Long time lurker here, first time poster. I got pulled into the rabbit hole of building guitars at home during the covid lockdowns. My first build used traditional "tonewoods" (mahogany, ebony, rosewood etc.) and while purchasing materials for my second build, I stumbled upon bamboo boards on a German wood retailed shop.
Compared the properties to the wood I wanted to use for parts of it (mainly the core/neck and fretboard) and decided to go for it.
So the second build [1] is 40ish % bamboo with purpleheart veneers in between layers of bamboo and purpleheart/olive for the body. Next build will be around 80% bamboo. Trying to source some strand woven bamboo boards to try them out as fretboards as well, but for a part time builder like me, getting such small quantities of bamboo boards is rather hard.
But yeah, fascinating material even outside of construction use. The boards I used for the guitar builds were nice to work with, easy to sand and finish (using wipe on poly).
One of the themes in this thread is reminding people that it's not actually bamboo, it's a bamboo composite--sort of like plywood. I doesn't work without petrochemical glues.
I think it's fairer to say your build is 40%-ish bamboo composite. When we're calling it bamboo we're doing that industry's greenwashing marketing for them.
If the mentioned bamboo composite is 95% bamboo and 5% glue (going by comment from hwillis), isn't it fair to say it's 40%-ish bamboo?
5% glue is far from something like carbon composite, where most content is epoxy. Common wood surface treatment is probably more than 5%, yet we don't call it a wood composite.
IMO, total surface sealant makes more of a material difference than 5% glue on the inside.
I appreciate the viewpoint, but we don't call plywood "wood" because it isn't wood. If we were to develop a metric, the % of mass of the finished product that isn't wood would be a reasonable one.
The problem with saying it's 38% bamboo is it implies it's in some meaningful sense made out of bamboo. It's not. There isn't a way to go in there and cut out a piece and have it be bamboo--unless it's really, really small (maybe). Whereas it's totally possible to take a piece of wood from an old piece of furniture, surface it four sides, and have essentially wood (albeit a little smaller).
I think also that you're a little off on two things: 1, common wood surface treatments are < 5%, and 2, composites vary but 60/40 fiber/resin by mass is a reasonable place to start.
Some of the terms being used are getting more and more ‘artistic’ too - I’ve seen a lot more use of the term ‘manufactured wood’ for instance, and like you’re noting hybrid ‘core is mdf, edges are real wood, top is veneer’ type stuff that you have to dig to find out, and that is way more complicated than the ‘traditional’ mdf+veneer junk.
The edge-glued boards at Menards are quite good - they're foot wide "shelves" if you will made from glued 4 inch wide pieces; they work and are roughly as strong as normal boards at a cheaper price - and come finished.
Edge-gluing's one technique you'll find in woodworking books, for making large surfaces. Desktops or table tops made out of a single piece of lumber are wicked expensive, or practically impossible once you reach a certain size, so you join a bunch of smaller boards to make it happen. The really cheap & easy version of this skips the gluing and just frames them so they're smushed together, leaving visible seams and gaps like a slightly-tighter version of an outdoor picnic table (I've even seen this look imitated by solid table tops made from particle board and veneer, which... WTF? Those seams are crumb-traps! They make dealing cards a pain in the ass! Why would you go out of your way to have them?), but the better kind involves gluing.
I used one of their planed, unfinished edge-glued boards when I built my kid's bassinet. I was impressed by the uniform quality; it was almost as if it was a single board. Thanks Menards! (Full disclosure, my employer is technically a competitor, but we don't sell lumber.)
I noticed you use the Planet Waves tuners. I love those as well, they're much more practical as they cut the strings for you. I wonder why they don't make them in more traditional colors, or why other manufacturers don't provide similar solutions. Everyone else makes just regular and locking tuners, not the locking-and-cutting tuners.
For a performing amateur musician, the ability to change your string quicker and without having to carry extra tools is certainly beneficial, and people spend a lot of time fretting about much less important details in their guitars.
I do like the current trend in youtube guitar videos talking more about playability, usability and reliability, and doing things like switching jacks or nuts, instead of endless pickup sound comparisons.
Yeah, I was looking into buying a new instrument, then youtube started suggesting all those build videos. Eventually found the project guitar web/forums and went for it. Probably my favorite side projects so far.
May I ask what you paid in the end for the bamboo you used? I went down the same rabbit hole some time ago and in the end went with oak as it was a lot more affordable (for my student budget back then).
121x20 cm board, 20mm thick was around 22 EUR + shipping. The shop I bought it from had 3 kinds of bamboo boards (normal, dark and some "figured" made up of dark and light stripes) but currently sell only the figured.
I guess I was looking in the wrong places ... or the wrong construction. 20 mm thick sounds like it was only the core with more layers.
In the end I went with some 150x4cm oak strips of varying width from the left-overs bin of a wood vendor. 5€ the piece was a pretty good deal back then.
Yeah, I cut the board I ordered into 4 stripes, rotated them for 90 degrees and glued back together with purpleheart veneer in between, to get the core/neck part.
I really wanna build one almost completely from bamboo (with various veneers to get some accents/lines in) but it's really hard to source boards now. Meh... but yeah, who would have thought that "tonegrass" would become a term someday haha.
I honestly believe that the key to building a good guitar is stiffness ... This will create a very high pitched instrument, as it does not lose the high frequencies in the wood. But that can be sorted out later vis EQing
I always thought that hardness is most important in a fretboard, is bamboo hard enough for this? I have a Parker guitar with a glass composite fretboard (carbon glass they call it) and it’s the best part of the guitar for playability.
The bamboo boards I ordered had a higher density than ebony (1100 kg/m^3 for bamboo vs. 955 kg/m^3 for ebony) and according to the suppliers site, they are roughly the same Janka hardness. That's why I went for it.
