#HTE

Build A Bamboo Bike In Under 5 Hours

Do you remember Bamboobee? The regrettably-named company first released a jig and bamboo tube set back in 2014, promising to make the DIY-minded bike lover into a bona fide bike builder. It featured a flat packing jig with a cool design, but I had reservations about the frame sizing, as well as lowering the bar for entry into building machines used in traffic…or unleashed on innocent bike mechanics. Well, they’re back on Kickstarter. This time they’re making more frame styles, faster assembly, and even weirder promises.

The goal is still a kit to build your own bamboo bikes, but the big update is in the flexibility and accuracy of the jig design. This new style basically allows the jig to produce what it claimed in the first place: a custom frame that you can’t find in stores. 

As a shorter person, custom bikes have always appealed to me because I fall outside the target demographics of the gourmet bike brands required by my high octane commuter lifestyle. But with the original Bamboobee set you couldn’t scale a frame down enough for the unforeseeable engineering nightmare of my Very-Average-Woman height.

This version of the jig design allows more measurement (a.k.a. any) and greater joint mobility. Meaning you can make way more types of frames than the original L-XL relaxed road bike.

Kids’ bikes, mountain bikes, step-through frames, cargo bikes…and was that a rickshaw? Suffice to say that several kinds of interesting options are on the table. These would become more DIY-able with the addition of the database app they’re developing, where users can access measurements and spec on different types of frame, as well as add their own. Tube kits will be available for the most common new styles–26" mtb, step-through, kids’ bike, and the cool if odd “minivelo.”

This is around where the weird promises start adding up. The claim that you can make a concretely “better” bike than the ones you can get in a store is patently weird. Great kids and family bikes already exist, period, and DIY hyperbole doesn’t change that. 

Next, their idea that, “building bikes for your family will be more fun and cheaper than buying them from a store,” utterly ignores the busy-ness of families and the economy of scale you tap into with mass produced bikes. Yeah traditional brands have more overhead, but have you ever built a frame up from the ground? Buying each individual brake pad and inner tube and wheel and so on winds up dinging the layperson at least double the cost of parts that come with a new bike if not much, much more. Yes, even with Amazon.

Then the assertion that you can make a grand array of bikes with this jig contradicts the other pitch points about not needing machinery or technical know-how. If you aren’t using one of their kits (e.g. want to use a new design from their app) you’ll need to be able to source and accurately miter your own tubes. This is no small feat and benefits greatly from tooling. And knowhow.

Last there’s the promise that you can use this version of the jig with steel and aluminum tubing. They’re beginning to offer steel tube sets for their road design at the end of this campaign, which is a big move. I’ve searched the campaign, the site, and their press materials for information on how the “natural material” jig will hold up during welding or brazing, or if they’re using some sleeved design. There are a couple welding-suggestive pics, and some lugged pictures as well, and based on memories of my own beginning welding and torch skills, I’m not terribly hopeful. If you can burn it, you probably will. 

Can I vouch for improvements in sizing, or the structural integrity of a bamboo mountain bike? No. Do I think most people should make and assemble their own bikes? Probably not. The goal here is a learning process and a super fun afternoon project. I think it would make a wonderful tool for mechanically inclined people, and could lead to some interesting DIY bike design.

The kits start at $249 and the BIY 2 campaign runs through July 8, 2016.