Bamboo boats

Bamboo is an interesting material to work with, and has some cool properties, but one must always keep a very important thing in mind when it comes to trying stuff with it:

Bamboo is a Grass, not wood. Cellular structure is very different, and not nearly as forgiving as the material you will find in most woods.

 

I think all the seemingly contradicting assessments above are valid, depending on which of the over 1000 types of bamboo you have experience with.

Some bamboo types have a higher strength to weight ratio than CF and it is an extremely fast growing renewable resource. So it has been used for airplanes, blimps, etc.

There are solid bamboo types that can be nailed without splitting.

Bridges have been built using bamboo, which means some species are resistant to weathering and mold/mildew. Financing is available for houses made of bamboo by one company, in Hawaii.

Don't know if one species can do all of these things though, and there are many species that can't do any...

Might be interesting to make a lightweight skin on bamboo frame boat. Joints would have to worked out though...

Porta

 

You can learn a lot from the book Bamboo World. Drilling is suggested prior to driving the nails.

Just one source so you can see the book jacket:
http://www.amazon.com/Bamboo-World-Victor-Cusack/dp/0743200667

 

Carpenters. There were some boats built mainly with bamboo ? New technologies even produce bamboo socks, wood seems resistant to water.

 

The answer is yes, boats buildt mainly from bamboo (other then rafts) exist in Vietnam, altough today they are becoming less common. You can read about them here: Woven Bamboo Basket Boats of Coastal Vietnam https://web.archive.org/web/20211224094436/http://boatsandrice.com/wovenBamboo.html

Bamboo socks are just a marketing gimmick related to the recent greenwashing trend. Bamboo fabric is just a rayon (fibers made from cellulose) that uses bamboo instead of wood as the cellulose stock. Rayon - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayon

 

"Bamboo socks"

They're very comfortable.

There is nothing comparable if they are of good quality

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There are high-altitude T-shirts made with a bamboo inner layer and a merino wool outer layer.

But I haven't tried them; they're very expensive. There are very good, very inexpensive polyester T-shirts.

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For a light sailboat, perhaps a double-sided plywood made of 1 mm bamboo and 10 mm Paulownia would be magnificent.

It's a fantasy of mine, perhaps not even an idea.

 

For example

1 mm Bamboo
10 mm Paulownia
1 mm Bamboo
200-400-800 g sqm fiber and Epoxy resin

 

i remember bamboo fishing rods . I also remember when trying to make some wooden bows using local woods and once I bought bamboo stick . Effect was devastating . Glued bamboo is common , kitchen tools offen made of bamboo .In yacht furniture bamboo is used also for outrigger floats too.