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How is bamboo lumber made? (2016)

bambooimport.com

101–110 of 226 posts

Re: How is bamboo lumber made? (2016)

#101

>Strand woven bamboo panels are available in a maximum thickness of 20 mm, otherwise they would become too heavy Does anyone know what this refers to? too heavy for what??

At 1200kg/m2, a standard 4x8 (120x240) panel at 20mm is already over 60kg. This is double the weight of a softwood panel of equivalent thickness.

Re: How is bamboo lumber made? (2016)

#103
post #62
post #31

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 impressi…

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. [1]: https://www.arbeitsplatten-shop.de/epages/61566463.sf/de_DE/...

Baltic birch isn’t cheap plywood - it’s good stuff.

Re: How is bamboo lumber made? (2016)

#104

How does it compare to spruce/pine/fir in terms of environmental footprint for the same yield?

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):

https://bioresources.cnr.ncsu.edu/resources/environmental-im...

Re: How is bamboo lumber made? (2016)

#105

How does it compare to spruce/pine/fir in terms of environmental footprint for the same yield?

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): https://bioresources.cnr.ncsu.edu/resources/environmental-im...

Thanks for the link. But I’m curious about the first part now. Why does yield time matter if you have all the empty land you could possibly need?

Indeed this matters for regional supply and reducing shipping. But does it matter for other reasons I’m not thinking of?

Re: How is bamboo lumber made? (2016)

#106

> The bamboo strands are placed in a massive industrial press and compressed with a pressure of 2,500 tons. I wondered if this number was a typo. Quick research shows that presses can produce tens of thousands of tons of pressure. [1] 1: https://thelibraryofmanufacturing.com/presses.html

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)

apropos link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Press_Program

Re: How is bamboo lumber made? (2016)

#107
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I noticed the ads(?) at the bottom with the price. ~150 Euros for a square meter? Damn. It's probably cheaper in China/Asia, but not here lol

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.

Re: How is bamboo lumber made? (2016)

#108
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Plywood is in a way more processed than bamboo.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppicing

Re: How is bamboo lumber made? (2016)

#110
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens to glue when you throw it away?

What happens to anything when you throw it away? It gets encapsulated in more garbage and stays there for basically ever.

Wood rots. It doesn't even take that long. Let's not pretend natural biodegradable materials are the same.
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