Basil can never have too many bags, right? I own a slew of Brompton bicycle bags (well, three, and the Brompton “basket”), and have made quite a few, too. Each has its place, but no one is perfect, and there’s always a new idea to play with.
I started with a T bag frame.
This time around, I wanted bag that was as tall as a Brompton T bag, but smaller, narrower, and closed all around with a zipper. So I took the T bag frame apart, leaving only the center section (which I promptly forgot to photograph just after the destruction).
Then I bent 1/2 inch copper tubing into a more-or-less pear-like shape (well, half a pear, anyway).
Once one side was done, I traced the shape onto cardboard, so that I had a fighting chance of replicating it for the other side of the frame.
This sort of thing is much better done in a workshop rather than on a kitchen floor. I managed to pull a muscle in the process of bracing the tubing, and didn’t get the sides perfectly symmetrical. “Hand made” has its flaws.
Then I stuffed each newly-bent side into the T frame. The resulting bag frame is not perfect, but it will do. The frame is not substantially less wide at the top than the original T frame, which is what I had in mind, but it is so at the bottom. Without tools, I wasn’t able to bend both ends as drastically as I would have preferred.
It will do, though. Now all I need is the bag.
(For those new to Brompton bags, each clips to a luggage block on the Brompton bicycle frame. In most cases, the luggage slips onto a removable inner frame, like the ones above, which have the mate to the luggage block built into the back side of the lower frame. This allows one frame to support a variety of bags — and also allows for a a lot of amateur experimentation.)