Boy’s Bike Basket

My kids love going on bike rides.  I like to think it’s for the exercise, but I’m pretty sure its just because it’s like a free yard sale.  Along the way they find all sorts of treasures: flowers, rocks, screws, springs…  What ever catches their eye they have to stop and inspect it.  A lot of it ends up coming home with us.

The girls have an easy time toting their finds.  They have cute little wicker looking baskets adorned with flowers.  The boy on the other hand had nothing for his bike.  He either had to bum room in one of the girls’ baskets or shove his finds into his pockets, which sometimes became quite full.  He needed a basket of his own.

Have you ever shopped for a boy’s bike basket?  I found all sorts of pretty pink or white ones with flowers or Hello Kitty on them, but nothing he would ever be caught with on his bike.  Time to get creative.

I had a morning to myself one day and went to a local flea market.  That’s when I came across this old metal thermos lunch box.

Perfect for a boy’s bike, right?  Well, of course, not at first.

I let Brother in on the action for the painting part.  We covered the handle with tape to protect the red color then sprayed it with a primer to cover the lovely paint job evenly.

Next he sprayed it with Rust-oleum paint and primer in a black hammered finish.  Ah, there we go.  A bit more manly.

Now I just had to figure out how to attach it to his bike.  I wanted to just drill some holes and zip tie it on, but my husband suggested that the boy would probably want to be able to take it off in order to pack it into the woods to play.  I thought about it for a while and came up with velcro straps.

My mom used to have a sewing business making duffel bags so I called her up for left overs.  I asked her if she had any 1″ webbing and/or velcro that I could use.  She did have webbing, but only in red.  Red wasn’t what I was really after, but hey, I’m getting this stuff for free so I can’t complain.  Her velcro was used up, but she did have buckles.  The buckle offer was even better than the velcro.  They won’t get dirt and moss and stuff stuck in them too badly like velcro which holds onto everything.

I started by taping off the back of the lunch box and marking where the holes needed to be for the straps.  The Dremel came out next.  I got it suited up with a metal cutting disk made especially for cutting slots.

After that was done I used a couple other attachments to smooth it down so that there would be no burrs to catch the webbing.  The smoothing process ground away the paint a bit so another quick spray to touch it up was in order.

I cut the webbing into 20″ lengths.  This is longer than needed, but I have no idea what all he will want to strap it onto in the future.

I inserted the webbing into the stationary end of the buckle and pulled 2″ through.  I sewed back and forth across the webbing multiple times by the buckle then went at an angle up to the end of the folded over piece, sewed multiple times across there, then angled back down to where I started which made an hour glass figure.

The other end of the webbing was folded over about a half inch and sewed back and forth multiple times to make a stop for the adjustment side of the buckle.  I threaded the webbing into the top slot, out of the bottom, and threaded on the adjustment buckle.

Last thing to do was snap it onto the bike.

And there you have it.  A bike “basket” for a boy.

I’m sure he’ll get a lot of use out of this.  Hopefully no frogs or snakes will ever see the inside.