MightyLegnano

Hello!

I'm going to visit and stay in Tasmania (Australia) in a few days and wanted to try to make my first bamboo bike there since in Greece we don't have this extraordinary material.

So I'd like to ask the experts here, is it possible for someone with no experience building bikes to make one? And if it is, can be done in free time with home tools?

Do you have any tips or suggestions?

xlDooM

I've never worked with bamboo, but how will you solve issues like threads on the BB shell? Headset integration? Seat post tube? It's not much good if you have to put steel or alloy piping in every piece of bamboo to make the inside round. You could of course take an old frame, cut out all the frame tubes from in between the joints, then replace only those sections with bamboo, but would it be worth it? I don't know.

paulkal

Yes, it is possible to build bike out of bamboo
Calfee even makes a bamboo tandem
https://www.calfeedesign.com/products/bamboo/

debit

I saw this a few years ago and thought it looked like a decent set of instructions.

HillRider

Possible? Yes. Practical for the rank amature? Probably not. Calfee has years and years of experience working with composits and carbon and if you look closely you realize there is a lot of carbon and metal in his "bamboo" bikes.

jolly_ross

I would have thought you could use bamboo "tubing" bonded into metal frame lugs - like the early carbon tubed bikes. Interesting that the instructions that debit posted show the tubes around the lugs rather than inside them. To me this seems more likely to result in splitting - but I suppose you can use bigger stronger bamboo this way.

Good luck with your project - come back and post some pics, even if you have problems it will be very interesting.

phulin

An example:

https://boobicycles.com/

dabac

Well, first you need properly seasoned bamboo(bone dry), then you'll need a jig to hold the pieces aligned as you work.
Then you will also need some metal fittings, like headset bearing seats, bottom bracket bearing seats, steerer tube and fork crown (unless you're going for a traditional fork), dropouts, and some way to sort out the seat post clamping.
Easiest is probably to get a donor bike, cut the head tube and bottom bracket sleeve out. If you're clever, and the donor bike fits you - build the jig around the donor bike before you cut it up.
Either bond them into some bamboo casing first, or use them as-is.
You can probably get the seat post to stick directly into bamboo, if you have a precision reamer to get a good fit.
Otherwise, bond a part of seat tube in there as well.

Then find a place that sells yachting or surfboard building supplies. Pick up some laminating epoxi and some micro balloons.
Visit a hardware store for breathing protection, gloves, some rolls of electrical tape. A gardening store for a some burlap, either cloth or strap.
You use the micro balloons to mix the resin into a thick gunk that you use as a filler to cast the bearing seats into your wooden parts.

Miter/fishmouth the cuts, sand to good fit. Mask off 2" from every joint, sand the "inside" surface for better adhesion. Use more micro balloon gunk to create smoother radiuses on the inside corners. When gunk has set, cut burlap into inch-wide strips and mix more resin. Take a roll of electrical tape, sticha needpe through it repeatedly to create a perforated tape. Wet the inside surface facing the joint with resin. Wrap every joint, out to the masked border with carefully overlapping burlap strips. Aim for a tapered thickness of something like 1/8"-1/4" over the actual seam. Apply more resin regularly to keep the burlap saturated. When finished, wrap every burlap/resin lug you've created with your recently prepared perforated electrical tape to remove excess resin.

FBinNY 

The bamboo certainly isn't a limitation since it's been done very successfully.

The issue is your overall mechanical experience. You don't necessarily need bike building experience, but good skills, including woodworking, measurement and fixturing, and the ability to work through problems as they arise are going to be critical.

Before you even start, you need to give some thought to how you're going to joint the bamboo elements, make (or buy) a fork, attach wheels, cranks and bearings. This can be easier if you use metal lugs, bottom bracket shell, and fork ends.

My point it that there's lots to think about before you jump in with both feet.

fietsbob

Metal gets used where BB, headset, and wheels go, joints in carbon thread, and epoxy,
Fabricate an allignment jig , the cost of the Shop to do it in, ie Real Estate Aquisition..

it does take a bunch of resources exceeding the cost of just buying a new metal frame
made by someone else.

by a Lot.

hope you find a bamboo bike frame maker while you are down there,

I'd think Cairns, and Darwin in the north coast a better place for sub-tropical Bamboo
than Tasmania , Surrounded by the Southern Ocean.

dnuzzomueller

erbacycles

I know / race with the owner, he uses one as his commuter.

HillRider

I would offer that it takes more money and resources than those needed to build an all-metal frame yourself

timvan_78

These guys had a selection of bikes with bamboo frames at MEC Bikefest in Vancouver last summer:
https://grassframes.ca/

Very light.

fietsbob

FWIW, 30 years ago, I managed to build a decent steel frame with a lot of, Socially, borrowed resouces.

