Check out this awesome picture and letter from Dale, a recent builder who just put his bike on the road in Bangkok.
Hi Marty, I’m VERY happy with the final bike. There are still a few tweaks I’ll work out here and there, but it turned out great. I wanted to actually put the rest together, but the Thai bike mechanics just went ahead and did everything. The good thing is I watched everything and can now take it apart and put it back together again
Tomorrow I’ll flip the wheel to the fixed gear side and start learning how to ride fixed in the park near my house.
We’re all really excited by the NYTimes article that published yesterday. We want to give a shout to Chris Hartmann, our fellow builder with the picture in the article. He has an awesome attitude and has an amazing job teaching kids with special needs. Definitely a good guy.
In the article, I’m quoted as saying “This is a sustainable material for sustainable transport,” There are additional factors to making a sustainable world beyond material selection and riding bikes. I don’t think anyone right now has a good handle on what a sustainable world will look like, and we don’t pretend to be the answer.
The global consumption infrastructure is a massive web. From advertising agencies on Madison Avenue and credit card companies in Wall Street to massive container ships, factories in Southern China to extraction and processing of raw materials around the world, our production and consumption choices have far reaching causes and effects. Our culture is insulated from this infrastructure. There is a disconnect between what see and experience in our lives and the wider effects.
There is a lot of movement out there going towards something different. Making and growing things locally and having more visibility to how things are made is putting us on a track towards a sustainable world. It’s not simple switches or technical wizardry, it’s a long process of getting smarter, and seeing and experiencing more things.
We hope building bikes will give people a better sense of where things come from, and how they relate to their other choices.
The short answer: They are not nearly as good… and end up hurting the environment.
I’ve been asked this a few times lately, and I want to give a longer answer.
I think being in close proximity to a product’s creation develops a deeper understanding of the means of production, which is a massive step towards developing a sustainable culture. However, this awareness needs to be matched with a clear analysis of life cycle cost and sound building principles. We can’t hope our way to a more sustainable and equitable future; it’s got to be a healthy combination and balance of cultural shifts and rational analysis.
Trying to make an environmentally considerate bicycle is a project we are obviously engaged in, but
material selection is only a piece of the environmental impact of a product.
A good life cycle analysis also considers durability and replacement, transportation and a host of other factors.
Our approach to refining our process includes a progression from brainstorming, researching engineering papers (a little boring) to prototypes, through lab testing, field testing and finally, through Justin, my co-founder and bike connoisseur.
We really liked the idea of hemp lugs, and wanted to make it work. After months of research we made a dozen test bikes with hemp and flax lugs. We invested months of work in the workshop and lab and thousands of hours of test riding, trying to determine the life cycle costs and viability of the material.
When Justin, one of the fastest bike messenger you’ll ever meet, and probably the person I trust most about bike performance and safety, got on one of my hemp wrapped prototype field test bikes after 3000 miles of riding, he shook his head and said it’s too soft. I compared a brand new steel bike and then one of our carbon wrapped bikes (ridden nearly 6000 miles), the degradation in stiffness was obvious.
This was a big moment, and the failure of a huge development project for us, so we decided tocorroborate our tacit findings and feelings with lab test data. We built a few hemp bikes with different wrapping styles and patterns and put them on the fatigue tester. the ultimate strength was good initially, but the displacement was pretty dramatic and got worse really fast. After a 1,000 cycles at 1600N, the frame was bending like a rubber band… way too soft to ride. Basically, it was a bike with an expiration date.
On the other hand, our bikes built with carbon and fiberglass lugs, have outlasted steel bikes, survived getting hit by cars, tens of thousands of miles of test riding and everything Justin can throw at it.
Check this video of Justin during a lunch break: Can your road bike do this?
As shown in the video, our carbon and fiberglass lugged bikes can hold up to some serious thrashing. It just didn’t make sense to continue with bikes that need to be replaced. So, we have abandoned our development of hemp lugs.
We didn’t think it was safe or viable as a long-term bicycle solution for people anywhere in the world, and our development efforts have instead focused on making our carbon and fiberglass lugs even more robust and making bicycle building process more accessible. We may revisit the project in the future, but for now it is not a priority.
