Bikerumor: The world's most advanced bamboo bicycle
Cycling tech site Bikerumor features our aero bamboo road bike created for London's Design Museum.
Bamboo Bicycle Club produces a wide variety of DIY bamboo frame building kits for people that want to build their frame themselves. Although they are not usually the ones building the frames, they decided they wanted to show off a little by illustrating what was possible with the renewable resource. The bike they made out of bamboo is unlike anything that had ever been done before.
"The Bamboo Aero Bike is so much more than just epoxying a bunch of bamboo together. Through a careful selection process, they chose tubes based on the size and thickness they needed and split to reform pieces with epoxy into aerodynamic seat, down and top tubes. Custom pre-cut composite lugs are made of flax fibre and internal cable routing keeps things clean and out of the wind."
— Trey Richardson, Bikerumor
Claimed to be the most world's advanced bamboo bike, the aero road bike was created to be a part of the Cycle Revolution exhibition in London's Design Museum. If the bike had no visual signs of the bamboo, it could likely be mistaken for being made out of carbon. The bike will be on display until June.
With NAHBS coming up next month, many of us, myself included, think about how fun it would be to craft our own frame. Fortunately, Bamboo Bicycle Club has developed several kits in various sizes for do-it-yourself'ers to build their own frame with minimal tools. For those who want to do it from scratch, they offer an in-house workshop at their London headquarters where your imagination is the limit.
"If the bike had no visual signs of the bamboo, it could likely be mistaken for being made out of carbon."
— Trey Richardson, Bikerumor
With bamboo, there is a lot less margin for error when compared to any metal that requires the use of a torch as the bonded joints are going to be consistently strong so as long as you follow instructions. All of the instructions in the world could not teach you how to weld or braze from cold turkey. Each kit comes with size specific tubes according to what frame size you ride, but you still need to cut them to proper length to obtain the desired fit and geometry.
There are several kits available including a road, mountain, commuter, fat, and BMX bikes and even a tandem! They also give you an opportunity to sign up for a finishing and assembly workshop should you desire to paint and stain your new natural rig or need help assembling it.
Originally published: Bikerumor, 23 January 2016
Author: Trey Richardson
Original article: Read on Bikerumor