5 ms·

Soft bamboo (which is useless for products like these) grows incredibly fast.

• tomrod 5y ago
  Why can they not be hardened? Or otherwise used?
  • ashtonkem 5y ago
    Different species. Bamboo is actually a family of 1,400 individual species, not one individual plant. The grassy and woody varieties are just different plants with different material properties. As a general rule, the structural properties of wood can’t really be changed without just injecting a shit load of petroleum products[0], which isn’t really what we’re after here. If a type of wood, bamboo or otherwise is too soft for an application, then there really isn’t a way to “harden” it. This is the reason we tend to use hard species for flooring, such as oak, as you need to rely on the natural characteristics of the wood for strength and hardness. 0 - For example OSB, which is basically 5% oil by weight. Even still, our ability to adjust some properties is limited. OSB is strong and cheap, but it’s not that much harder than the wood species it was made from, and hardness is a desirable property for flooring to resist dents. Also, OSB is ugly.