Sunday, May 10, 2015

How do I build a bamboo bike – the search

First off, with 4 bikes (a Jamis 29er for mountain biking, a custom Whisper Cyclocross bike, a rebuilt single speed and a rebuilt fixie) I was not sure I could justify building another bike – even if it was a bamboo bike.  My wife was actually pretty supportive of me doing it, but I was feeling excessive.  Then I learned my daughter fit on my single speed  - and with my son soon behind, all my bikes would have reasons to be rode. I had excess inventory!

So I started doing some research on how to build a bamboo bike.

I found some great resources on Instructables.  Here are a few


Outside of instructbles, this was a great reference

I found some references that used old bikes to handle much of the structure including the seat and wheel stays.  I wanted to start a little more from scratch.

Then I found a blog that opened up the world a bit

From there I could find places to buy parts and bamboo as well as other great info.  The most interesting find in the blog was a place to buy bamboo specifically for bike building


While searching I found out there were places to buy bamboo bike frame kits.  For my first attempt I liked the idea of starting from a kit.  I would learn some of the basic and have a place to get the right materials.  At the time I wrote this, Calfee was still talking about kits, but did not have one yet.

Here are the few I found…

Based on price and the fact that I found Bamboobee.net via kickstarter (I am an entrepreneur) I leaned toward Bamboobee. 

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