Bike Rim Mini Mega Tree

I made a Mini Mega Tree with an old bike rim and some other things I had laying around.

Materials Needed:

Bike Rim- whatever size you want

PVC- 3/4in

Miscellaneous Bolts

Christmas lights

Zip Ties

S Hooks

Some scrap metal

Tools Needed:

Drill

Wire Cutters

Crescent Wrench

To figure the length of pipe you want (or the height of the tree), I doubled the diameter of the rim to get the height of the tree. So the diameter of my rim is 16 inches and the height is 32 inches. So I cut the PVC pipe to 32 inches.

You need to strip the bike rim so there is no tire or tube. All the bolts for the wheel are needed. Take all the bolts off of the rim. Next take the piece of steel and make a bend in it so it will align with PVC pipe to attach it to. The piece I used already had holes in it but you may need to drill holes. Bolt the piece of steel onto the rim using the bolts attached to the rim. Once it is on, place the PVC pipe piece on to the bolt and park where you need to drill the hole for your bolt to bolt the pipe on. Place pipe onto the rim and place bolt through the metal bracket and the bolt and tighten.

To attach the lights you need to place the S Hooks at the top of the pipe (I placed them as I went). Start at one spoke and ziptie lights to the rim, (make sure you start where the lights begin) run the light strand up to the top of the pvc place the S hook and hook the lights on, stretch lights back down to rim ( I skipped a spoke so it came out to only need one strand but you could go every spoke) continue around the spokes until all lights are attached, Note: you do not want to stretch the lights to tight so that it leans to one side the first half may lean but you should be able to correct it when attaching the second half.

After the lights are attached cut the zip tie excess off. Now you can place it wherever you want it. To place the tree there was a piece of steel welded to the bike rim so I just drove a piece of rebar into the ground and slid the tree over the rebar. Then plug the tree in or add it to a light show.