Airburst

I'm having trouble understanding how building a bamboo frame costs more than building a metal one. A set of brazing kit runs to a couple of hundred pounds over here for torches, hoses, regulators, cylinders (or BOC membership to rent them) not to mention all the protective gear, the brass/silver solder, the flux and all the rest of the paraphenalia involved. The tubeset's another hundred and fifty, putting you on at least £350 plus the time and practice parts it takes to learn to braze. This is assuming you're doing a brazed steel frame, TIG welding kit is even more expensive...

A big roll of carbon tow is about £30 (can't remember where I saw it for that price, but I did) and the bamboo is around £60. Add another £50 for the epoxy and the dispensing pumps etc to work with it and you're on £140. Epoxy isn't anything like as difficult to use as brazing kit either, so you'd need less stuff to practice on, and the stuff's cheaper too, meaning the actual savings over a steel frame are probably a lot more. The joints aren't hard to make, and vacuum bagging adds more cost, but most of the stuff I've seen about bamboo bikes online says it's not necessary, although it allows for a better strength/weight ratio for the joints. There's plenty of stuff online about building bamboo bikes.

If you buy the headtube, dropouts, BB shell and any other hardpoints new you might pay another £30 for them, but that's stuff you'd still be buying for a metal frame, so it's not really an extra cost.

OK, you need a jig for bamboo, whereas you can do pinned lug construction for steel frames without one, but you can make the jig out of wood fairly cheaply if you're any good at carpentry.

All the prices for frame parts are rough ones from Ceeway.

What am I missing? Are oxyacetylene/oxypropane brazing sets and tubesets a whole lot cheaper in the US or something?

Maukaman

Building a bamboo bike with zero knowledge sounds dangerous. What about studying bamboo stress factors and age and type or strain of bamboo for the highest strength. Then comes the joining of the frame pieces for strength and durability. What if, all is built and your bike breaks in half during a ride and the bamboo goes into your body like a spear. That would be a fear I would have. If a class and master bamboo bike builder was present when making it, I might take a chance. If jumping in because you are thinking of building a bike using free or cheap materials interest you, then I would study more on material quality and the how to's. Sound kind of dangerous to ride if not built properly. Anyhow, just my 2 cents and something to think or worry about before you start.

Maukaman....

HillRider

I wasn't referring to just the equipment and tooling costs but to the knowledge and background needed to build any frame and bamboo in particular. Lots of amatures know how to build properly and safely with steel. Very few know anything about bamboo.

IthaDan 

The more I dabble in building the skills to make a frame, the less I see my skillset's shortcomings in the actual brazing/welding/fusing of the materials as much as I see my lack of tooling and skills on the mitering and fitment side.

I feel one of the most common misconceptions is that the majority of skill building a frame is required in the time when the tubes are hot. You can braze a frame in a couple of hours- it's the fitment and alignment that takes the most meticulous planning and execution.

It's really not about the material or the process used to unify the components, it's making them buggers fit together.

Sure, it's easy to make a frame, but it's damn hard to make a frame you'd prefer to ride if you were honest with yourself.

Here's a hint- you can make a frame with just a tape measure- there are some pretty complex angles and compound cuts to be made that need a lot of experience or a LOT of planning to get even close to right.

jsharr

AllenG built one I believe. He had a thread about it here somewhere. Not sure of which forum.

no1mad 

I'd wager that it is somewhere in the Framebuilders forum- there's all kinds of threads concerning building frames out of wood in there.

Airburst

There was a multi-page thread in there about how to build a bamboo bike for a while, it gets bumped every once in a while.

dabac

Depends on where you're starting from. People doing various DIY projects in metal, of various degrees admittedly, is overall far more common than people doing serious composites work. I've got at least half a dozen of friends who could lend me a hand in welding, or lend me the gear. And while not strictly required for this work, the only one I know who can do vac-bag is me.

So yeah, starting from a bare room, composite work may be cheaper. But if you start by asking around,(and striking lucky of course) metal work is likely to come out cheaper.

dabac

Doing anything with zero knowledge is dangerous, I don't see this as special from that point.

Bikes are easy. Admittedly, I would be quite intimidated by a bamboo fork, but a frame really have very clean load cases, entirely dominated by compression and tension. Go thick and be safe. Go skinny and live on the edge.

Surface area is the name of the game. Any kind of sensible tube diameter and "lug length" will give a huge surface area where the resin can bond to the tubing. As long as you get the fiber orientation and the thickness at least half right, you should be OK. My main concern would be bonding the dropouts and bearing seats.

squirtdad

here are some threads from frame builders....user search function and bamboo.

certainly doable, but not easy, quick. and just because austrailia has bamboo it doesn't mean that you can just go cutsome down and build bike......

https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...-Bike-Problems

https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...ghlight=bamboo

https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...ghlight=bamboo

Dilberto

I agree - do ALL your homework on working with Bamboo, before indulging in such a potentially frustrating and futile project. "Measure twice - cut once".....knowing the intricacies of Bamboo qualifies as the "measure twice" phrase.