After coming up with many terrible ideas for a project, I decided to look for inspiration. I got on my phone and googled “upcycled art,” hoping to see something that would inspire me. Then, it hit me. I remembered a small motorcycle statue I purchased in Vietnam that consisted of nuts, bolts, and washers welded together.
Drawing upon this idea, I decided to use paperclips instead of nuts and bolts, and solder instead of welding.
Similar to this motorcycle, I will be making a mountain bike. I envision it to have fully functional wheels and steering. I am going for an industrially chic look, so I’ll make a bike stand out of palette wood and more paper clips.
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I miss the Windows XP paper clip! Not because it was particularly useful, but it was fun to see it bounce around the screen. I make paper clip art all the time-if I’m bored in class, I will unfold a paper clip and try to make it into something. I am interested in what this project turns out to be. Making it spin will be really cool, I never even thought about that. The bearing/connector between the spinning wheel and the static frame will be interesting, I imagine you will just have to crimp that part or something, I cant see how soldering that would work.
Awesome idea! I like that you’re planning on using paperclips and solder for the frame of your bicycle model. And I really like the idea of making it dynamic, with the wheels, handlebars, and pedals moving. I would recommend potentially using flux with the solder so you could almost paint the solder onto the paper clips. It would certainly be worth looking into. It would also be smart to pre-touch your paperclips with the solder. That process will be quite a bit different than typically soldering electronics. It’s more of an art! Let me know if you’d like a hand when you get to the soldering part. Good luck with this project! I can’t wait to see how it turns out.