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Does anyone know if bamboo is capable of being used in engineered lumber? Could you make effective LVL or similar from it? Feels like you’d get dirt cheap, rene
by nemo44x 3y ago
Does anyone know if bamboo is capable of being used in engineered lumber? Could you make effective LVL or similar from it? Feels like you’d get dirt cheap, renewable, and super strong lumber this way.
- bragr 3y agoI don't see why you couldn't grind up the fibers and compress them, but a lot of the strength of bamboo comes from its structure, so I'm not sure it would be much of an improvement.
- naremu 3y agoWell, from my experience, bamboo isn't cheap, and from my reading varies in properties based on species at least as much as wood. A probably bigger problem though is you'd need to add production steps to an already not dirt cheap material to create larger surfaces to make veneer from. And I'd imagine the veneer has potential to be mighty ugly since it'd have to be from a bunch of glued up boards. Maybe bamboo OSB would be a simpler and cheaper experimentation.
- nemo44x 3y agoNo idea on price of bamboo but my thought is a plantation of it would dramatically outgrow pine. You could harvest numerous times per year. And seeing how pine costs have sores I wonder if there’s an edge there. Unfortunately I don’t have the skills to pursue this.
- naremu 3y agoOh it most definitely grows faster, it's more a production question/investigation. I can say as someone who has a hobby woodworking in NA though, even factory made bamboo items can be reasonably pricey for the amount of material used. I'm sure most of the costs are shipping but, I struggle to imagine the traditional 4x8' sheets of plywood being made of bamboo ending up being cost efficient without some serious production innovations (not that it wouldn't interest me endlessly).