the coolest DIY project of all time
 

what is the coolest diy project ever? this is not a custom messenger bag thread- i want to see something like combat boots with spd cleats, or something of that magnitude. pics prefered. shoot

I wanted to see how hard it was to build my own bike out of bamboo. I read about them doing it in 3rd world countries and theres some company in Santa Cruz I think who makes them professionally. It aint all that pretty but it's cool as hell. Yes, all the tubes were replaced with bamboo.

http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g4.../bikeye005.jpg

how'd you do the head tube, seat tube and bottom bracket?

that is really sick man. dope cruiser bike. id love to bar hop with a bike like that!

that is really an awesome bike. interested in how you managed to use the BB and head tube.

um. that just looks like a bike wrapped in bamboo. look at those rear dropouts.

Does that seriously look like the geometry that you would find on any production bike?
They clearly cuts pieces from a regular bike, and used it on. They never claimed that it is 100% bamboo.

it's likely that he cut out the tube sections leaving a stump to use as a 'lug' to bond the bamboo to.

its a great idea if you need to recycle a mangled frame. if the frame is bent you could just chop the dropouts, bb, headtube, seat tube and make a bike from that with straight bamboo pieces.

Thanks for the props there eagle eye.:rolleyes: "wrapping" would have been way more difficult to do than use the acutal tubes. And as somebody else pointed out, where in the hell are you going to find a bike with that type of aggressive geometry?:thumb:

For the rest who were interested I did cut up an old bike and used about 2" of each pipe as an inner lug to mount the bamboo tubes to. I used expoxy thickened with micro-balloons to do the basic joints and taped, zip tied or whatever else to get them lined up. I used the TLAR method so it's not perfectly aligned but who really cares on a project like this. Then the joints are wrapped with 170lb test hemp and saturated with epoxy to secure them. I've worked with carbon and kevlar for a while so I'm pretty sold on the idea that the bike will hold. Here's a few pics of the work in progress.

This is what I started with.
http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g4...s/Stuff007.jpg

ended up with the pile you see in the corner
http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g4...lunaboo004.jpg

My tubing
http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g4...lunaboo001.jpg

After torching to remove as much H2O as possible. Really stiffens the tubing
http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g4...lunaboo029.jpg

All the joints drying.
http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g4...lunaboo035.jpg

The forks are just extended and wrapped with hemp. I didn't have the balls to run bamboo tubes there. I'm very seriously considering swapping over to a springer front end.

Sorry for the thread hijack, NAES

wow you win

Noah's ark was pretty impressive...

thats exactly the kinda thing i was shootin for- keep em coming

I'm really more impressed with the DIY bike stand...