The many uses for bamboo are well documented, and of course I’ve spent some time outlining a few uses for bamboo beyond flooring which I personally find to be fascinating - and hopefully you found them to be fascinating too. I suppose I started out with this approach in order to frame (no pun intended here!) just how strong this stuff is, in addition to how plentiful and fast-growing it is.
But, I’m also interested in how it seems to spark creativity in innovative people, how it gets talented brains thinking in directions that maybe they would have considered. If one is looking for a material to allow for lateral thinking, then surely bamboo makes the cut in all sorts of areas. Apparently, biking is yet another area where bamboo has a direct application.
Take a look at this article about bamboo bike frames as published in the tech magazine Wired. Basically, it’s about a bike frame manufacturer in Las Vegas who literally grows his bikes in a field, since they’re made from bamboo. He grows them bonsai style, which means that they are ‘pruned’ into shape using barriers to enforce the right shapes and angles.
The bikes themselves aren’t cheap, since they’re made to order. So, maybe you don’t want to turn in your aluminum frame just yet. But, to me it’s the possibilities of this that are staggering. Imagine the stress levels that are placed on a standard bike frame.
Yet one of the things about bamboo as a bike frame, beyond how naturally lightweight it is, is that it absorbs vibration extremely efficiently, better than many types of alloy. It most likely helps that the bamboo frame is augmented by carbon fiber and titanium components too. Yet, many of the others components are also taken from natural materials.
