Good morning
Is there any experiance in using bamboo als a material for masts?
I'm thinking about using bamboo for a Hitia-17-Mast. This bamboo is used for scaffolding, pole vault and building bicycles. A a cane with diameter 120-140 mm and length 6 meter costs 56 Euro.
It could be a quick and cheap mast....? What do you think about that idea?
https://www.bambushandel-conbam.de/Produkte/details/Bambusrohre-Moso-gelb
(sorry, website only in German)
Greetings,
Eckart
Hi, look at this Tiki 21:
http://econscience.org/tiki/2015/02/15/performance-of-a-bamboo-polytarp-...
I also will use a bamboo pole for my cat (20ft).
I fill the cavity with epoxy foam and exterior coated with fiberglass
The original "Child of the Sea had bemboo spars--and if I remember, the builder split them down the centre with a bandsaw,, removed the nodes (or some portion of all of the the nodes), properly dried and preserved them, then re-joined the halves, What was done after that, by way of whippings on the outside of the spars, or by using a sock and resin, I have not remembered. It was all on the old forum now lost.
From my own experience I have used bamboo a great deal for making deck cover frames, and bits and pieces of equipment. It spilts easily and has a limited life unless treated--but another piece will float by as required--or I can go collect some.
If I were to keep some aboard permanenetly and expect it to last, I would dry it properly from the inside, use lashings or a sock and glass to reinforce the outside, and use a solvent-based preservative on the insides, which would mean drilling through the nodes and poring some preservative into one raised end until it trickled out of the other, then there is some in each sector, I would then roll it around until the stuff has well and truly soaked into the inside--which is mutch more porous than the outside. I would then tip out what was left and use it to treat some pluywood so as not to waste the excess. This would need to be done as couople of times, and then I think you might have a useful spar. A rough job one could tape the outside with two overlapping laths of glass tape--then yopu have a glass spar with a banboo mandrel which has some strength of its own.
Banboo is fine--I have seen it used as masts on Dhows when a lad--but they were regularly replaced. I think from the smell of them they used fish oil as the opreservative. Making it permanenet is where the problem lies.
One can also split it with a fibe v]=bladed saw auch as a Japanese pull-saw, and do the preserving more easily--which makes removing the centre of the bodal barriers unnecessary, then re-join it later using an epoxy or pheno-formaldehyde glue such as resorcinol. Resorcinol requires accurate allignments and firm clamping. I always liked that stuff--just don;t breathe any fumes from it.