There is no doubt that necessity is the mother of invention! Otherwise, this Coimbatore-based interior designer wouldn’t have come up with wooden bicycles. Last year, when P K Murugesan, 33, searched for a new frame for his bicycle that was damaged during transit, he couldn’t find one. This led him to design a frame using engineered wood or plywood. In the process, he decided to modify his bicycle completely using wood, except for the crucial parts such as the handle bar and the seat.
“I started it as an experiment. Also, as I had interest in environmental issues, I thought making a wooden bicycle would attract people’s attention, as they are one of the most important ways to tackle vehicular emissions,” Murugesan said. As he expected, when Murugesan took his wooden bicycle out for a ride, it grabbed people’s attention. “People started stopping me on road and asked me about the cycle. Many wanted one made for them,” he said.
It took Murugesan around 15 days to sketch the design and fabricate the first wooden bicycle. “It cost me around 25,000 to make the first one. But I am planning to improve the design, which would bring down the cost to 18000,” Murugesan said. He also has plans to register his design and start a firm. In the first wooden bicycle he made, Murugesan used the tyres of city terrain bikes, which are suitable to ride only on paved surfaces. “In the forthcoming design, I am planning to use multi-terrain bike tyres which would be suitable for long rides too,” he said.
(Except for the headline nothing has been edited in this article)