here's something I find highly interesting, bike frames made of wood (especially bamboo).
those are made by Calfee Design, the first one is a road bike made of bamboo:
really beautiful craftsmanship, isn't it?
what I found even more cool is their mountain bike made from a fallen tree branch:
the interesting part is that especially bamboo beats any of the "classic" materials like steel or aluminium and even the modern hi-tech materials like titanium or carbon, you actually have all the good features of those materials connected: the stiffness of titanium, the lightness of carbon, and the crash safety and damping characteristics of steel.
sadly the frames are a bit on the pricey side yet, the bamboo road bike frame goes for $ 3200, but that's most likely because of the small series production, the question is how well such frames can be built in mass production...I guess the material itself can't be machined automatically too well.
another company which is a step further already in context with producing bigger series is Boo Cycles:
http://boobicycles.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
their frames are not fully bamboo though, the "hard to manufacture" parts are still metal or carbon....still a very interesting concept (but also still at a pretty high price).
I will look around a bit, maybe I get a chance to do a test drive with a Boo bike somewhere...
bikes made of wood!
Re: bikes made of wood!
I would totally get a bamboo bike .... I may save up and get one, one day. That is awesome!
Re: bikes made of wood!
watch out for hijacking pandas though!maboroshi wrote:I would totally get a bamboo bike .... I may save up and get one, one day. That is awesome!
"The best place to hide a tree, is in a forest"
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Re: bikes made of wood!
good one....
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Re: bikes made of wood!
Nice designs, thats a lot of work gone into them, no wonder the price is high.
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Re: bikes made of wood!
yeah, small series (most likely even build on demand), which is of course way more expensive than mass production...most mainstream bike company frames are made in china btw.
hopefully someone picks up the idea and promotes it in sports, best winning some races...that would surely attract some attention.
hopefully someone picks up the idea and promotes it in sports, best winning some races...that would surely attract some attention.
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Re: bikes made of wood!
here's one for 799€...
http://www.sandwichbikes.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
shipping starts in december...
http://www.sandwichbikes.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
shipping starts in december...