Now that it is more or less 1 year ago since we returned from our trip, we finally made the slide show. So we could show everybody who could manage to participate how beautiful our world is – or at least the part we traveled through. Dear friends, thank you all for coming! Dear friends from abroad, we keep the memory alive. To have the possibility to share even the smallest part of your life, there in the countries remote now for us, was a unbelieveable experience…
Nevertheless, daily life has us again, not easier than the travelling life, but difficult in another way. Nevertheless, it is very nice to know where you will sleep at night… One of the smaller problems was that Agata wanted to have a ladies bike because riding her quite big travelling horse was difficult when it came to business clothes on her way to work. No problem, I decided to buy her a fine old boneshaker – a prewar WANDERER ladies bike. The intention had been to simply buy it, overhaul all the parts in need of it and attach a pair of white balloon tyres. Well, what I got in the end had two colors – black and rusty red.
I came o the decision to add one or two layers of laquer, which in the end led to full dismantling, then painstakingly documenting the size, colors and location of the decals and decors (who ever wants to do the same simply email me when you have questions about that). A very good source of how it must have looked is http://www.maw-sr2.de/ where a Wanderer of similar age is shown in very good condition.
When doing the laquering, preparation is everything. So the different parts were cleansed from grease and dirt, then sand off all of the rust and loose parts of the old paint. The laquering started with some primer (NEVER, NEVER EVER USE THE HAMMERITE SPRAY LAQUER FOR THAT!!!!! You end up with flushing down all the paint you before so carefully attached…), I used zinq paint which is quite good against corrosion and – VERY IMPORTANT! – is very neutral against the top coat laquer.
To complete the laquering, I went to a local paintshop for the pinstripes. For them, the photos of where the pinstripes had been located was very useful , although they tended to interprete it more freely than I had hoped.
Parallely, I had to find some 30´s-stuff. As it came out, the bike is from 1935 – which I found out via frame no. and the chart found on this site: http://www.fahrradsammler.de/index.php?article_id=163. They also linked me to a website where I found out about the history of the Wanderer bikes – an old saxon company.
Thank god there´s Ebay 😉 I even found a leather tool box from tyre manufacturer Continental especially branded for the Wanderer. Also, the prewar bikes were not equipped with illumination by the manufacturer. The lights attached to the bike when I bought it were from around the 60´s – far too young for my idea of how it should look like! Especially the front light now fits much more to the bike´s style – A light for fitting on the carbide lamp holder, with a switch for either battery or dynamo use. You see, parking lights are no invention of today…
Concessions, however had to be made concerning the saddle. The old one from Wittkop was far too much destroyed to renovate it. So I had to find a similar looking one. A Holland Bike Saddle form the company Lepper from around the 60s will do it as long as I haven´t found an original one.
Alltogether, I am sure there is enough non-authentic stuff on the bike that would scare a real bicycle collector. But I am by and at large satisfied wth the result of nearly 150 working hours (more or less 4 months, one day work a week), and Agata simply loves it 😉
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