This is what I have thought up and something I really think could improve unicycling outside of the pure technical realm through sustainable development, but other challenges in the future if there are other cool ideas the community is willing to support, such as 36er wheels or schlumpf options.
This wouldn’t be funding someone’s commercial R&D, since the reward would be released once the documentation to study, modify, make or distribute it is released in Open Licence. This R&D would be everyone’s, with the benefit of rewarding the person who made it possible and shared it with others.
Thanks LanceB. One thing doesn’t exclude the other. The idea is to get a working prototype of a bamboo unicycle capable of taking the kind of abuse we put into flat and street riding. I believe the kind of technology developped through the challenge should be transposable to other kinds of wheels and riding, such as freestyle, long distance, muni or trials, even if it is not completely straighforward.
The fact that it shall be in Open Source will allow for anyone, manufacturers or tinkerers, to adapt it to his or her needs, even a 32’’ frame
Well, it’s not because it hasn’t been made before it’s not doable. But if we don’t try, we can be sure we won’t be able to make it.
And who know, if we pull it off, maybe we can enable a new generation of Bamboo BMX and Trial bikes, in the same way BMX and Trial bikes enabled Trial and Street Unicycles.
As the saying goes and all unicyclist understand: The difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a little longer
As with most “open-source” projects, the idea that the information being public is the same as the product being public is fatuous. If someone develops a plan for a bamboo composite unicycle, I’ll have access to it only if I pay a manufacturer to build the thing. I have no more ability to manufacture a useful bamboo unicycle than I do to create a useful code fork of MySQL.
You are totally right. Actually this is also a critique that is done to Tesla. They have “open sourced” their patents, but they are farely safe since nobody has billions of dollars to replicate their factories and copy their stuff.
Besides performance criteria (strenght, weight, rigidity…) we are setting up some production criteria. The cost of materials and renting of the tools must be under 500 Euros, and the tools must be regular ones or easy to rent.
It occurs to me that while the properties of bamboo would seem to indicate that road riding would be the best application for it, its inherent flexibility may work against it as the frame legs get longer (as with the 36’r frame). Perhaps it would work best to shoot for a 24" or 26" frame, but design it specifically with a Schlumpf hub in mind. (Or jackshaft gears, whatever.) Just a thought.
Bamboo is not a wood, but a sub-family of the Grasses family.
There are over 600 genera of bamboo and approx 10,000 species.
Bamboo has a unique internal structure; depending on the species, it can range from very flimsy to very, very strong: “The high tensile longitudinal fibres of a bamboo culm are set in a softer matrix and are structurally very similar to carbon fibre. On a strength to weight basis, bamboo culms are stronger than steel.” (Bell, 19.)
(I’ve propogated over a dozen species of bamboo and built many things with it, but no unicycles. Yet.)
This is all true, but the comparison to CF is a bit misleading. In all of the reading I’ve done on Bamboo for fishing rods it is most comparable to Fibreglass in terms of modulus. And this is the highest modulus bamboo that’s available. It is possible that someone has genetically engineered bamboo to have a higher modulus, but I haven’t heard of it.
So, in the end I think the design will be critical to gaining the stiffness needed on a uni. I liked the photo of the bike that was made with split bamboo tubes much like a fly rod. I think that method could pay off. What about a composite with split bamboo and CF stringers in the joints between the bamboo splits? That would look cool too!
I’m not sure if this sounds dumb, I’m half asleep after a long day at work, but how about bamboo plywood? I’m not clued up on woodwork, but I’m sure I remember seeing, or reading something about plywood being strong?
