Dirt Cheap Plywood Bike Holder

Bike Stand

Commuting to work on a bicycle saves tons of dough, but sometimes storing your bike isn’t that easy. [Lewis] has been playing around with a few prototype bike stands and seems to have found the ticket, and it’s way cheaper –maybe even free, if you have the supplies. All you need is a single strip of plywood, and some wood screws, or wood glue! Well, that and a woodworking clamp.

The stand is designed to clamp onto 4×4 posts, or even a 2×4 stud. It’s great for storing bikes along your fence! It’s built purposefully snug, which allows you to add a small clamping force to make for a very rigid stand, suitable for even old steel-framed clunkers. Hooray for friction! Oh and if you’re happy with the location you could always get rid of the clamp and screw it in place instead.

Simple? Yup. Effective? Totally.

Oh and if it’s still crummy old winter where you live, why not beat the cold weather blues with an indoor bicycle roller?

24 thoughts on “Dirt Cheap Plywood Bike Holder

  1. I’m sorry. I really am, and I hate to be the guy yelling “this is not a hack!” But, seriously, how is this in the scope of Hackaday? This is handicraft. Does hacking even in the broad sense of the word that Hackaday embraces now include hacking away at wood?

    1. Plus the sensationalism of “this was free!”. No. It’s not free. It took the materials you had and the time it took to create it, combined with the tools you already had on hand with some expertise likely thrown in for good measure.

  2. Lean bike against fencing, glue plywood to posts and hang bike. Hmm…. Unless you hang the bike from the roof of something or above and out of the way, rather pointless effort.

    1. Before you said it I had not considered it. I own a telescopic-bike-hanger-pole-thing with rubber feet that clamps between roof and floor, the whole point of it is to use the space above the bike hanging at the bottom. If you don’t clamp it up out of the way, this IS kind of pointless…

  3. Can’t believe not one of you got that this is a work stand not just a stand got storing your bike. You can see it’s clamping the frame down too to hold it in place.

  4. If this a work stand, or at least lets you tweak the gear stops it’s OK. I am assuming such because of the vertical pony clamp. Something we all need to do now and then.
    Worthless on suspension bikes but it gives me ideas about doing it different.

  5. I’m an oldtimer from alt.hacks, and the article is referencing what we would call an Obligatory Hack. It’s small, it solves a problem, it’s rough but has the germ of a good idea there. Criticizing it for not being more “something” is weak and beneath people of character. There, go program that into your Arduino and smoke it.

    1. Actually, this does not even meet the Obligation level. It would not pass building code, yet its publication encourages dangerous repetition.

      This is not the same as “hey, I made something glow!” Something glowing does not fall on a kid or a pet. This hack is fighting gravity for a while. It’s not safe, it’s not good for the bike, and it doesn’t prevent someone from stealing the bike.

      This isn’t a C-; it’s an F. Free bike and carpenter’s clamps to whomever finds it.

      1. Not safe? Put on your stupid helmet and kneepads and get out of here… unless you were being sarcastic, then I shall be the one to hold the handrail on the way out.

  6. Wow, lots of constructive criticism here! A few thinking persons among you picked up on the fact that this is for working on bikes, NOT storing them. I’ve updated the post to make this more clear for the rest of you. Imagine trying to true a wheel or tune a derailleur while your bike is resting against a wall, on a kick-stand or is up high and out of the way. Then you will see the utility of this device: a bicycle *Repair* stand. If you’ve the space to screw this to a wall, by all means do! I don’t have a place out of the weather to do that, so I clamp my *Repair* stand to a post when I perform bike *Repairs* and maintenance.

  7. Suitable even for old steel frames? More like ONLY for old steel frames. I saw that clamp and I cringed. You dont want to do that on a carbon or aluminum hydro-formed frame. Thats a quick way to destroy a frame.

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