I don’t know if hardness is the best criteria. I have both rosewood and ebony fretboards on my basses and they feel differently and longevity seems only loosely affected. I’m not slamming down hard on the wood like what happens in flooring though and maybe other players are much rougher than myself.
Keep in mind these aren’t what you would get if you cut down some bamboo and used them. They’re usually processed, compressed, and a high % by weight of glue or epoxy. Many of them are harder and tougher than all but a tiny percent of exotic hard woods.
This was interesting in light of an interview I was just listening to yesterday, a CBC podcast [1] talking about the benefits of mass timber (glued wood) for large highrise building construction.
There were two guests on, both sounded like environmentalists, with the first one (Michael Green) saying that mass timber was
"currently the best tool we have to address climate impact and in the building materials for a large building"
while the second guest (John Talberth) was arguing:
"The idea that we can cut down our forests and turn them into two by fours and build our way to a stable climate is absurd, and it's just another one of these false narratives of big timber corporations are using to get us to buy more of their product and continue to subsidise their record profits",
and Talberth advocated Bamboo, mentioning it multiple times as an alternative. It kind of went back and forth a bit with Mr Green saying
"Bamboo, for instance, is not structurally a material that can actually satisfy the demand of three billion people that need a new home because it doesn't build large buildings"
and Mr Talberth saying
"Believe it or not, bamboo can actually be put together in the structurally with high structural integrity beams to make taller buildings"
It kind of left me wondering who was right... though Mr Green (an architect) sounded like someone with actual experience making buildings, where as the Mr Talberth (an economist) sounded like he might have been doing a bit of ill-informed wishful thinking about Bamboo.
Seeing the process here gave me a bit more perspective on the discussion. Given the labour involved and the fact that you are working with 20mm x 5mm cross-sections of bamboo, I can see how it would be extremely expensive to build a large building out of bamboo, and the $300 euro price tag on a sheet of plywood at the bottom of the page added more confirmation that it's not going to be a practical replacement for large-scale building.
We are not cutting down forests to make buildings. We get plenty of lumber to do that from sustainable tree farms. We are cutting down forests to get land (mostly to use for non-tree agriculture)
John Talberth runs the Center for Sustainable Economy, an environmental advocacy organization in Portland, Oregon. He is an old general from the PNW "timber wars" of the 1990s, directly involved in pursuing the spotted owl injunctions. He has long been opposed to intensive management of native conifer forests. It's amusing to me to hear him advocating for harvest in somebody else's back yard. I suppose that's been the subtext the entire time, with so much harvest volume having migrated to the US southeast following the spotted owl injunctions.
At the bottom of the OP link is the price for a 4x8' sheet of bamboo plywood. It's listed for 295 euroos or $342USD. I'm not sure there is a 'regular' wood sheet that is even close to that cost. It's truly a specialized product and unless there are more economical bamboo sheet goods, no one would ever build with this.
I started searching for bamboo exterior sidings because of this post and it seems to be about the same price like hardwood sidings. Bit cheaper than padauk.
When thinking about “carbon stores” - it is significantly more preferable to turn managed forests into manufactured wood products for buildings and furniture (where the CO2 gets functionally stored and then possibly tossed in a landfill far in the future) to turning those forests into wood pellets to be burned as biomass.
Managed forestry has the ability to, relatively trivially and particularly when compared to other “carbon sequestration alternatives” lock in decent magnitudes of carbon as we figure out our energy system.
Particularly helps when comparing to other building material options (bricks, concrete, steel all very energy intensive and not decarbonized yet).
Really neat article, love things like this on HN. I thought this was really interesting:
> A bamboo stem reaches its maximum height in just a few months and shall not grow taller or thicker over time. In the following 4 years the fibers will "lignify" and get their extraordinary mechanical properties in terms of hardness, strength, density.
That seems pretty fascinating to me. Are there any other plants/trees that grow like that? I mean, from my naive knowledge, trees go wider with a new ring every year.
Most trees won’t grow that fast (well almost nothing grows as fast as bamboo). Usually height of a plant or tree is determined by the available shade (more shade, the more the tree will try to climb above it), and available water. Less water generally means shorter, and more (easy) sun usually means shorter, though there is a huge genetic element of course. Some trees will collect significant water from rain or fog when it’s hard to get water up the tree from their normal transport methods (like redwoods) because of their height.
A normal tree (which is slow growing) typically will get taller and wider each year until it starts maxing out something like water transport, or dies due to disease and competition from other trees.
The rings you are referring to are generally gathered from the base of the tree as that is the part most likely to grow (for sure). If you go to the top of the tree, it’s a bit harder to tell what has been going on.
And the ring itself is formed when the tree stops growing as part of the yearly seasonal cycle.
It’s not a tree really but banana plants (especially the common type found in Thailand, which is not the common Cavendish westerners know) can grow ridiculously quick, particularly if the entire “trunk” is cut off - within hours the middle most growing stems will have extended up above the cut point a significant amount.
Coincidentally they’re a PITA to get rid of too - id argue worse than clumping bamboo.
Yes, I know and understand all that. The new information to me was that, after shooting up quickly to its final height, the bamboo basically just grows stronger and harder over the next 4 years without changing its dimensions. Curious if there are any other plants that do something similar, or why bamboo would do this in the first place, evolutionarily speaking.
Think of plants in competition with each other. The compete for water, nutrients and light. In a forest setting, light is at a premium. A common strategy is to grow upward as fast as possible to capture light and also to shade competitors.
Been searching for the answer to this question too, unfortunately information on Bamboo is quite scarce. If anyone have any pointers or answer please do share.
Most won't but some do grow really very fast. Like the Willow.
I live in an area with lots of Pollarded Willows. We have about 30 of them in our garden. They grow a ridiculous 2-3m each year (6-10ft). Often in just a few months.
