Lightweight Electric Motorcycle With Bamboo Frame

Step 5 Obtaining and heat treating your bamboo

 You should be able to obtain bamboo at a local lumber supply store or online. You’ll need both 2 and 1 inch thick pieces of bamboo for different parts of your frame. The higher-stress areas should be thicker bamboo.  

 

Before heat treating, it is important to break all of the inner membranes of the bamboo with a piece of rebar. If you do not do this the bamboo will crack, and might explode. Also, existing cracks will increase in size during this process.

 

There are two ways of heat treating bamboo. The first method is to put the bamboo in the oven. This is the easiest, the fastest, the safest, and the cheapest way, but not all your pieces of bamboo will fit unless you have access to a really large oven, or decide to make an oven. If you use an oven, set the temperature to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and put the bamboo in for as long as it takes for it to become slightly browned. It is hard to tell how long this will take, but it took about 40 minutes for us. It helps to rotate the pieces every 10 minutes or so.

 

The second choice is to use either a blow torch or an electric heat gun. We suggest an electric heat gun, because the heat will not burn the bamboo as easily as the blow torch. If you do this the finish on the bamboo will look nicer, but it will not be as thorough, and the heat treating process takes a lot longer.