How to get at the chain on a Dutch bike with a full chaincase

It may be winter still but the snow has left (again) and you can start thinking about doing some maintenance. My wife sometimes trusts me to work on her Dutch bike, which features an annoying to remove chaincase which also happens to be quite good at keeping most moving parts away from dirt, water, salt. A while back I was trying to find out how to remove the chaincase on my wife's Dutch bike. The info out there was sparse, even in Dutch. So I had taken some photos with the idea of posting them so they may this help someone else out there. Then I promptly forgot about them. Until now. So I'm reviving this for your benefit. You're welcome.

You don't need to flip the bike over, but for these photos I did to get a better view.

There are at least a couple varieties of chaincases on Dutch bikes. This one is traditional with frabric covering a metal frame. The frabric is held together with a wire woven between hooks alternating along the edges of the fabric.

Undo the wire by pushing it away from the hooks. Don't push so hard that you bend the wire. It has to maintain some stiffness so you can put it back together.

Wire undone and exposes the chain and crank so it can clean them or replace the chain. A chaincase will keep things fairly clean, but eventually even a fully-covered chain will get dirty.

Pull up the little doohickey that holds together the two sides of the fabric.

Pull back bend of the metal chaincase so it separates. It might need a bit of tapping from a wrench if it's stuck. Just look at that chain—still quite clean and no rust. It's just the cheap metal frame that's been rusting a bit. Salty Toronto winters are hard even on Dutch bikes, but particularly on bikes where all the bits are naked to the elements.

If you ever need to change the tire or wheel, remove the nut and pull the braces to get the wheel loose. You may also find you need to tighten the chain by tightening that small bolt that points towards the back. This is a chain tensioner.

Undo the arm for the coaster brake. At this point you'll be able to remove the wheel and change the tube, tire or fix something else such as a broken spoke (thankfully rare on a sturdy bike like this).

To get it rideable again, reverse the process. Put the wheel back on and tension it. Fix the coaster brake arm back to the chainstay. Slide the metal curve back onto the end of the chaincase. You may need to tap it gently with rubber mallet.

Pull the flaps back together and start weaving the wire back on between the hooks. It can be difficult to pull the plastic fabric all the way back. Be persistent but careful so that you can get the snap shut. The snap is the hardest. It isn't crucial but it will expose more of the chain to the elements.