We'll cut them around now (autumn) down to 1.50m, and next year august they'll easily be 3-4m high again. Pollarding is rewarding but a lot of work.
Paulownia or Empress/Princess trees are one of the other top contenders from a growth/carbon sequestration standpoint[0].
They're one of the only trees that use C4 photosynthesis (more commonly employed by grasses like bamboo) than the C3 process most trees use. This lets them grow up to 20ft/6m per year, and they're able to be harvested commercially within five years.
They're also good from a woodworking perspective: traditionally, parents of daughters in southern Japan would plant a kiri tree on the birth of a daughter and then cut it down to make chests, drawers, and boxes for their daughter's marriage ceremony.
I has a higher strength:weight ratio than balsa wood, and is pest and rot resistant.
Other fun fact: they resprout from the stump after cutting, similar to coast redwoods.
There is more glue than bamboo in the bamboo products, but thaks to the marketing department they are ECO, and friendly and yada yada... Just look at the proces to get decent thich board/beam.
Engineered lumber (MDF, OSB, glulam... all of them actually) also involves the same glues and chemical treatments used in bamboo, and both use formaldehide-based glues which are known carcinogens.
Uproar usually begins with the results of research and reports. That research and those reports typically originate from wherever the money is. That money typically originates from a new competitor entering the market, or from an established competitor trying to force change in market forces by affecting demand for the products being reported on.
Occasionally uproar originates from someone's personal motivation, but that requires a rare alignment of drive, capability and charisma.
One of the most insightful comments in this thread. Lays waste to the whole idea of "science happens" and instead brings forth the more realistic: "science happens when it is the interest of someone with resources for that line of research to progress".
Thanks, but it's not my insight. There's a saying "follow the money" and that's what I had in mind when I wrote my reply. I simply added the bit that covers situations where money may not be the motivator.
I'm not sure what nuerow was trying to say. Carcinogens aren't bad for you simply by looking at them. And it's widely known and often repeated to use respirators when cutting MDF.
Now is the creation of the glue environmentally unfriendly? I don't know.
> I'm not sure what nuerow was trying to say. Carcinogens aren't bad for you simply by looking at them. And it's widely known and often repeated to use respirators when cutting MDF.
In case you are not aware, engineered lumber, whether used as structural elements, finishings, or even furniture, continuously releases formaldehyde into the environment. Consequently, there are health and safety guidelines to minimize exposure, which depending on the jurisdiction can vary around 0.03ppm and 0.01 ppm.
Those who handle MDF in industrial contexts need to take a lot of precautions to be safe regarding the half dozen types of cancer linked with it's exposure, but the risk isn't limited to that context. Risk is determined by the degree of exposure, and lower-level but continuous exposure throughout longer time periods, which happens when you stay home, also presents a serious health risk.
Because people like low cost stuff. You can buy formaldehyde free plywood and MDF, but wow it's expensive compared to the formaldehyde containing products!
Vinyl flooring that has become very, very popular recently is probably worse than wood composites with regards to air quality and overall toxic effects.
Unfortunately, a lot of the effects from these materials aren't immediate and typically don't affect a large portion of the population, so it can be hard to get people to realize it's bad on a large scale.
There has been more of a focus on indoor air quality over the last decade, I expect that to continue and that we'll see more of a push for materials that have better air quality properties.
Would lignin-based glues be a suitable alternative in terms of cost, effectiveness and long-term reliability (stability) or hasn't there been sufficient development to make them viable yet?
Alternatively, could we revert back to safer traditional animal-based glues as a practical/viable option? That said, I'd guess that these days cost would be prohibitive as well as having environmental concerns not to mention their long-term reliability in that composites made with them may be prone to delamination, etc. (my experience is that animal glues get brittle with age).
In a similar vein, one of the major problems with MDF, medium density fiberboard/particleboard, is the fact that the amount of binder used is quite inadequate which means that it has limited durability/lifespan. This is a two-edged sword of course, the more binder the more expensive it will be but its durability will be increased; on the other hand, unless the binder is environmentally friendly then sooner or later we'll have a polution problem. Nevertheless, the high-grade high-density stuff can be extraordinarily durable (thus it's much less likely to end up in landfills). It seems to me that we urgently need new very durable glues and binders that are also cheap, safe and environmentally friendly.
That logically segues into the matter of artificial wood. I know, that process has been pitifully slow for obvious reasons but it seems to me we need a solution urgently as we're fast running out of both building and cabinet-quality grade lumber.
(Whilst, we may be able to keep up supply with fast growing building-grade lumber such as pinus radiata (and importantly bamboo), quality timbers are in desperately short supply and will continue to be so into the foreseeable future. For example, we've precious little of timbers such as sandalwood, lignum vitae, ebony, and various Dalbergia genus rosewoods (retusa/Cocobolo, nigra/Brazilian rosewood, melanoxylon/African blackwood, etc.), as many take several hundred years to mature and no one had the foresight to plant forests of them back in the 18th Century! Thus, all of them are on the CITIES watchlist for good reason and have been so for decades.
Moreover, they're essentially unprocurable for any practical purpose, and even if you can buy small quantities of them legally, then they're hideously expensive. For instance, African blackwood costs a fortune at well over $10,000/cubic meter, and when it comes to sandalwood we actually buy it by the gram ($85/100g): https://ventured.com/most-expensive-woods-in-the-world/
Thus, there is no solution other than to artificially manufacture† excellent, high quality, chemically-similar (complete with lignin, cellulose, etc.) facsimilies of these wonderful and very beautiful timbers.
__
† Even if we're still a long way off from having artificial timber as a practical reality, there seems to be an obvious way forward for at least part of the manufacturing process - that of additive manufacturing/3D printing, as the number of textures and designs it affords are essentially endless.
My standing desk top, a Fully Jarvis, is made from bamboo.
