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Bamboo Bike A Reality
markjugg writes "The American Bamboo Society has a page describing a working bamboo bike. This is a strong step towards making bicycling more sustainable, expecially in contrast to aluminum, one of the most resource demanding materials that exist."
Before you say that bamboo is weak and easily dismembered, here's a quote from the article:
But Flavio makes me see things differently: Bamboo is a resource of immense potential. And it is strong too. What makes it possible to build bicycles from it is that it is stronger than steel when strained in the longitudinal direction, 17% to be exact.
The main point of the article, of course, is that bamboo is much more environmentally friendly than metals while being extraordinarily plentiful.
i've seen this before on a show called gilligans island...
fact: microsoft > linux
Does any one see a set of brakes on this thing?
Yes, I know that some bikes have the brake mechanism in the hub of the rear wheel, but that doesn't appear in the photo either.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
They're probably just trying to bamboozle us...
Is the poster serious ?
r ustmaterials.html
Aluminum makes up 8 percent of the crust of this damn planet. http://www.csulb.edu/~rodrigue/geog140/lectures/c
expecially in contrast to aluminum, one of the most resource demanding materials that exist.
That's funny. Aluminum is indeed expensive to extract and process and that's why it's also the most recycled mineral(?) in existence.
This is all good until someone gets attacked by a Panda. Yet another version of "meals on wheels!"
Next week we can all read about the follow up stories from the America Plastic Association, the American Balsa Wood Collective, and the Society for the Reuse of Aluminum Foil...
Davak
Bicycling more "sustainable"? Haven't the environmentalists been trying to get us all to change to bicycles from cars supposedly because of the pollution that cars generate? And now not even bicycles are "sustainable" because they are "resource intensive"?
When does it end? Should I just stop using resources altogether (i.e. die?)
I won't post this anonymously precisely because I mean this quite seriously and not as a troll. Mod me down if you must.
Justin
I am a bike-geek as well as a Lunix-Geek:
The bike is a single-speed. That means it does not need gears, breaks or even a ratcheted freewheel (on the back wheel)... the pedals are connected directly to the rear wheel by the chain. If you want to slow down you use your legs.
Single-speeds are favourites of city-couriers, where there is a great advantage to have a light-simple bike. There is less to break (XTR gear systems are known to wear out after a few weeks of couriering).
As for Aluminum - dont get me started on that nasty harsh material. There has been a disturbing trend for wannabee bikers to adopt the freakiest lightest materials at the expense of all other properties.
For me, steel still has the edge over all these fancy materials. A steel frame will last for years of hard riding, and still feel as plush as the day it was first ridden.
I do a lot of mountain biking. I know there's some engineers who read /.
There are suspension forks which can be purchased for mountain bikes and some offer read suspension.
Assuming, the metal suspension fork is kept and a decent diameter bamboo tubing is used - would the bamboo have sufficient strength, durability and shock absorbing qualities to make a good mountain bike?
One way or another it would be interesting to try, that's for sure.
My Structural engineer friend told me that Bamboo is better than steel if used properly and since it just grows like grass it's basically free.
A bamboo bycicle would be neat but, as a natural product you aren't going to get uniform material to work with so every bike would probably be completeley different to an other. You wouldn't be able to mass produce these things.
Doing a little googling I found this report about using bamboo instead of steel in reinforced concrete.
any way that's my bit out of the way.
A
This is a strong step towards making bicycling more sustainable, expecially in contrast to aluminum, one of the most resource demanding materials that exist.
It's a cool looking bike, but there's a few things worth mentioning. First of all, compared to driving cars, any form of bicycle is the most sustainable mechanized transport imaginable. I think if we have to worry about the fifteen pounds of metal used for each bicycle, then we might as well give up all hope that humans can survive on the planet. Because if things are that bad, the millions of people buying SUV's are going to put us over the edge in no time, no matter what material we fashion bicycles out of.
Secondly, the summary says that aluminum is "one of the most resource demanding materials that exist."
That statement strikes me as terribly disingenuous, if it's not also mentioned that recycled aluminum does away with about 95% of the energies needed to extract aluminum from ore. And besides, how many bicycles are actually made from aluminum or fancy alloys/composites? No bicycle I've ever ridden, I know that much. And certainly not the bikes that are going to be produced for developing countries.
The real question here is how much extra work goes into fabricating a bamboo bike, vs. mass producing a steel-framed bike that's totally useful to anyone who's not a racing enthusiast. Because I would bet that making bamboo bikes in quantity would take fivefold or even tenfold the labor of stamping out cheap steel-framed bikes. And if that's the case, bamboo bikes could never be within reach of the poor.
Given how eco-friendly a steel-framed bike is, it's probably counterproductive to devote attention to an alternative that would probably be fundamentally unsuited to mass production.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
This may seem like a pain, but fixies are actually extremely popular among a certain bike subculture, particularly urban bike messengers. The famous and wonderful Sheldon Brown has an extensive collection of articles on building and riding fixies.
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
Particularly in the orient, but in other places as well when times were either hard or when metals were subject to civilian restriction, such as during WWII. Wooden bikes have also been used at times.
They don't work very well. Bamboo is strong, but it's also very flexible. This is also the reason that molded plastic bikes ( as opposed to fiber reineforced plastic bikes) have never worked. If a plastic is ridid enough to make a good bike frame it's also to brittle.
Aluminum is energy intensive to originally produce, but the cheapest and easiest metal to recycle. It also doesn't rust away to unusable oxide, making aluminum the most green of the metals in the long run.
In any case you'll still find most bikes made of steel, because iron is common, easy to smelt, easy to turn into high quality steel, easy to recycle, cheap, and, while not necessarily the highest performing material for a bike frame in any particular measurment, it is, nonetheless, in the top 90 percentile in every attribute needed to make a good bike frame.
What's more, you need very little steel to make a bike whose usable lifespan may be measured in decades. I have two ridable children's trikes over 100 years old.
There's simply nothing about bamboo bikes that make them more sustainable than a steel bike, and they're nowhere near as good.
KFG
Sweet!
Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them? --Abraham Lincoln
One of the primary reasons (even beyond weight and durability) why the SCA uses rattan instead of bamboo for weapon shafts in its mock "heavy" combat is that it does not splinter but instead kind of "pulps" when it breaks. The concern on the battle field is that splinters could easily be driven through helm eyeslots. There's enough risk in taking a blow or falling in armor during normal fighting that extreme hazzards like that are hardly welcome.
After all, we can't have anyone getting hurt during a war, can we?
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Bamboo is also flamable...which leaves out common activities like jumping through flaming hoops, or over a burning tar pit. Being made of wood, I really wouldn't want to ride a bamboo bike while juggling chainsaws. There are lots of arguments against bamboo bikes.
Personally, I would love to see more natural fibers in bikes. Rather than making the whole bike from bamboo, making just a few pieces helps reduce the consumption from the titanium mines.
Sig: Flamable materials are dangerous, which is why I always make sure the products I buy are clearly marked as "inflamable."