The bikes in the Ghana factory will have fiberglass lugs, and the bikes we build in the US are a combination of fiberglass and carbon fiber.
Feel free to write in with comments or suggestions: bikes@bamboobikestudio.com
Bike-making is a great way to introduce concepts in engineering, math, science, and art. This Spring, five NYC high school students built bicycles at New York’s Museum of Art and Design.
NYC high school student Nick makes his first bike.
Karina, Brandon, India, Ray, and Sherwood learned to make bikes in MAD’s Designer-in-Residence Studio overlooking Columbus Circle and Central Park.
In this blog post, Brandon describes what it’s like to build a bicycle with your own hands.
Tim just finished his first bamboo bike at last weekend’s workshop. He’s from Fargo, ND and works at Boston College where he is an educator and software developer. He’s currently developing programs to help make literature more accessible. We would like to thank Tim for his amazing attitude during the building process and for his kind words. This is an excerpt from an email he sent us:
“The bike and I got home just fine, and I loved my 2:00 a.m. ride home through downtown Boston. I threw some clipless pedals on this morning and had possibly the best ride I’ve ever had just getting to work–so fun. I’m a little surprised people are breaking into cheers and high-fiving me as I ride by just because it’s a freaking bamboo bike, but maybe I’m just projecting my excitement on to them. I had a fantastic time building it and I want to commend you guys again on how well the workshop was run and on the work your doing more generally. It’s really inspiring.”
He was also kind enough to send us some of the moments he captured. The link to the photos are below.
Rowena Crowe, a builder from last year, made this beautiful video about riding and building her bike. She’s been touring with her bike all over Europe and has been sending us updates from time to time.
The production value is incredible and I’m really happy to share it with everyone.
This week we turned our attention to making some nice cabinets to hold the bike components for the Studio.
My sister is a killer interior designer, currently on hiatus from the hustle while she raises her kids.
She wanted us to continue our themes of wabisabi, and keep it real with the Red Hook warehouse setting with salvaged wood.
We found some gorgeous discarded poplar 3×3′s in a dumpster to make the frame.
We made the cabinet fronts out of some discarded pallets we found on the street.
The weathered wood looks great, fits in with the shop, and the whole project cost a grand total of $32 for the cabinets (just the hinge and magnet clasps).
It’s amazing what you can make from discarded wood.
- Marty
PS- Check out my new bike, finished today… it comes in at 19.5 lbs.
I’m not really into weight, but that’s pretty nice considering the stiffness and smooth ride (which I’m really into).
We’re excited about how many folks are coming to build their own bikes this Summer and Fall.
Not everyone was able to get the date they wanted, so we’ve added a few more workshop opportunities–dates are below.
Come make your own bike on…
July 10-11 (1 space available)
July 24-25 (1 space available)
July 31-August 1 (BOOKED)
August 21-22 (BOOKED)
September 4-5 (1 space available)
September 18-19 (2 spaces available)
September 25-26 (2 spaces available)
October 9-10 (2 spaces available)
October 16-17 (2 spaces available)
November 6-7 (2 spaces available)
November 13-14 (3 spaces available)
December 4-5 (6 spaces available)
December 11-12 (8 spaces available)
With the Frame Only ($632) option, you’ll build your own bamboo bike frame from scratch, then add components independently. This option is popular among those who already have bicycle components.
With the Full Bike ($948) option, you’ll build your own bamboo bike frame, then learn how to install and maintain bicycle components before riding off on the full bike you just built with your own hands .
My name is Marty Odlin, I am the cofounder of the Bamboo Bike Studio.
I also do work on the Bamboo Bike Project and at the Center for Sustainable Engineering at Columbia University.
I like surfing, skiing, camping, fishing, and building things with my friends.
The Studio is about sharing our experiences and passion for building with like minded and interested people.
My name is Marty Odlin, I am the cofounder of the Bamboo Bike Studio.
I also do work on the Bamboo Bike Project and at the Center for Sustainable Engineering at Columbia University.
I like surfing, skiing, camping, fishing, and building things with my friends.
The Studio is about sharing our experiences and passion for building with like minded and interested people.