Wreath!

ClankWorks now has a rather untraditional, though very fitting, wreath in the front window.

Open Hours Friday!

We’re excited to announce that the ClankWorks shop will be open to the public tomorrow! Stop by and introduce yourself, have a cup of coffee or tea, and check out the inventory! Speaking of inventory… a wool capped crusader armed with an overactive sense of utility seems to have gotten loose in the shop and mounted some of our new stock of VO bags on Ben’s bikes late last night…

We’ll hope to see you sometime between 10AM and 8PM tomorrow. Keep an eye out for regular hours- they’ll be posted as we start to get our schedule nailed down.

For your consideration, a sneak peek:

FRIDAY NIGHT: Be sure to swing by Roboto on Wood St in Wilkinsburg to catch bands Birds & Wires, Onodrim (featuring our good friend Justin Lacey), and Blood Red. Doors at 7pm!

Pedal Power

Discovered an interesting thing in this morning’s blog checking. Turns out Copenhagen is taking one more green step this holiday season with a bicycle powered Christmas tree.

(Credit: Denmark Tourism Bureau)

It takes only 15 stationary bikes to maintain a full brightness of the 700 LEDs which cover the 17 meter tall tree.  Impressive and though provoking, especially as the article at CNET then dives into the eco and global warming side aspect.

Not covered in the article is the interesting highlight this puts on technology and improvements in various related arenas. Bicycles and generators have been around for the past century, but very infrequently saw use as electrical generation machines. Only after improving generation and light yielding devices, can we fall back on a primitive form of mechanical energy.

We have toyed with the idea of occasionally powering either of our two belt driven items (Leo and the yet un-named drill press) via bicycle. In this thought process, the issue of power must be looked at, and whether to convert the bicycle to electricity, then power the existing motors, or instead adapt the belt system. When written like so, it seems almost obvious that the most efficient system would be to skip the electric middle man. So why don’t we more often?

Maybe the answer to energy consumption does not lie in hydrogen cars and LED lights. Everyday simplicities brought to mechanical tasks use thousands of kilowatts each day. So maybe we should all hop on our bikes next time we want to open one of those automated sliding doors.