About 6months ago I had a crazy idea that I would try and build a bike.
And somehow I actually ended up with something that exceeded all expectations:

I’ve just finished my first ride without it failing spectacularly, so thought I’d share how it all happened…
Bamboo frame build blog.

Hopefully I can inspire others to give something mad a go!

I would have given up long before the end if I’d had the same experiences. Good on you for seeing it through. I hope it rides well and lasts. Anyone who says you could have bought a better frame for the same money is missing the point.

Tell me that’s just red duct tape 🙂

Congratulations on getting a finished thing. Making stuff is incredibly difficult but also very satisfying.

Product development, even of a tried and tested design like yours, is hard work and shouldn’t be undertaken by anyone not prepared to ‘keep-on-plugging-away’

It takes skill and determination that many folks don’t have – Congratulations again ;o)

Hahaha, No it’s not duct tape.
It’s just orthopaedic casting tape coated in a decent load of epoxy resin.

It was a challenge for sure, and I was prepared for it all just to be a farce.
Am super happy it has worked out tho :).

Cheers all :).

You have a gt triple triangle design.

You have a gt triple triangle design. I think your mad.lol.

Colour me impressed (that you’re still married).

Top project though, and looks like you made 95% of the right decisions. Not convinced by the mdf dropouts, especially as they’re not fully wrapped, but if it works then all power to you.

The dropouts are marine plywood, but definitely get where your coming from. The original alloy plate I wanted was way to hard for me to do with basic tools.
Picking a hardwood board to use would possibly have been better, but it would risk shearing along the grain.
They are well bonded to the Bamboo, and well wrapped, and have a decent coating of epoxy on them and the epoxy also goes onto the alloy on the dropouts.
So I’ve done everything I can to re-enforce them and make sure it’s as solid as it can be.
Worst case I can always chop them out and completely replace them with something else.

Tripple triangle was by mistake rather than design, but serves me right chopping too much off the toptube!

Great work. Having just read the blog on the building of it, i’m pretty keen to know how it rides…does it feel, well, like a normal bike?
Congratulations…just don’t go hucking off any large drops…just in case!

Ah, don’t know where I got mdf from, sorry. It looks tough as old boots to be fair. You’ll probably break before it does.

Top stuff, well done

So far I’ve only done 22miles on her.
10mile road commute to work, with ~8laps of the local pumptrack.
12 mile night ride in the woods with ~2k ft of climbing.

First impressions were that the riding position is good and power delivery is good. But it’s definitely got some lateral flex.
It was a bit of a handful on the pumptrack, but knobbly tyres, soft suspension, and long reach aren’t going to be great.
I can also manage to get the tyre to buzz the disc-side chainstay if I push it hard into corners.
Looking super closely I think the rear wheel is slightly out of alignment (~1-2mm to the disc side by the BB). The good news is that the syntace dropouts have offset options that can allow for rear wheel alignment corrections! So I’ve ordered a 0.5mm offset one already.

The off-road night ride was a much better test.
I felt comfortable enough after the first climb and downhill section to just ride it the same speed as my old hardtail. I even hit all the jumps and berm gaps that I normally would first time. Also took it on the rough natural DH trails and it really rode well.
Climbing position is excellent, it does take a bit more effort to get the front wheel up. The only negative was that my weight wasn’t as much on the back wheel, so slippy roots took some concentrating to get traction right.
Good news is that I didn’t noticed the lateral flex much while riding it in the woods, I think it was once when a hitting very off-camber line.

Also I noticed some chain slap so I need to get some rubber on the chainstay quick, and maybe a strip on the downtube as did hear a couple of rock strikes.

All in, just tiny niggles.

Ten thumbs up. Is the flex in the joints or the wood/both? Or not sure?

I’ve a feeling the flex is in the actual Bamboo.
I specifically wicked epoxy into the joints after the first flex test, and added extra wrapping onto the downtube at the headtube and bb.
Visually it looked like it was flexing from the downtube, but that’s got a 5mm wall thickness and super solid. So now I think it’s possibly from the smaller toptube.
Which would make sense considering that when putting power down it it doesn’t feel sluggish.

But tbh I am guessing a bit, so happy to be corrected or take suggestions to try.

I have toyed with the idea of adding another cross brace from halfway down the downtube up to the seatpost/toptube joint. Think I’ve got a big enough spare section of thick wall bamboo downtube to do it if I really wanted.

This is 🤬🤤

TAKE MY MONEY !