The Sturmey & the Archer, Part 1

     It's a great thing when you can turn an idea into reality.  In fact, I think it's a good feeling just knowing you can turn an idea into reality.  It's kind of a special thing, simply because it's not always possible.  Money, resources, time, knowledge:  these can all be hurdles in realizing an idea.  I know about this all too well, as I have quite a backlog of dormant or completely spoiled projects and ideas.
     But lately I got lucky with one.  Ever since I got bit by the three-speed bug, as I described in this post, I've wanted to get my hands on my own Sturmey-Archer hub, rebuild it for the hell of it, lace it to a wheel and create an upright comfort bike.  For a few years now the idea of building up a cruiser has been bouncing around in my head, but there was no great desire to see it through.  This all changed when a coworker rebuilt an old Sturmey-Archer AW three-speed hub.
     I've got to be honest, two thoughts popped into my head.  On one hand I was surprised because I had created the idea in my head that three-speed hubs were too complex for me to work on and thus floated in the ethereal realm of things I should never try to actually fix.  On the other hand, I thought, "If he can do it, so can I!"  Shortly afterwards this same coworker picked up a few hubs for himself, took them apart, and we were both completely smitten with these machines.  The moment I first saw the box of cleaned parts, ready for reassembly, I fell in love.  A deep, almost forgotten part of me was stirred just from seeing the dark, precisely machined gears, shells and rings.  It reminded me of the kinds of things I would play with as a child, sneaking old "junk" parts out of my dad's things and pretending I was doing something with them.  Deep down, seeing the insides of these hubs made me very happy.
     A common saying in the world of bike mechanics is that you're only a real bike mechanic if you can build a wheel.  It's a sort of rite of passage.  I imagine half of that comes from the mystique surrounding the bicycle wheel and its importance to the bicycle itself.  I think the other half of that comes from the fact that they are a bit of a puzzle and commonly seen as complex.  But honestly, I think being able to rebuild one of these hubs is the sign of a good mechanic.  It may not make you a bike mechanic under the traditional bike culture "regime", but in my book it makes you a good mechanic period.  Just my opinion though.

One of the very first Sturmey-Archer hubs, from 1902.
Source

     Time to back up and provide some history, some of which I touched base on in the previous post talking about internally geared hubs.  The Sturmey-Archer company was formed in 1902, in Nottingham, England.  Their claim to fame from the start was the internally-geared hub.  In 1936 the AW "wide gear range" hub was introduced and proceeded to be the most widely-spread and famous of the Sturmey-Archer hubs throughout the years.  They are still manufactured today, and honestly the design has not changed as much as you may think.  Sadly in 2000, the company gave its final gasp for English air and was sold to SunRace.  The machines and tools used to manufacture these wonderful mechanisms for almost a full century were moved to Taiwan, where thankfully SunRace has been working to restore the glory and reputation of a brand which had fallen on hard times ever since the race bike craze of the seventies and eighties.  From what I've read, quality control during the final few decades of Sturmey-Archer's time in England was at an all time low, and they weren't quite living up to their name.  The modern hubs are supposed to be much nicer, although I've never worked on a bike with one.

An amusing Sturmey-Archer ad.  Not sure when it is from, my guess is sometime in the seventies.
Source

     I wanted a hub of my own, and I wanted an old one.  But there was one other requirement which was most important of all:  spoke holes.  A lot of the hubs manufactured for English bikes had forty spoke holes, as this was a common spoke count in England.  Unfortunately, there just aren't a lot of forty spoke hole rims available today, especially if you want something nice or in a modern size.  They exist for tandems, but they are rare and expensive.  The most realistic solution is to simply use the original steel rim that these hubs were laced to.
     Fortunately they also made a lot of Sturmey-Archer hubs with thirty-six spoke holes, which is a spoke count that rims still come in.  I tried finding a hub in town, but I could not even find one made by Sturmey-Archer, much less the AW three-speed hub.  So I was forced to resort to unfamiliar territory:  eBay.
     There are a lot of cool bike things on eBay.  The stifled economy has undeniably forced a lot of people to make money any way they can, and parting out old bikes seems to be at least somewhat lucrative.  I had a lot of options to pick from, and it didn't take long for one particular auction to shine through.  For $27, I could get everything I'd need to get started:  a Sturmey-Archer AW rear hub, a Schwinn-branded front hub, the shifter, cable, housing, and accompanying hardware to setup the shifting system.  Just the rear hub, sometimes without even the crucial indicator chain which connects the cable to the hub, were going for similar prices so this one seemed perfect.  The only bad thing was that the auction ended at six in the morning on a day I worked.  Showing unusual resolve, I actually awoke an hour early, sat on the page for an hour and sniped the winning bid ten seconds before the auction closed.  My first ever true eBay auction and it was a great success!

Everything I got on eBay minus the shifter and cable: the AW hub, a Schwinn-branded front hub,
a pulley cable guide and a housing guide.
Taken on July 10, 2013

     I was very excited when the package came in the mail, and was glad to see the hub dirty but in good shape.  This makes for impressive before-and-after shots!  I was itching to disassemble this hub for myself, clean it, and rebuild it for my own satisfaction.  There is a lot to gain for your soul in doing this.
     In the interest of not creating enormous, "novella" length posts I'll stop here and continue the story of rebuilding it in the next post.  Enjoy.