THE BAMBOO
From Root to Top Tube:
Bamboo for Bike Frames and Sustainable Entrepreneurship
Slideshow: Bamboo Harvest in New Jersey
The advantages of building with bamboo have been recognized outside the western world for over a thousand years.
Watching Chinese bamboo masters construct their naturally-derived scaffolding 60 stories above the streets of Hong Kong, without a single screw or nail, was the inspiration for the Bamboo Bike Studio. In our own experience, bamboo has proven to be stronger, lighter, damper, more renewable and much easier to work with than steel. Below we detail the top four reasons we build bikes with bamboo.
Build-Ability
We try not to prioritize the advantages of bamboo, but for us, “build-ability” is number one. Working steel and aluminum into a bike frame takes the touch of a master welder, and shaping carbon fiber is a highly technical industrial process. Bamboo, on the other hand, is a natural material that requires only woodworking skills. This means that over the course of one weekend, you can learn how to cut, drill, glue, assemble and lash your very own bamboo bike frame, from scratch.
Performance
A great bicycle frame must be rigid enough to optimize the power you put into each pedal stroke, yet flexible enough to absorb the bumps, divots and vibrations of the road. Inside every bamboo plant, stronger-than-steel “power fibers” run through a matrix of flexible, foamy tissue. This unique combination, what we call “nature’s composite,” is strong enough to support plants that grow up to a hundred feet tall, but supple enough to survive hurricane winds. Bamboo is naturally hollow, lightweight and sturdy— when it comes to the rigorous and varied demands of cycling, no other material matches the versatility of bamboo.
Sustainability
Bamboo is a grass that grows so quickly (individual stalks reach maturity in as few as three years) and widely it is considered a weed. At least 18 species of bamboo grow in the tri-state area; about 1,000 species flourish worldwide in a variety of climates. Steel, aluminum, composites, and carbon fiber are non-renewable. Bamboo requires no refineries, mines, smelting or long-distance freighting— the result is quality bicycles, grown in our backyard.
Suited for International Bicycle Industry Development
The first two elements make bamboo the perfect material for building bicycles that can handle the rugged terrain of the developing world. Bamboo bikes are more maneuverable than traditional bicycles and can handle a heavy cargo load; crucial to farmers transporting goods from rural locations to urban markets. From a manufacturing perspective, the third and first elements mean bamboo has the advantage of being a locally available, renewable, low-technology resource; availability makes flexible production schedules easy and cuts down on inventory needs, while “build-ability” equals quick and efficient worker training and local repair.
Further Resources:
For more about our partnership with the Bamboo Bike Project, the Center for Sustainable Engineering at Columbia University, and the Millennium Cities to establish scalable, locally owned and operated bamboo bike factories in developing countries worldwide, please see The Cause page.
