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Build Your Own Bamboo Gravel Bike with Latest Kit from Bamboo Bicycle Club

bamboo gravel bike kit bamboo cycling clubPhotos c. Bamboo Bicycle Club
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The Bamboo Bicycle Club combines DIY & natural-material bikes. Its newest project focuses on what’s arguably cycling’s most in-vogue discipline.

In short, you’ll get everything you need to build your own bamboo gravel bike when you order Bamboo Bicycle Club’s kit. A build plan, custom jig, bonding glue, bamboo, lugs, videos, and a manual all come in the box.

The idea? To ease the most common pain point with bamboo bikes, which is that they demand huge expertise and take forever to build.

90-hour builds are common, according to the club. But it claims its new kits can cut that commitment down to just eight hours.

You might not end up with a Jason O’Nions masterpiece — indeed, many bamboo builders, including Bamboo Bicycle Club founder James Marr, have been at it for a decade or more. But the club’s main goal with the kit is to give everyday cyclists a fair shot at creating their own functional bamboo bike.

bamboo gravel bike bamboo cycling club kit

Instead of custom frame joinery, the lug kit leverages simplistic technology that’s already here. That allows home builders “to create a consistent design and speed up the build progress by 75% as well as create a more sustainable and durable product,” the Bamboo Bicycle Club said in a press release. “Combining the lug with bamboo offers a natural vibration dampening creating a superior ride to all other bicycle frame materials. It will move and reform with riders creating a more connected ride whilst providing the stiffness and performance of traditional materials.”

Specs include:

  • Tire clearance for 2.2 650b/52mm700c.
  • Modular dropout for thru-axle, single speed/hub gear/thru-axle.
  • Internal cable routing for rear/front derailleur, dropper post, and rear disc brake.
  • 27.2mm and 31.6mm seat tube options.
  • Rack and mudguard mounts, and optional frame inserts.
bamboo gravel bike kit dropouts

The result is a relatively narrow- or wide-tire touring or gravel rig. Lug sets are aluminum. Choose from four frame sizes, and pick it up now from Bamboo Bicycle Club for $620 MSRP (frame only).

bamboobicycleclub.org/gravel-build-kit

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Exodux
Exodux
1 year ago

What’s always thrown me off when it comes to bamboo as a frame material, especially when it comes to lugs which the tubes are bonded inside is, how do you control the diameter of the bamboo to fit the lug?
Many years ago, I was going to make a bamboo seatpost and talked to a bamboo farmer about me machining a clamp which would be bolted around a length (12″ or so) so that we could somewhat control the diameter being that the bamboo would be limited to the I.D. diameter of the clamp. He or I were not sure this would work but we never did try it.

Drew Diller
1 year ago
Reply to  Exodux

I’m qualified to answer this question. I build bicycle frames, started as a hobbyist building bamboo frames. Basically you have to get the best-of-the-best poles, and you need to sort through a lot of them. There are not many bamboo bike frame builders who are financially intact, and what nearly all of them have in common is they live on-or-near a bamboo plantation. I live in Minnesota, US, and I had to get material shipped here. My scrap rate was over 80%. You read that correctly. Basically the “big” bamboo bike builders already *had* healthy businesses of making bamboo related products for decades before they ever built a bike, and they save the best poles/tubes for the bike frames. I ended up building carbon stuff with the goal of making very tough models that are intended to stay out of the landfill.

It’s kinda like how we won’t be building bamboo houses anywhere other than climates where it is readily available: SHIPPING it is more expensive than just using conventional domestic lumber.

Exodux
Exodux
1 year ago
Reply to  Drew Diller

Thanks for your answer Drew. I’ve seen tube to tube construction as to where the joints are carbon wrapped, I can’t say I’ve seen a lug and bonded bamboo frame.

I live in So.Cal and there was a bamboo farm not too far away from where I was living at the time.
Although I never built a seatpost using my method, I still wonder if it would have worked,

Destroyer666
Destroyer666
1 year ago
Reply to  Drew Diller

Thanks for this, indeed. The scrap rate you mentioned does not actually surprise me, but confirms my suspisions and experiences. When I was a kid a bought a couple of digeridoos and both developed cracks pretty quickly. Maybe expertise in the material can also lead to knowing if the bamboo will crack or not once it leaves the shop, but if this cannot be done well, to me selling bamboo bikes appears as an impossible business model if you think of the consequences like bike/frame returns and accidents…

james
1 year ago
Reply to  Drew Diller

As a builder of 12 years, choosing and sourcing bamboo is the easiest part of the build. We’ve also conducted a lot of collaborative testing with universities and most bamboo will be compatible with the stress in a bicycle frame, however, the connections are the area most likely to fail to make the joining of the bamboo the most difficult part of the build. By creating a lug you create constancy and simplicity to the build and design.

WhateverBikes
1 year ago

I’ve always liked the idea of bamboo bikes and they’re apparently very nice riding characteristics, but this is the first bamboo bike that I actually like how it looks. I think it’s the black lugs, instead of the wrapped around carbon that makes the difference.

Destroyer666
Destroyer666
1 year ago
Reply to  WhateverBikes

EKER. Not perfect, but to me the best looking bamboo bikes (though probably the most expensive choice as well).

WhateverBikes
1 year ago
Reply to  Destroyer666

I’m no expert, but this DIY frameset doesn’t seem overly expensive to me tbh.

Destroyer666
Destroyer666
1 year ago
Reply to  WhateverBikes

I was referring to Eker…

WhateverBikes
1 year ago
Reply to  Destroyer666

Wow, I somehow completely missed that, lol.
But though they look refined, it’s not a look I like. I prefer the lugs like on this Bamboo Bicycle Club one.

james
1 year ago
Reply to  WhateverBikes

We try our best to be good value!

james
1 year ago
Reply to  WhateverBikes

It’s also simple to build and gives you loads of fit-up options with modular dropouts and cable options. We designed it to be compatible with almost every component variation.

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