Wine Box to Cruiser Bike Basket

From Crankbased

Sadly, I continue to justify being a hoarder.

I recently became obsessed with adding a box to the back of my cruiser. I love the old cruiser and I use it a lot for getting around town on lazy days. With the beginning of summer lurking and thoughts of getting out to the local farmers market, I thought the addition of a wooden basket would be useful, kinda cool, and fun to build. I had a metal rack for the rear in my stash of bike junk. I dug that out and bolted it on with spare hardware from my scrap hardware bins. Now I needed to find the right box.

From Crankbased

I looked on-line for an appropriate box but didn't see anything that I wanted that was also at a price I was willing to pay. I checked the two big local hardware stores for a pre-made box and struck out there as well. I had planned to start checking the antique stores for a nice, worn box with character. If I struck out there, I thought I could build one pretty easy using some scrap cedar planks I had stashed in the garage..... than I remembered... Up on the shelf in the garage was a nice little wine box that was not being used to it's fullest potential. I dug it out, threw the junk sitting in it back on the shelf, and began sizing it up.

I tried setting it on the rack length-wise first, and then crossways. I liked the width (13") but didn't like the length (too long). I needed to shorten it, without loosing too much of it's character and still maintain a useful size -- Not too big, not too small. 13 inches square seemed like a good size. Big enough for two six-packs and a little extra. I drew a line on all three sides 13" from the end, and took the circular saw to it.

From Crankbased

From the scraps, I knocked out the end piece and gathered up the nails to reuse them. I hammered the end piece in place and sized up the box sitting on the metal rear rack. I kinda like it. I just needed to find the right way to mount the wooden box to the metal rack. I went back to my scrap hardware bin and found a little bracket, some screws of the right diameter and thread, and also some nice big washers. I also decided to re-purpose an old belt I've had since high school that no longer fit. I drilled a couple of holes in the leather and added the belt to the mounting hardware. Not sure how necessary it will be, but it can be used to secure the load if needed.

So that's it. A fun little project completed entirely with junk I had hoarded in the garage.

From Crankbased