Be Happy, Be Authentic, Make a Bamboo Bike

It's been several months since we first reported on Brooklyn's Bamboo Bike Studio and their weekend classes teaching you how to make your very own bamboo bicycle. But last week Planet Green finally had a chance to stop by, check out the action, and pick the brains of the guys behind the studio to find out why dedicate yourselves to teach other people DIY bike-making.

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Unless you know where you are going beforehand, you won't find the Bamboo Bike Studio. There's no sign on the door, nor even on the entrance buzzer. The first time class members meet is at a coffee shop a few blocks away. But inside a smallish warehouse studio in Red Hook, Brooklyn--itself slightly off the beaten track for most New York City transit, if not the hipster radar--Marty Odlin, Sean Murray, Justin Aguinaldo, plus a number of volunteering friends, spill the beans on how to make bicycle frames out of bamboo (harvested in New Jersey), foam, carbon fiber tape and resin.

Over one weekend, four people will go from having a pile of bamboo sitting in a box at their feet to having a bicycle that is truly theirs.

Not that it takes that long to make a bamboo bike frame once you've got the knack for it. While it may take class participants twelve-plus hours on the first day and nearly that long on the second, Justin says they can turn out a prototype in just a small fraction of that time, with the current record time being three and half hours.

Top to bottom: Sean Murray (left) explains the physical properties of bamboo to class participants and how they will be tacked together; Justin Clapper uses rubber bands to help hold the frame in place while tacking epoxy dries; the frame tacked together, awaiting filing of foam lugs.

Bike frames, bamboo and otherwise, hang from the ceiling. Racks with stacks of bamboo are in the corner and outside, some waiting to be flame treated, some already completed, and some rejected for use for one reason or another. Tools and testing apparatus take up one third of the room, while custom jigs on which participants assemble their bikes stand in the other.

On the walls are several posters--put up to see how people react them I'm told--extolling the virtues of bamboo (it's "nature's carbon tubing, hollow, lightweight and sturdy" with vibration dampening qualities making it perfect for bikes), how these bikes are made out of multiple composite materials (bamboo being a natural one and carbon fiber being a manufactured one), and one which I think really gets to the heart of the Bamboo Bike Studio: Craftsmanship.

"Craftsmanship is a producer taking pride in their work, or a consumer having a close, personal, and confident relationship with a product that he/she bought," it reads. "This was the norm back when every village had dedicated craftsmen whose reputation depended on building long-lasting durable products. Mass production has since boosted the standard of living for many people in developed countries...[but] has also proven to be damaging to the environment and has produced a wasteful culture of throwaway consumerism."

Pretty heady stuff to think about when making sure you've filed foam lugs smooth enough that stress concentrators are minimized or are wrapping tape or applying epoxy resin to them. But this level of deeper green thought really infiltrates the mission of the Studio.

(top) John Beauregard files the foam connectors. (bottom) Justin Aguinaldo uses a dremel tool to remove excess material from the lugs of the frame.

I asked Marty about what he hopes people get out of the class. "A bicycle can make you happy," he says simply. "It can make you healthy; you can get around really easily; you can be outdoors. When I made my first bike, in my studio apartment, I had a lot of fun. It made me happy. I didn't have to buy a whole bunch of stuff. I just made it. That's what we want people to get out of this: To realize that happiness isn't about churn and burn, buy and throw away, it's about making something that you care about."

"It's kind of funny," he continues. "People always look for authenticity, some experience or product that can become part of their identity. Building something yourself, that's the most authentic thing you can do. You can't get anymore authentic than that. People feel really good about themselves when they do this. This is their bike. When they roll out of here, that is their bike. Not a bike made by some company--we don't brand them or anything--so that is their bike. It doesn't say even say Bamboo Bike Company on it."

Or maybe it's a trojan horse--that's how Sean describes it--the whole process a vehicle for getting people to think more critically about their products, for caring about them in a deeper way.

Marty Odlin (right) helps Chris Foster make final preparations on his bike frame prior to attaching the components.

Want to build your own bamboo bike? Check out BambooBikeStudio.com for more information and to sign up for the class.