Comparing the illustrations in TFA to the thing I'm leaning on, I think it is constructed of a core of side-pressed pieces, with a thin layer of plain-pressed pieces giving the working surface and underside.
I've had it for < 1 year. It is a little soft, and shows dents and scratches where I set down moderately heavy objects with too much force, but it still looks nice. I guess I can think of the marks as evidence of actual use and life.
Almost all wooden surfaces will show dings and dents from heavy objects. Denser woods with a matte finish will show them less of course, but it's inevitable.
I installed all bamboo flooring in my house and then threw a party... some woman who was at the party was wearing 6" heels and after the party my floor was dimpled all over... she apparently walked like five miles within my living room, dining room, kitchen...
Same nonsense I was told when I put in bamboo flooring. In my case it was destroyed by the late night shenanigans of an 11 lb cat. I think hardwood comes with its own tragedy at no extra cost. What we need is a flooring material that acquires character as people walk on it and scratch it. Edit: And it turns out we have it.
Interestingly, floor decks in airliners and load floors in military cargo aircraft are made from a composite of an aluminum skin and very high-quality end-grain balsa wood panels, laminated together in a huge press with film adhesives. (Used to be called Metalite by LTV, who made the stuff for lots of other aircraft companies...) It's lighter and stronger than any synthetic composite for that application. Load floors obviously need to take huge abuse, but still be light, and women's stilletto heels are famous for being able to exert several thousand pounds of force (dynamically) in a tiny area.
FYI, women are also really hard on touchscreens - fake nails/nail polish is the hardest and most abrasive thing they come in contact with over their life except for drops on pavement. It's the main reason all decent touchscreens now have glass top layers.
If it makes you feel any better my solid "hardwood" workbench from Gladiator (purchased at Lowes) I use as a standing desk also has some dings and dents! I also figure it's part of the charm.
Same here (same desk). Whenever my kids drop something heavier on the surface, it leaves deep marks. It's the most easily damaged surface we have at home. Does look nice where there are no marks :)
Strange that that article states "There's no single English word which is an exact equivalent of 'vorsprung'".
Vorsprung is lead. Durch is harder in my opinion. Can be translate as "by" or "because of".
So the translations would be "lead by technology" or "in the lead because of technology"
Vorsprung is anything that is slightly ahead, so you're wrong there. It applies to a lot more than you seem to think. It's frequently used in describing smallish platforms on mountains, buildings as well for example.
In the ‘small platform that sticks out’ sense the English equivalent would be ‘projection’ (interesting that that comes from a Latin root of ‘something that is thrown forward’, while the German word is more ‘something that jumps forward’), but in the context of the phrase the other meanings of that word would dominate.
There’s definitely a sense of ‘getting a head start’, ‘being at an advantage’ to Vorsprung that is hard to capture in a single English word.
Perhaps one way to translate it would be: Privilege through technology
It’s a commonly offered translation but there’s a sense in which it doesn’t capture the same nuance.
If Audi wanted to say ‘progress through technology’, why isn’t the slogan ‘Bewegung durch Technik’? Bewegung very much has the sense of ‘progress’, but also has a double sense of ‘movement’, both in the sense of physical movement as well as a social movement. All of which are strong connotations the English word ‘progress’ captures. And would be a good slogan for a car company, too.
But that isn’t the word they chose, so progress is a slightly unsatisfactory translation.
I wish I had a pic of the plaque wall at intel HQ, SC5 -- there are a bunch of plaques from partners... and several of them have Engrish phrases thanking Intel for best to the future we go hand in hand for great cause and somesuch other awesome things.
This particular post is about making plywood sheets out of raw bamboo. But there is also work happening on mass timber applications of bamboo. For example a company called "Rizome" (https://rizomebamboo.com/) is working on LVL and LSL bamboo panels. One of their founders wrote a post about structural applications of bamboo last year (https://medium.com/rizome/bamboo-skyscrapers-eded5b234726).
I posted this lower down as a comment, but some might be interested to know what specific glue is being used:
Most manufactured wood building materials contain one of these two types of formaldehyde-based glues:
* Phenol-formaldehyde (PF)
* Urea-formaldehyde (UF).
Its water resistant properties make phenol-formaldehyde glue more effective for production of exterior wood materials. Urea-formaldehyde glue, cheaper and less tolerant of excessive moisture, is most often used for interior materials including wall paneling, flooring and cabinetry.
In its natural state, softwood lumber emits a tiny amount of formaldehyde. While PF-glued products typically emit 10 times the formaldehyde outgassed by softwood, UF resins can release at least 100 times more formaldehyde than the natural wood.
A typical particle-board subfloor made with UF glue can release enough formaldehyde to result in a 0.3 ppm concentration of formaldehyde in a room. For healthy people who are not bothered by formaldehyde, the levels in softwood lumber and PF glue are usually not considered a serious health problem.
UF glue, on the other hand, has been implicated is causing people to become hypersensitive; a good reason for healthy people and sensitive people to avoid UF glues altogether"
As a further point to the above, while UF and PF are very prevalent for engineered / manufactured woods and planks of all types, it's possible to make manufactured bamboo planks without the use of formaldehyde-based glues.
You need to look for "NAF" (No-Added Formaldehyde) tested and certified bamboo products.
If you were doing the hardened wood process on it, you wouldn't even have to wait 4 years for the culm to lignify, since you were just going to delignify it with a hot chemical bath.
Yep. I saw a sibling comment after I posted that mentioned that. It seems like a nice way to skip an additional step! Thanks for point that out!
Also during the 4 year wait for it to harden it doesn’t increase in size. So there wouldn’t be a decrease in the amount of bamboo harvested, it would just allow it to be harvested every year instead of every 4.
Bamboo is already harvest every year. Every year new shoots come up out of the ground. The shoots start to form in the winter about one meter away from mature culms. In the spring the shoots emerge from the ground and quickly grow to full height. Changing the harvest schedule will not increase the availability of bamboo, since already all new culms are harvest, just after they become four years old - the system is steady state.
