failures and food shortages resulted in the death of tens of thousands of horses. This led to Carl Dre's to consider the need for a machine that would allow for a single person to travel without the need of a horse. So the right forces at play could possibly just as easily have caused this need 4,000 years earlier. However, the dandy horse was more of a passing fad peaking mostly in the summer of 1819. And it wasn't until the addition of the rotary crank and pedals that really made the machine an enduring form of transport. And a little olive oil to get things nice and lubricated. I think that might get you to not ask. So when we took it out for a test round where you basically ran one major engineering flaw, which was with the steering column. A lot of dandy horses have a more complex triangular rig which we avoided because the strip pull method seemed a lot simpler. But obviously that requires a higher level of precision and strength of your material that we're quite able to live up to. So with a hard deadline coming up for this video we had to use some modern assistance to help build some kind of engineering training wheels and lock in this column so it doesn't bend. But we were able to put the rest of it to the test and actually perform surprisingly well. We're rolling. Oh God. Got no steering now. No, no, call the city of Minneapolis. I'm not acceptable. Do I look dandy? Get the glide in. That wheel has a lot of weight. One of the worst roads to try it on. This is the most efficient machine anymore. That's exhausting. They're not very ergonomic. It's like the wheels. They actually worked out pretty good considering their roughness and crudeness. They all rolled. Perfectly circular which causes some issues but overall I'd say pretty effective. I was surprised. The stone was a lot easier to carve in shape especially a larger size like this than the wood one but the extra weight kind of makes the bike pretty difficult to use. As this is just kind of the first step in the evolving bicycle as we continue on we're gonna add to it and make it better and better. And in just next week's video we're gonna roll out a new tool that was really useful for producing more refined items. It'll be really helpful for making things like ball bearings, brakes and things like that. We are obviously a little ways from the Bronze Age craftsman skill level of the people who would build chariots back then. I think if they had the idea to try and make a dandy horse back then they definitely could and they could get something a little bit more effective than this but I have a hard time seeing it have much practical use besides kind of a novelty toy for farrows and such. So to answer the question I'd say it's definitely possible to build this very first form of a bike in the Bronze Age. So now I'm gonna take off some sweet jumps. You ever take it off any sweet jumps? If you enjoyed this video be sure to subscribe and check out other content we have covering a wide variety of topics. Also if you've enjoyed these series consider supporting us on Patreon. 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