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After seeing the Bamboo bike build thread I got a bit curious, as you do, and started searching for Bamboo Full Suspension bikes... they're pretty thin on the ground, but a few brave souls have gone there.
However, a real eye opener was this masterpiece, made out of plywood:
At this point, you may be thinking it'd be a right heifer...
But there's more:
In fact there's way more, but I can't be arsed to post all the pics, let alone craft a bike out of tree meat.
However, you may want to check out more from the insane genius behind it:
https://brenfinity.wordpress.com/2016/04/12/birch-plywood-96er-full-suspension-trail-bike/
Sooo, to get to the root of the matter, does wood have the potential to bring the trail alive, what properties can we hope for and will it save us from the complete environMENTAL collapse of the planet bought about by the silly herberts that live on it?
One word
SPLINTERS
Renovo just folded, so I'd say 'no'?
https://bikeportland.org/2018/10/04/out-of-cash-and-employees-renovo-calls-it-quits-290561
That renovo link sounds like a similar situation to what happened with the Lahar carbon gearbox DH bike... payments taken, orders not delivered, rather than a fundamental flaw with wood.
That is an ugly ugly beast Eddie and there's something about the ones in the gallery that makes them look like a children's toy for some reason, though i can't place what.
Betteridge applies here.
Bamboo isn't actually wood, it's technically a form of grass, hence it's relatively fast growth (conditions and species dependant) and fibrous structure.
As a material for bike frame construction bamboo is superior to pretty much all types of woods (IMO), it's strength to weight properties, it's generally got more parallel, uninterrupted longitudinal fibres which are good under tension, bending and torsion the fact that it grows quite quickly and best of all does so in a hollow, cylinderical form all makes it ideal.
Wood generally requires more processing to make it suit the application and produces heavier structures (relative to their load bearing capacity). You cannot help but admire the craftsmanship in the stuff posted above, but I'd sooner have a bamboo frame for actual riding...
Bamboo is a about as good a structural material as nature has managed so far...
Wood generally requires more processing to make it suit the application and produces heavier structures (relative to their load bearing capacity). You cannot help but admire the craftsmanship in the stuff posted above, but I’d sooner have a bamboo frame for actual riding…
and I'm guessing close to 60-70% waste for that frame design above? Bear in mind this is processed/finished too so a lot more before it got to that state, save it all and either chipboard of the fire?
I think anyone posting about the green aspects of wood frames has to post what they actually ride at the moment.
Me? Two Alloy hydroformed frames . 🙁
However, a real eye opener was this masterpiece, made out of plywood:
I love wood as a material. Nature's composite. But look at that first example shown. Plywood, so most of the fibres are not really pointing the right way? Bah!
The steamed, ammonia bent and laminated forms are better but fundamentally flawed from a green point of view by the decent epoxy needed to make them work.
I love the look of the 'high end' (even if they're not really other than in price) wood bikes but bamboo is a simple start, not the end of the developement.
Even bamboo bikes aren't particularly green. You can't grow the bamboo in the UK, so it needs shipping. Bamboo bicycle club are doing a bike with the Eden project to get some UK bamboo, but it's a one off iirc.
High end bamboo frames all have carbon lugs, so non recyclable and not particularly green.
Regards wood bikes, the only nice one I've seen were the Irish? Guys with the cnc'd ash road bike at Bespoked a couple of years ago - that was a lovely looking bike..... No idea if they are still going.
Edit: they were called Woodelo. ...
So combining a fibrous material with a type of glue or resin - no can't see that being a way to make frames
I think anyone posting about the green aspects of wood frames has to post what they actually ride at the moment.
Of the last few I have owned....
1 Carbon SC from 2012, sold on in full working order in late 2017, spotted out on the trails
1 Alu SC 2012 sold on in full working order in late 2017, spotted out on the trails
1 Carbon Rocky from 2014 sold on and still being ridden....
Spotting a theme here 😉
The comment being it's a lot of treated, manufactured wood in some big sheets that are being jigsawed up for the layers. as the frame is being build as a single layer rather than joined components.
As someone who designs and manufactures pretty fancy lightweight things out of plywood using a CNC machine, there’s no way I’d try to make a bike using a similar method or materials. You’d have to do so much extra work to get the tolerances tight enough because you can’t machine with sufficient precision and repeatability.
but fundamentally flawed from a green point of view by the decent epoxy needed to make them work.