If you harvest all of them at once, you have 4x the amount, since each generation gives space to a new one instead of sitting around for an extra 3 years.
A general question: how does forestry avoid degrading the soil? If you keep removing the plants that grow, rather than allowing them to rot and return the nutrients they sucked up during their lifetime back the soil, do the trees steadily grow worse until it is no longer profitable and you have to go grow trees somewhere else?
Most of the non-cellulose elements (the ones nneeded for life) are in the outer layers of the tree.
Modern forestry machines strip off the bark and a little of the phloem (the living layer) in situ.
But yeah, there is a slow loss. Partly made up by the micrometeorite dust that falls everywhere, and in some places by dusts from other places. For example, the Amazon rainforset is replenished from the Sahara.
Deciduous forests are better at this. Deep tree roots break down rocks in the subsoil, recovering minerals that way, and leaf fall creates a realtively rich soil. Undisturbed virgin deciduous forests with deep soils have near 100% mineral recycling. The micrometeorite dust makes up the rest.
likewise, took me years to internalize that when you're losing weight, you're breathing and pissing most of it: you burn C+H+O compounds, and expel CO2 and H20.
Yeah I mean, there's barely any solid residue when you burn fuel in your car when you think about it. There's some (carbon), but most is converted to CO2 and H2O.
The right plants catches nitrogen from the air. Fungus and microorganisms make minerals, like potassium, available from sand and rocks.
This works great until someone destroys the soil by killing all microorganisms with pesticides or fertilisers. Forests are very good at producing a lot of biomass without help fertilisers, even when a lot of trees are "harvested".
Wood is mostly cellulose (which is all carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen). There's some calcium and potassium, but not that much. You are correct that it's not entirely renewable.
Not sure what you mean by renewable? Would carbon, hydrogen and oxygen be more renewable than calcium and potassium? They are all just elements we have a lot of on earth.
And those elements don't get used up. Toss your wood on a compost pile, and you can re-use them?
Minerals follow cycles. If biological activity is utilising and removing specific minerals faster than they're returned to their respective sources (atmosphere, soil, or water, generally), then those minerals are depleted.
Leibig's Law of the Minimum states that it is the specific nutrient which is limiting of growth or metabolism which is most crucial. This is a point missed in numerous dicussions of growth or limits. Typically this is a fairly major nutrient such as nitrogen (fixed from the atmosphere, but at high metabolic cost, largely through microbes which are sybmiotes with legumes). Phosphorus and potash are the other most heavily utilised, and most frequently limiting nutrients. In parts of Australia, a land that is remarkably inactive, tectonically, critical micronutrients arrive as wind-blown dust, much from India or volcanic eruptions in Indonesia. A few grams per hectare can make a significant difference in crop yields.
Soil alkalinity is another major factor, as is drainage charcteristics, with sandy, clay, or high-carbon soils all being favoured or unsuited to specific plants. Then of course, climate, temperature, and precipitation.
Yes, minerals follow cycles. But so does hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon and oxygen. It's just that some of those are delivered via air, and some via liquids and some via the soil.
Nitrogen is an example of a nutrient which is present in air, but which is available through soil for the majority of all plants.
Again: nitrogen fixation is exceedingly energy intensive, and few organisms can achieve this on their own.
Where nitrogen is removed from soil faster than it is replenished, it becomes a critical, growth-determining, nutrient.
Carbon is available in the air, but also comprises a major constituent of topsoils. Though soil carbon itself isn't a plant nutrient, it provides a vital role in supporting plant life in its role in supporting symbiotic life, in managing alkalinity, and in moderating water and nutrient flows.
In many agricultural areas, soil carbon is being depleted at roughly 10x the rate at which it is formed, leading some to term such farming as "topsoil mining". Accumulations over a period of 10,000 years (since the previous ice age) are being degraded over a period of centuries.
Presence in the atmosphere != availability from the atmosphere.
But they are allmost unlimited in the ground. A intact forest, with deep roots in symbiosis with lots of fungi and other microorganisms retrieves them and make them avaiable to the rest of the forest via leave fall.
So taking out some trees at a time is sustainable. Chopping down all of them, is not.
Phosphorus would be better example. Even if you take only part of organic matter away, as long as it's faster than phosphorus availability from rock weathering, there's going to be a reckoning eventually.
Sure it can be added via fertilizer...if we'll be able to source such a quantity. It's not very abundant.
Depending on what trees are grown, and the specific ecology and geology, it can and does. However this typically occurs over several generations of planting, each of which are 2--4, or more, human generations.
James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State opens with a description of how "rationalised" scientific forestry in Germany lead to a precipitous decline in the health of the soil and ultimately yields of timber, but over the course of 150--200 years. He's largely citing Richard Plochmann, Forestry in the Federal Republic of Germany (1968), and Chris Maser, The Redesigned Forest (1988).
With credit to the other posters here, who do give correct answers as to how forestry is less destructive to the soil than other crops,....
and assuming a clearcut/monoculture approach to tree farming (because the comp to foodcrop agriculture also ignores regernerative/permaculture techniques)
forestry is massively disruptive to the soil, because it obliterates the ecosystem/community which allows forests to produce so much biomass.
also, because the harvest cycle is measured in decades rather than years, the soil destruction also happens at a slower rate. Doesn't mean it isn't as destructive per harvest cycle, just that the cycle rate is slower.
"Most manufactured wood building materials contain one of these two types of formaldehyde-based glues:
* Phenol-formaldehyde (PF)
* Urea-formaldehyde (UF).
Its water resistant properties make phenol-formaldehyde glue more effective for production of exterior wood materials. Urea-formaldehyde glue, cheaper and less tolerant of excessive moisture, is most often used for interior materials including wall paneling, flooring and cabinetry.
