Building a Mountain Bike Frame from Bamboo

Craig Calfee had spent a decade building top-end, carbon fiber bike frames. So when his dog Luna dragged a piece of bamboo into the yard behind his bike shop, he wasn't exactly looking for a new foundation for high-performance mountain bikes. But that's exactly what he found.

'From that point on,' Calfee says, now 10 years after building his first bamboo bike, 'it has just been about learning about bamboo and being amazed by it.'

There were, of course, plenty of skeptics. People who told Calfee that bamboo wouldn't hold, last, or cooperate. And, at first, they were right. But when Calfee Design shifted from black bamboo to smoked bamboo, the wood stopped splitting. Now some 150 mountain bike enthusiasts, particularly trail riders, enjoy the US$ 2,695 frame. 'No matter how you build it, it is going to be very smooth riding,' Calfee says. 'It fully absorbs the bumps on the trail.'

Each frame, weighing 1.8 to 2.2 kilo, takes 25 to 30 hours to build. There is no mold. Bamboo shafts are bonded with mitering, glue as well as a hemp and epoxy wrap.

For people in Asia, the strength of bamboo is no secrete, daily construction workers balance on bamboo construction which would be impossible to support there weight if it was made of steel pipes. Maybe soon we will see a young Thai entrepreneur who will starts to produce bamboo bikes in Thailand.