Well yes no not really depending on your viewpoint ,did a few projects for some pretty big auto companies that proved out that you could replace carbon in automotive panels and there was a big study done on that one with a number of very green matrix systems one was 98 percent vegetable derived and had very good impact toughness
The reality is no one actually gave a shit but it was great free euro money
Seems they are...but they don't seem to explore the issue of price that extensively on the website 🤔
http://woodelo.colmanreilly.eu
but fundamentally flawed from a green point of view by the decent epoxy needed to make them work.
Whilst that's a point, it's not a particularly good one.
I burnt more hydrocarbons driving into work today than I will probably consume in the next 5 years of bike frame purchases (assuming I buy one carbon frame in the next 5 years).
Mat Hoffman built a couple of BMX frames from bamboo ply.
Just googling Mat for an image and discovered that BMX freestyle is going to be in the next Olympics.
I don't think we need to worry about the 'Green-ness' of bikes. When you consider the order of magnitude improvement over cars. There are larger problems afoot. A persons worry time could be much more efficiently spent on other issues.
I assume it's not, unless we are prepared to take significant hits in terms of cost and weight (based in part on the excitement above about a wooden framed road bike being sub 10kg).
Just gonna throw this into the mix...
"This new way to treat wood makes it 12 times stronger than natural wood and 10 times tougher," says senior researcher Liangbing Hu, from the University of Maryland.
"This could be a competitor to steel or even titanium alloys, it is so strong and durable. It's also comparable to carbon fibre, but much less expensive."
"It is both strong and tough, which is a combination not usually found in nature," adds another of the team, Teng Li from the University of Maryland.
"It is as strong as steel, but six times lighter. It takes 10 times more energy to fracture than natural wood. It can even be bent and moulded at the beginning of the process."
https://www.sciencealert.com/new-super-wood-stronger-than-steel
Even bamboo bikes aren’t particularly green. You can’t grow the bamboo in the UK, so it needs shipping. Bamboo bicycle club are doing a bike with the Eden project to get some UK bamboo, but it’s a one off iirc.
High end bamboo frames all have carbon lugs, so non recyclable and not particularly green.
You can grow bamboo here in the UK but with our colder climate it grows slower (but you also get a denser structure so there would be some benefits).
You can buy less evil epoxies, you can use more organic fibres (Hemp or Flax) in the joints rather than Carbon.
I believe you have to treat Bamboo poles in caustic chemical baths too to kill parrasites and help dry them out etc.
But fundamentally no, nothing ever has absolutely zero environmental impact. I still think Bamboo plantations and processing is a damn site less environmentally damaging than strip mines, smelting plants and steel mills but you probably do have to factor in the end product's full life cycle and whether or not it will be used for a couple of decades once sold, or binned within five. in most instances, baring catastrophic failure pretty much all bicycles should have a good long life...
At Bespoked they has a beautiful bike by Saffron bikes, titanium down tube and head tube, carbon seat tube and ash top tube running into the seat stays here, piece of craftmanship in the flesh:
http://www.cyclist.co.uk/news/4651/gallery-the-best-bikes-from-bespoked-2018
You can’t grow the bamboo in the UK,
Tell that to my back garden, which is full of the ****ing stuff....
I didn't mean literally, rather commercially for bike frames.......
Even then, companies like Boobikes who grow there own bamboo for their bikes only use 20% of there crop for actual frame production. I've no idea what they do with the other half, but as it's in Vietnam I'm sure there is a use for it.
I didn’t mean literally, rather commercially for bike frames…….
Commercial Bamboo grown in the UK tends to be used more for cheap fencing and garden poles etc I believe.
I'll agree that it doen't tend to be grown here for "Structural applications" like making bicycle frames, mainly because our climate doesn't yield rapid growth rates and large dimeters you get in more tropical locations.
But you could do it, you'd just have to persuade the grower/land owner to tie up their land for longer, and as noted accept a higher rejection/wasteage rates, so the cost would go up way above that of importing from abroad. But it's not necessarily a quality issue but a cost one.
The major advantage of Bamboo grown in colder climates should be a denser structure with more fibres per/mm^2 of cross section making it strangerer...
Of course similar factors apply with commerially grown timber where the advantages of lower climate yielding slower growth but with denser structure, has to be balanced off against cost...
Ultimately it does work out more ecconomic to import Bamboo from overseas, like most other frame building materials. maybe there's a gap in the market for someone really good with poly-tunnels?