How Stuff Works: How bamboo works

Bamboo is one of those amazing materials that is not so common in the United States. But you may soon begin noticing it more and more. Bamboo is appearing in everything from flooring to paneling, and there are even people riding around on bamboo bicycles now. In the not too distant future it is possible to imagine bamboo replacing wood in a number of furniture and fencing products as well. Let's take a look at how bamboo works.

Bamboo use is growing because bamboo has several advantages over traditional woods like pine and oak. The first advantage is the fact that bamboo grows fast. Bamboo is not a tree per se — it is actually a very, very large type of grass with an extremely strong stem. This grass heritage means that bamboo does not have bark, and it doesn't have dead wood in the center of the trunk. It also grows more as a long, straight column rather than being tapered like most tree trunks.

Like many other grasses, bamboo can grow quickly. Think how fast crabgrass can take over your yard. Given the right soil and the right weather, some varieties of bamboo can grow more than a foot in a day. This speed means that it takes much less time to get a usable crop of bamboo than it does to get, say, a usable crop of pine trees. An acre of pine trees takes three or four decades to reach a usable size. Bamboo grows more densely and can be harvested many times in that same span of time. This means that an acre of bamboo forest is far more productive than an acre of pine trees or oak trees.

Another advantage of bamboo is its strength. Bamboo is surprisingly strong, and pound for pound certain species are as strong as steel. Heat-treating the bamboo stalks maximizes the strength. Bamboo is so strong that it is being used in place of steel to make bicycle frames. You can buy bamboo bicycle frames pre-made or you can look on the Internet and find instructions for building your own. It may surprise you that these frames are not made of any kind of specially engineered bamboo composite material. It is just normal bamboo stalks that have been heat treated with a blow torch to strengthen the fibers.

Bamboo flooring is a composite. To understand bamboo flooring, think about a typical bamboo stalk. It is a hollow cylinder, and the walls of the cylinder are not very thick. The cylinder can be cut into long strips. These strips will have a slight curve to them because they were cut from a cylinder, but if the cylinder is large (like 3 inches in diameter) the curve is very minor. It is easily removed by running the strip through a planer that makes it square.