Sustainable Bamboo Bike
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Objective
Make a creative, aesthetically pleasing bike to auction off at a USA Water Polo event as a fundraiser for Mercer Street Friends. This was done as a passion project with my teammate in my gap year from Stanford while training for the 2020 Olympics.
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Outcome
A bamboo bike frame decorated with USA themed stickers and paired with red, white, and blue bike components. My teammate and I raised $5,500 for the nonprofit.
The Process
Frame Layout
We first generated an appropriate layout based on the size of the bike we wanted to make. Using this layout, we cut bamboo pieces to the appropriate size and glued them into the appropriate form along with metal joint pieces to attach the rest of the bike components.
Make Joints
The joints are made from hemp fiber and epoxy. Strips of hemp fiber coated in epoxy were wrapped around each joint and then allowed to dry. Once dry, these joints were sanded to achieve a smoother form. This process was repeated several times until the joint appearance was satisfactory!
Decorate and Assemble Bike
Because our target audience was USA Water Polo fans, we stuck with a USA theme. We added white stickers to the frame and used red hemp fiber for the joints. With help and guidance from John Climaco, we bought used bike parts that were blue and integrated them into our bamboo bike frame.
Take it for a spin :)
Our bike is entirely functional (self tested by us)!
Skills Learned
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What I loved most about this project was learning how something as common as a bike could be redesigned with more sustainable materials and function just the same. I loved getting the opportunity to learn about bamboo’s unique properties such as its speed of growth and strength!
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I came into this project thinking that everything for a bike needed to be super precise and exact. However, through the process, I realized this was an unrealistic expectation and that it was more important to be able to think on your toes to make minor adjustments along the way.