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.

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. "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?

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.


ended up with the pile you see in the corner


My tubing


After torching to remove as much H2O as possible. Really stiffens the tubing


All the joints drying.


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...