"
Formaldehyde. It’s actually pretty unenvironmental. Because it uses formaldehyde and other chemicals, you can’t sand or refinish bamboo, and the dust is extremely hazardous.
I just looked this up since I have bamboo floors I'm considering refinishing, and this resource[0] seems reputable and indicates that it's very doable but you should wear PPE to protect yourself.
Yeah, I was surprised too. They talk about a lot about the bamboo part but not at all about the glue part. And the glue part is certainly the most problematic one. Also, but that may be too much interpretation, you'll notice that the dirtier the place/the job; the more you see women on the pictures.
Seems about right; 1000psi assuming a 4x8 foot sheet, roughly.
Bamboo is a -somewhat- soft pseudo-wood and can deform enough under that pressure to compress into the sheets they're describing.
(for reference, I've operated a 10kton press at a previous job, which was roughly 30 feet high + underground hydraulic lines. I don't know how many presses of this scale are even left in the US)
Perfect, I was going to link this as well as a response to the other comment "especially given the bigger your press is, the less people are going to need it for something."
Ensuring that large presses exist is important to national security but not important to most business.
Nice link indeed... I might have come across it before, though must have been a long time ago. But it does highlight the economic issues here, a govt. program was needed to create machinery that might never have existed in a pure free-market environment. I now wonder if the big "One-Press"(its nickname) I worked with was a product of that program...
I think; There could be other factors, but this is the main one
I'd guess that, on average, the bulk weight of the press loosely determines its maximum pressure... Just because it needs a certain amount of steel to confine and direct that pressure without damaging itself.
Over time, the engineering gets tighter and with less excess. You know that phrase, "anyone can make a bridge that stands up, but you need and engineer to make a bridge that just barely stands up"
It probably becomes an economic issue, especially given the bigger your press is, the less people are going to need it for something.
Bamboo is surprisingly expensive considering it is a C4 photosynthesis plant that grows very fast in the tropics and is amenable to fully automated harvesting.
Anyone know why? Why is pine nearly 10x cheaper despite turning less light into carbon, growing in places with less light, requiring semi-manual harvesting and having a far longer plant-to-harvest time?
Somewhat related, there are these amazing homes in Bali made of (treated) bamboo. I believe they are treated by soaking them in a boron solution which results in better resistance to decay and insects.
"I think these kinds of homes are an excellent idea for the billion or two people living in suitable climate for it."
Yes, but people and bamboo have coexisted in these places for a long time, and majority of buildings aren't made of bamboo. So obviously other materials are cheaper/easier to work with otherwise I suspect they would have selected it as building material of choice.
Agree, there’s plenty to factor into the “build a home” equation. The billion or two living in these climates also have to deal with serious bug-borne diseases. How do we get to cheap, sustainable building materials that also consider bugs or other important local requirements.
Related - cool "circular economy" company in Vancouver that collects chopsticks from restaurants and, using a similar process, makes some pretty amazing stuff: https://chopvalue.com/
Land use at least is much more efficient when harvests are every 4-5 years instead of every 40-80 years with spruce or fir. Birch can be felled at around 55 years.
Normal wood is kiln dried similarly to bamboo, and glued panels are done in a similar fashion.
We could do the same process with fast growing bush-form softwoods like poplar or willow that regenerate from roots.
In fact a stand of young poplars doesn't look too dissimilar from a bamboo grove; lots of narrow straight trees.
I cut two dying poplars on my property a few years ago and there's now a stand of dozens of 4" diameter smaller trees, sprouted out from the root system.
Has anyone worked with bamboo plywood? How does it compare to other plywoods?
It doesn't appear (at least on the website linked) to be particularly cheap - a full sheet of 20mm bamboo plywood is almost €300! You could probably buy 3-5 sheets of 18mm baltic birch for that price - hardly the cheap material they're claiming.
I bought a cheap chair made of bamboo once and it was very soft - it didn't give me the impression it would hold up very long. Perhaps some of the processing steps for plywood improve that?
I've never worked with bamboo plywood, but the product on the website looks like it should be compared with 20mm 3 ply wood panels made from cut hard wood instead of the cheap ply wood made from peeled wood.
So a better comparison would be something like [1], which is a lot more expensive than standard birch plywood.
I'm not saying it's bad, I've used birch plywood myself and I like it.
But you can't compare the 13 layer plywood made from peeled wood with the stuff made from 3 layers of sawed wood. They are completely different types of product, and the cost is also very different.
Apart from mechanical properties, the 3 layer stuff is also much nicer optically usually (eg. they use camera sorted boards to achieve nice and even patterns). That's why it is more expensive.
Birch plywood and baltic birch plywood are completely different animals.
Regular birch plywood is indeed often the cheap stuff.
Baltic birch will be void-free and of a very consistent quality and made from thinner veneers. It's much more stable and high quality product, although you're correct that it probably won't be as pretty on the surfaces.
Too be honest I've never heard of "baltic birch" before so I can't comment on how different it is from the normal birch plywood we get here in EU.
I just googled it and saw that it looks exactly like the birch plywood I have been using, so I assumed that it has similar properties.
I consider birch to be "good" plywood, it's very easy to work with, strong, and seems somewhat resilient to warping. However, because the layers are so thin you often end up breaking bits off when working on it with a router, and the surface somehow doesn't get as smooth when sanding.
The 3-layer boards (not sure what they are called in English) seem to be easier to sand smooth, easier to finish with oil, and are not as finicky when routing.
Just from looking at pictures, I'd assume the bamboo boards are closer to the 3 layer stuff rather than the 13 layer stuff.
God, I remember working at one job where I saw a couple stacks of metal come in on a nice sheet of 4x8 woven-bamboo instead of a crappy wood pallet or plywood, I'm now kicking myself for not grabbing them when I had the chance.
