On Sep 16, 7:51*pm, "MikeWhy" wrote:
See:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsaMb7Wuinw

I actually looked into getting bamboo of a quality suitable for making
a bike and it was basically no-go. The available stuff all looked like
scaffolding rejects, or if strong enough was way too big. Guy in one
of those former Iron Curtain countries made a carbon bike and then a
bamboo bike, both successful, but he wrote later that -- after so much
trouble getting decent bamboo -- if he did it again, he would grow his
own! -- AJ

"Andre Jute" wrote in message

...



As noted elsewhere, I have considerable experience in structural
reinforced plastics. As a reminder to those who think the carbon in
carbon fibre is the important component, no it isn't. The important
component is the epoxy, the plastic. The carbon fibre by itself is so
brittle as to be useless. It is only in combination with the plastic
(epoxy) that the carbon becomes useful in any engineering sense.

The largest and most successful structure I designed and built was a
68ft transocean racing yacht in moulded wood or, if you will, in wood-
fibre-reinforced plastic. That impressed the virtues of laminated wood
indelibly on me.

In a contemporary thread we hear much about the troubles carbon fiber
rims are liable to. It doesn't take a genius to see that, in every
possible engineering sense, a wooden rim is superior to a carbon fiber
rim.

Yes, I know, the wooden rim brakes badly in the wet, is a high-
maintenance item, and ultimately cannot be made as light as a carbon
rim. So? Do carbon rims brake well? Or, when you've made the carbon
rim lighter than the wooden rim, doesn't the carbon rim instantly
become a disposable item with short service life?

In particular, wood is superior in its failure mode, in exactly the
same way as steel is superior to other bicycle materials in its
failure mode. Wood has more in common with good steel, in that when
properly laminated into shape, wood is about the same strength as
bicycle steel tubes, though it might be made to weigh the same as
aluminium or less. But laminated wood fails as progressively as steel,
not suddenly and catastrophically like carbon reinforced plastic. Wood
just isn't brittle like that shiny rubbish.

I'm really surprised that we don't see more wood in bicycles.

There's a substantial section on engineering moving mechanisms in wood
in my book DESIGNING AND BUILDING SPECIAL CARS (Batsford, London;
Bentley, Boston; etc).

Andre Jute
Visit Jute on Bicycles at
http://www.audio-talk.co.uk/fiultra/...20CYCLING.html