Why is bamboo suddenly appearing in so many products?

Nowadays bamboo is used to make all sorts of products, from flooring and furniture to bicycle frames. In this episode, Marshall explains why bamboo is becoming so popular -- and the advantages of using it to create consumer goods.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Brainstuff from house Stuff works dot com where
smart happens. Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question, why
is bamboo appearing in everything from flooring, defencing to furniture?
All of a sudden, bamboo is appearing in everything from

(00:23):
flooring to paneling. And there are even people riding around
on bamboo bicycles now and they're not too distant future.
It's possible to imagine bamboo replacing wood in a number
of furniture and fencing products as well. Bamboo's use is
growing because bamboo has several advantages over traditional woods like
pine and oak. The first advantage is the fact that

(00:44):
bamboo grows fast. Bamboo is not a tree. It's actually
a very very large type of grass with an extremely
strong stem. This grass heritage means that bamboo does not
have bark, and it doesn't have deadwood at the center
of the trunk. It also grows more like a long,
straight column rather than being tapered like most trees. Like

(01:08):
many other grasses, bamboo can grow incredibly quickly. Given the
right soil and the right weather, Some varieties of bamboo
can grow more than a foot in a single day.
This speed means that it takes much less time to
get a usable crop of bamboo than it does to get, say,
a usable crop of pine trees. An acre of pine

(01:28):
trees takes three or four decades to reach a usable size.
Bamboo grows more densely and can be harvested many times
in that same span of time. This means that an
acre of bamboo forest is far more productive than an
acre of pine trees or oak trees. Another advantage of
bamboo is its strength. Bamboo is surprisingly strong, and pound

(01:50):
per pound, certain species are as strong as steel. Heat
treating the bamboo stocks maximizes the strength. Bamboo is so
strong that it's being used in place of steel to
make bicycle frames. In some cases, you can buy bamboo
bicycle frames pre made, or you can look on the
internet and find instructions for building your own. It may

(02:10):
surprise you that these frames are not made of any
kind of specially engineered bamboo composite material. It's just normal
bamboo stocks that have been heat treated with a blowtorch
to strengthen the fibers. Bamboo flooring is a composite. To
understand bamboo flooring, think about a typical bamboo stock. It's

(02:31):
a hollow cylinder and the walls of the cylinder are
not very thick, the cylinder can be cut into long strips.
These strips will have a slight curve to them because
they were cut from a cylinder, but if the cylinder
is large, say three inches in diameter or greater, the
curve is very minor. It's easily removed by running the

(02:51):
strip through a planer that makes it square. So now
you have a thin square strip of bamboo that looks
a lot like the wood for making a yard stick.
These strips are turned into flooring in very much the
same way that pine is turned into plywood. Strips are
laid down in alternating layers, with a heat activated glue
added between the layers. A heated press then compresses the

(03:15):
layers and activates the glue to bind everything together. When
the process is complete, you have a laminated bamboo panel
that's incredibly strong and relatively light weight. It can then
be cut into strips or squares to make either traditional
tongue and groove flooring or parquet flooring. Bamboo flooring that's
made in this way has several advantages over traditional hardwood flooring.

(03:38):
The lamination process makes it extremely strong and natural. Bamboo
tends to resist dents better than hardwood floors do. Bamboo
flooring tends to be less expensive because bamboo grows so
much faster than oak or pine. Best of all for
many people is the fact that bamboo feels greener than wood.
When loggers clear cut of forest for the lumber leaves

(04:00):
a scar that lasts for many years. With a bamboo
for us, the roots are still alive and they regenerate
the bamboo stocks with surprising speed. That, plus the fact
that bamboo can be harvested so often, means that it
takes far less land to grow bamboo than to grow
the same amount of wood. The only thing you need
to keep in mind with bamboo flooring and other bamboo

(04:23):
products is the source. You want to purchase your flooring
from a reputable manufacturer to ensure uniform quality, appearance, strength,
debt resistance, and chemical composition. Be sure to check out
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