DIY Bike Roller-Crimper

So I made a bike roller-crimper to help manage all the quack grass around my place. It works great, and if you do it while the grass is flowering in mid to late June, it works so good that it's almost like magic.

Used alongside the traditional rope-and-bar foot-stomper crimper, I can get almost 100% coverage of an area, including tight up to row edges and fence lines, and in between and around closely spaced trees and shrubs.

For safety it definitely needs a cover over the roller (I have one in the works), as well as rubber bumpers on the sharp corners.

Handling on flat ground and up/down light to moderate slopes works without any problem. Side-hilling is not easy but it's doable once you get the hang of how it handles.

For the next version, I think I would like to build it based off a completely different style of bike, the penny-farthing. Not sure how it would actually handle without trying it out, but I think I would like it to have a near vertical headtube angle so that the roller doesn't want to tip from side to side at all when you turn the handlebars, and also for me to be able to keep my bodyweight mostly over the roller for a better crimp. I imagine it would be kind of like a stair stepper machine at the gym, or like a little kids tricycle. I would also at some point like to try making a front wheel drive version using a flexible rotary-shaft power transmission.

Previous iterations (also pictured) were the first attempt - a super heavy concrete filled crimper that was too unwieldy, and the second attempt via a push-mower type of setup using the same roller as the bike (too hard of work to use, and not enough weight on it to crimp). Also pictured is my traditional stomper-crimper which I've had for years and still use all the time.

How heavy is the roller?  Is it filled with something or did you get that sort of impression just with the weight of the steel plus part of your body weight?  Are the angle iron bits sharpened?

Mike Haasl wrote:How heavy is the roller?  Is it filled with something or did you get that sort of impression just with the weight of the steel plus part of your body weight?  Are the angle iron bits sharpened?

The roller wheel isn't filled with anything and it's probably 40 to 50 pounds. The fork and the rest of bike probably add another 35 pounds, and I'm about 150lbs. So the total weight is less than 250 lbs. The angle iron blades are sharpened about as sharp as I could get them without putting an actual point on the edge (so it doesn't cut the grass), so like 1/64th of an inch or so. Sharp edges definitely help concentrate the force of the crimp.