Bicycle Wheel to Hanging Pan Rack
Introduction: Bicycle Wheel to Hanging Pan Rack
My husband loves to cook and while his cooking repertoire has been expanding, so has his collection of cookware. Fortunately, these newer ones have handles with either a hole or some sort of cavity, enabling them to be hung. The problem is that we did not have anywhere to hang them!
I had seen these bicycle wheel pot racks but a) they were too expensive for me and b) they didn’t look like much. So I set out on a search, spending hours scouring the internet for ideas on some decent-looking bicycle wheel pot racks - no luck! I wasn’t crazy about something hanging from chains, wanting instead, a rack that looked nice - more like a hanging planter - perhaps something with... you-got-it, macrame! That sent me off on a macrame planter (making) hunt...
Supplies
1) For main rack - The star of the show: Bicycle wheel (preferable front)
2) Possibly required for cassette removal: Chain whip and Lockring Wrench (Specific tools) OR Wrench, needle nose pliers plumber’s wrench, vice, and plenty of elbow grease.
3) For Hanging the rack and for macrame: Rope - ⅛’’ to ¼’’ If your intent is - as mine was - to recycle, then any rope that seems strong enough for the job should work. If buying rope specifically for this project, go with Polyester
4) For attaching the rope to the wheel: Thin clear zip ties
5) Optional for embellishment: Beads, pull tabs, washers, nuts: Based on your preferred pattern, style, and taste, you might choose to use these or not
6) For securing the ends: Glue - Gorilla glue, crazy glue, or any polyacrylamide based clear glue
7) For cutting the rope: Scissors
8) For threading the ends into the knot: Large crafting needle (not necessary but helps). You can improvise with a thin piece of wire (that’s what I used)
9) For hanging the pots and pans: Old/broken clear plastic hangers with a metal hook (the kind clothing stores use) or full metal hangers (the kind dry-cleaners use)
Step 1: Prepping the Wheel
Remove the bolts using a wrench and if you happen to end up with a rear wheel, as I did, then you will need to remove the cassette. I am not about to re-invent the bicycle wheel on cassette removal as there is no dearth of how-to videos on this topic floating around on the internet.
If you do not feel inclined to do this yourself, find a bicycle repair shop and they will do the job for you in under a minute. 972
Feel free to tip them!
Other than that, make sure you clean the wheel very well as there might be quite a bit of grease on it.
Step 2: Planning the Design
Since the wheel had 9 sections, I thought it was better to design my pattern based on that number, rather than try to force-fit a symmetry of 8 - even though the latter would have been easier and more convenient in the short term.
I used random pieces of (what I think is nylon) rope which were free, they were part of the packaging that had been used to secure some large items we‘d bought a long time ago. As it turned out, I had three different lengths, thicknesses, and styles of this somewhat similar textured white rope.
The longest piece was used for the main hanging structure. It was 64’ long and happened to be of the double twisted type. Now, I needed to divide this by 9 - since there were 9 natural sections on the heel - remember? That turns out to be a little over 7’ so I decided to measure out 9 sections of exactly 7’ and reserve the extra 1 foot of length to do a little whipping at the end. Instead of plain old whipping, I used it to do the twisted knot, which became the main theme for the macrame part of the project.
I designed it to have an industrial meets girly look, which is why I initially chose to incorporate washers and nuts into the macrame pattern, rather than beads. But then I remembered that I had a stash of pull tabs and decided to use those instead.
Step 3: Attaching the Rope to the Wheel
I folded the rope over and marked off 6” at the two ends since I had 1’ of extra rope to account for. I then tied the two ends together (at their 6” mark from their ends) to form a circle with a circumference of 63’. I then marked off 9 sections of 7’ each. 316