Story time! My uncle had some contact in fruit shipping, and noticed that this guy got pallets of mangoes (i think it was) with bottom plate boards that were 3/4th inch mahogany plywood. They'd been burning them as scrap.
He salvaged enough to roof his houses in barns near the Florida coast and never worried about hurricanes. I have a couple chunks of it that have outlived the steel frame of the flatbed cargo trailer they're floor for.
Ah good save, I did see a rough cut 2x4 of tiger maple once, plus a couple sheets of appearance-grade 4x8 red oak... and thankfully I was smart enough to grab those.
Personally I'd use the mahogany ply for something furniture-related if it didn't have ugly knots or cracks in it. It was a rather nice looking wood the few times I've seen it, so it seems a shame to use it for something purely structural.
I wonder how long does take for bamboo to grow and if it can grow in US and Europe. Maybe it's economically viable to grow bamboo instead of cutting down trees.
Yes it grows in US/Europe. I only have experience with smaller forms (1inch, 2.5cm diameter).
It's fast growing and spreads like crazy. Be careful with bamboo in your garden, it'll shoot out underground and resurface couple meters (yards) away from the main plant if you don't encase it in concrete.
Now if it yields more then a fast growing tree? Don't know.
Yes to this! Bamboo root structure (rhizomes) can be broken down into two basic types, leptomorph and pachymorph. Bamboo that belong to the leptomorph rhizome group can grow many feet over a growing season, and have buds along their length that will grow into new rhizomes or culms (shoots). These are the classic runaway bamboo that folks worry about. Bamboo that have pachymorph rhizomes will (each one) grow into a culm and are thus much slower to spread around your garden. More like a clumping bush.
I grow bamboo as a hobby in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, and currently have about thirty bamboo plants of 10 different types growing in pots in my yard. I'm waiting to plant them in the ground at my next house for when I have root barriers to prevent the leptomorphs from spreading too quickly!
Kinda sorta off topic, but recently, to my surprise, learned that every continent, except Europe and Antarctica, has at least one native bamboo species. Pretty neat
The bamboo in our yard in Arkansas is about 30 ft tall already, only a couple years old. Pine is much softer and easier to work with as a general wood.
Well we know that bamboo harvesting is more sustainable/renewable than wood harvesting (note the 4-5 years time to yield vs... orders of magnitude difference with trees, among other things).
But I'm guessing your question is more about the processing of that bamboo (chemical and energy to produce):
With lots of glue. I don’t know why cellulose building materials yet so much hype. Yes part of the product is renewable, the other half is very nasty and we’ve not yet seen a fair comparison of the entire supply chain pollution of these materials vs more common one.
Wood does indeed expand and contract a lot due to changes in humidity. The expansion and contraction is far greater in certain directions and will vary according to species and how the grain is orientated in a particular board.
Laminiating strips or sheets in addition to the strength from the glue (typically in plywoods this is done with perpendiclar grain directions) can counter this.
For a solid wood panel door for example you really want a very stable hardwood species for the frame and for the panels to be fitted without glue into recesses with room for them to expand and contract.
This was our bummer of this year. We bought eighth small bamboo plants and expected to be busy on containing the natural explosive growth they should show. What happened was the opposite, small and no sign of growth. After some digging this retailer sells genetically modified versions which cannot grow.. Now we are looking for proper natural versions to plant these next year. So if you want to hear and see large patches of bamboo ask the retailer for unmodified plants. Naïve and uninformed I tried to find seeds but bamboo doesn't have them? If someone can share some light on how to how grow them please chime in.
In the places where bamboo grows natively, it is used extensively, but typically not for long-term structural applications as bamboo is susceptible to rot and insect infestation.
But it forms decorative elements: fencing, window blinds, or window framing[0]. Also tools like sumisashi (an ink pen) or poles for carrying things. Even scaffolding even on high rises![1]
The simplest thing (survival stuff) is you can cut a section leaving one node (I think it is called?) and use it as a cup / water heating vessel, or keep 2 nodes turn it 90 degrees and cut a hole in the top and you have something to cook in. Using a knife you can fashion a spoon for eating what you cooked.
You'd probably spend half your time mucking around with how to manufacture lumber. That might be fun on its own, just expect projects to take twice as long.
I assume they just mean that they get too heavy for practical use. They stated that they offer boards with a thickness of 30-40mm, they just don't offer panels of that thickness.
At a density of 1200kg/m2 it's almost twice as dense as some other hard woods like walnut (~650kg/m2) or particle board (~700kg/m2).
I guess for a kitchen countertop it wouldn't matter (stone countertops are popular and even heavier), but for most furniture it would probably be just way too heavy to be practical. Someone needs to be able to carry your furniture :)
Safety regulations say that one person should not lift more than 25kgs unaided. Obviously people can lift more than this, I remember hefting 50kg bags of sand around in the 90’s but it’s not great for your back.
If you start with something that is natural and sustainable (for example, bamboo), and you add to it something that is neither (for example, glue), then you end up with something that is neither natural nor sustainable. Sorry.
That's very absolutist thinking. Just because some solution doesn't solve all the problems outright doesn't mean that it's totally useless. What's the baseline? Using bamboo plywood thing instead of normal plywood? What's the end-goal? Increasing carbon sequestration when building stuff? Reducing ground water pollution? Something else? Where is the bamboo lumber used? How far is it shipped? For what it's used? Et cetera.
Notice though that the article doesn't talk about sustainability, ecology, or being natural at all. It just shows how bamboo lumber is made. Which is interesting in its own right.
The world, for some strange reason is dominated by absolutist thinking. It is part of the reason why we dont compromise any more. And it is a worrying trend.
Sure, but ‘synthetic’ is a weird word. At root it just means ‘made via synthesis’. Rayon is not made by synthesizing cellulose, though - it is made by extracting natural cellulose. You could say the fibers are synthesized - but cotton needs to go through a spinning process too. Where do you draw the line between ‘synthesis’ and ‘manufacturing’?
