Today the lifecycle of a bicycle ended in a recycle with the old rims of my beloved slayer of crosswinds finding a second life as a drug ring leader dart ring light.

There is little I love more than tinkering and improvised repairs or projects, and a friend mentioning that a store-bought ring light costs up to 200€ gave me the perfect excuse to grab tools and one of the old rims and we whipped up this surprisingly good improvisation in just over an hour.

The total cost amounted to exactly 23€ for a LED strip (with remote control!) and a bit of metal from the hardware store, making this one of the rare cases where the self-built option is cheaper, faster and looks cooler.

In theory you could use any ring shaped object for this, it just so happens that a 28" bicycle rim has the perfect size and so that was what we used.

The first step is to remove all the spokes. Lacking any idea for what to built with them we decided to simply use a pair of wire clippers, quite the unexpected workout but still faster than unscrewing each of them.

harder work than I did all week
notice the expertly drawn rim maker decals I used to fake it till I made it and got actual H+S rims

With every last spoke pried from the cold, dead rim we went on to saw through a millimeter thick piece of steel with the slightly overpowered MAKITA, slayer of - well everything really.

or we would have if I hadn't forgotten the saw blades. After we used a hand-saw blade to no effect we improvised and simply bent the metal until it broke like the bones of our enemies.

The spoke holes proved to be slightly too tight so we widened them a little with this IKEA brand hole-widener (I think that's what they make 'em for) and simply screwed the bolts in harder than yo sis' las'night.

Finishing the rim job with a bolt-and-nut-job the ritual was done, the countless hours of adventure successfully transferred from the wheel into the enchanted ILLUMINATOR.

LET THE CELEBRATIONS COMMENCE!