In one of our photos ... is the bamboo scaffolding held together withy
 duct-tape?

 Robin Bergland

 It would not surprise me :) It looks like it.
 If the worker falls and breaks his neck so be it.
 The survival of the individual is not important as long as the work
 gets done.

 Paul Lamar

 In Asia they introduced steel scaffolding but after many deaths went
 back to bamboo, I was in Hong Kong a few years ago and they were fixing
 the advertising neon lights above Nathan Road and had bamboo scaffolding
 across the the busy road above the traffic with bamboo poles standing up
 from the island fence in the middle of the road, the fence was there to
 stop people trying to cross the busy road, just would have needed a tap
 on the poles and all would have come crashing down, life is cheap in
 China, one down another 1.6 billion to go!!
  John.

 I wonder why steel scaffolding  did not work in China.
 Perhaps they could not figure out how to bolt it together?

 http://www.calibamboo.com/whybamboo.html

 I am thinking of making a low cost fuselage space frame out of
 bamboo since it reputedly  has a higher compressive strength to
 weight ratio than carbon fiber.  Lots of hang gliders have
 been built from it already.

 Because of the strength to weight ratio of bamboo it was used for
 some of the first airplane designs. However, due to the difficulty
 of joining pieces it lost out to other materials.

 The first successful flight of a powered dirigible had a super
 structure made of bamboo. It was 82 feet long and 11 feet in diameter.
 Its first flight was in 1898.


 Total Ave. (E)= 2.27*10^6 psi about as stiff as a fiber glass laminate.
 Ave. tensile strength for narrow samples is 11232 psi
 Ave. tensile strength  for wide samples is 14196 psi.
 Being organic, it would also deteriorate more quickly than steel

 Independent testing has shown that bamboo/epoxy also has a much longer
 fatigue life than fiberglass/polyester laminates.

 Bamboo         300 - 400       kg/cu.m
 300 kilogram/cubic meter = 0.010 pounds/cubic inch
 400 kilogram/cubic meter = 0.014 pound/cubic inch

 Aluminum is .1 pound/cubic inch
 Steel is .3 pound/cubic inch
 Hand laminated fiber glass laminate 50% resin is
 about .06 pound/cubic inch.

 The problem is the joints. No duct tape :)

 Paul Lamar



Paul

We use bamboo scaffolding and bamboo post to support when casting the slabs
in Nepal.  Diameter are 4 inches but the wall thickness is is 5/8."  It
takes more load than the 1 1/2" metal pipes.  The joints when  correctly
done are fine. Correctly means properly notched and  1/8" wired thick
together.  I seriously doubt duct tape would hold anything.

Doug in Japan



For good example of building with bambo do a search on google for
"bambo bicycle". There are some beautiful examples out there. They use
epoxy and fiber to wrap the joints.