Project Bicycle Wheel: Part 1

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I had an unused bicycle wheel sitting around my apartment. I have been trying to figure out what I want to do with it. I have many ideas, but I am leaning towards making it into a hanging ceiling light.

Lately I have been spending a lot of time making paper beads. I decided I should put some of those beads to use and bead up the spokes of my wheel. The only thing I needed to buy was a spoke wrench. I went down to a local bike shop and picked up a Park Tool triple spoke wrench for less than $10.

There are 36 spokes on this particular wheel and the beads are about 1 1/4 in. long. I was able to fit 8 beads per spoke so I used 288 beads to bead up one bicycle wheel.

I am still deciding what I want to do about a light fixture. I could probably wire it up with a lamp kit, but I am thinking about another option of winding a string of small LED lights around the rim of the wheel. I also need to decide with what I want to hang the wheel/light. I may use an old bicycle chain or I may just use a some other kind of standard metal chain.

I still have a bit of work to do and some decisions to make, but for now here are some pictures of what I have so far:





I will post the final results when I finish the project.