Sure, for rayon the cellulose extraction process is chemical, unlike the physical process used to get cellulose fibers out of cotton, but the raw material is still natural, plant grown cellulose.
There are plenty of things that are made by taking natural ingredients, shoving them in a vat of toxic chemicals to transform them, then taking them out to use, which are generally still considered ‘natural’ products: leather, bleached flour, pressure treated wood, dyed cotton…
But thinking of Rayon and viscose as ‘synthetic’ means people assume it is not biodegradable, which isn’t the case. It’s about as biodegradable as cotton, or cardboard.
In fact cardboard and paper are good analogs - I think people are comfortable thinking of them as ‘processed’ natural products, but not ‘synthetic’. There is value in getting people to think of rayon as more like that than true synthetics like nylon and polyester, which create non biodegradable micro plastic pollutants.
There are several different kinds of pressure-treated wood.
The old bad stuff is CCA, which uses arsenic. It's been restricted (in the US) for about two decades, though still available for some applications. Home Depot does not carry it.
The newer stuff is ACQ (several types) which are Al and Cu-based. Not considered toxic by the EPA, however some people (including myself) are still not comfortable using it for, e.g. garden beds.
Sawdust of all woods is considered an irritant, toxic, and a possible carcinogen.
Work outside, and/or use good dust collection. Always wear a dust mask.
This is a genuine question I've been wondering about, but isn't the glue basically the same as the lignin that holds the wood (and I assume bamboo) together naturally. If it's not, could it be?
This applies to a lot of wood products like plywood and MDF not just bamboo.
In wood fiber insulation, some factories do manage to use the wood's own lignin to keep the insulation batts together, though apparently it's harder to manage for very thick batts.
Not sustainable or cost effective. Look at the amount of labor and processing it takes to make one sheet of plywood!
By comparison, plywood manufacture is a simple process. Entire logs are shaved into veneer sheets, rough cut, laminated together then finish cut.
302 Euros for a 4x8x3/4 sheet of 5-ply plywood that's inferior in most ways to hardwood plywood is crazy. By comparison, the same sheet of hardwood A-B grade plywood would run somewhere between $40-$80 a sheet.
Trees are a great sustainable and renewable resource, they just take longer to grow.
Please note that this is not automated yet. I bet that automation could make bamboo plywood cheaper than hardwood plywood... with the same level of quality.
I mean... Some species are ready to harvest in 90 days(not sure if those are applicable, though).
But typical hardwood is decades of growth time to harvest.
Glues were made from animals for centuries and are animal glue is still phenomenal for a number of woodworking applications.
It's also much more expensive than synthetic glue. This does not mean that a glued lumber product is necessarily unnatural or unsustainable, but rather that the price may end up being higher, and the properties different, when using a natural glue.
Totally right, but one thing I learned recently - hide glue isn't that much more expensive than the same manufacturers' PVA glues.
(For folks who aren't familiar, though, animal glues aren't really substitutable for things like plywood; the ability to undo a hide glue joint is valuable in furnituremaking but not in plywood composition.)
That makes sense. You're talking about a lot of glue for one panel, though, and at that point I would be worried about costing (and still more worried about delamination than with PVA). Plywood is weird when you think about it.
Sure but so what. It is a question of how sustainable. Cutting 2x4s from pine trees still use a lot of non-sustainable energy sources. Saws burn gas and so do the trucks of the people who cut them down, so do the trucks that hall the logs, so do the mills that cut them, and so on and so on.
There are always more externalities we don't consider. To me, the question is whether bamboo worse than other composite wood products. Does it store more carbon? Does it store the same carbon but more quickly? Can it grow using less land? Does it last longer than what would be used instead? If it is at least neutral on all the other questions, does it have other properties that make it preferable?
about 1/3rd correct. It is not made with epoxy[1]. Bamboo lumber is made with urea formaldehyde just like plywood. UF is made from CO2, ammonia, and methanol[2]. Methanol can come from plants or from fossil fuels. Ammonia uses 55% of global hydrogen, and that hydrogen comes from fossil fuels. Typically natural gas. There are also No-Added-Formaldehyde brands that used soy/PVA/other adhesives which can rely less or more fossil fuels (PVA is wood glue- vinyl based).
Engineering bamboo (flooring doesn't always use UF) has ~5% wt. UF, so 20 kg of lumber requires ~.4 kg of ammonia. Using a methane feedstock that translates to ~.85 kg of CO2. 4% of the CO2 captured by the bamboo, for context. Ammonia can also be made from water, via electrolysis- .64 kg per 20 kg of bamboo.
[1]: UF does not contain an epoxide group. Note also that epoxide is an incredibly generic type of chemical- all it means is that two pairs of radicals and an oxygen form a triangular bond. Epoxides can take all kinds of forms and be made from all kinds of stuff. For instance Epichlorohydrin is used to make some of the most common epoxy resins and is produced from glycerol, which comes from plant/animal sources generally. Not all of it, but most of it.
That's not true. Chemicals are -everything-. Unless you think everything "artificial" is bad then I think you will be open to realizing just because something manufactured doesn't mean it's bad by default.
Compared the properties to the wood I wanted to use for parts of it (mainly the core/neck and fretboard) and decided to go for it.
So the second build [1] is 40ish % bamboo with purpleheart veneers in between layers of bamboo and purpleheart/olive for the body. Next build will be around 80% bamboo. Trying to source some strand woven bamboo boards to try them out as fretboards as well, but for a part time builder like me, getting such small quantities of bamboo boards is rather hard.
But yeah, fascinating material even outside of construction use. The boards I used for the guitar builds were nice to work with, easy to sand and finish (using wipe on poly).
[1] https://i.imgur.com/fUyxd7n.jpg