Bamboo frame!

It has arrived! All the same except for one darker piece, I think perhaps I should use that as the seat tube so it would balance aesthetically? :)

Even i'm excited to see how this works. Good luck.

Thanks! (ps. Yes I do have a batman duvet cover.)

Awesome - looks like Moso with a bit of Black. You might find that the Black is too thick-walled for a seatpost, but it might be ok.

By another bizarre coincidence my bamboo has also arrived today. Your thinner bits look way better than mine, jealous. I'm going to go more extreme on the sanding so hopefully that should even out the imperfections in mine. May start a thread of my own if I can be bothered, but it'll be a few weeks before I actually start building ...

I'll also not be starting for a while, I have exams throughout june and immediately aftwerwards I have some holidays booked. I may do some preliminary work on it when I need a revision break though!

It's a good idea. I'm halfway through finals and instead of revising I have been spending silly amounts of time combining the following into a functioning front end: a steel MTB frame with a 160mm headtube a 700c fork with a 160mm 1" threadless steerer, assorted parts of 1" headsets, threaded and unthreaded, and a 1 1/8" stem. The final product is more shim and steerer extender than bike and I have absorbed little literary theory. But I have relaxed ...

by another bizarre coincidence i am also making a bamboo frame! ive got the bamboo, epoxy, old frame (a create shit heap), carbon etc. bought a blow torch too to heat treat the bamboo and make the poles nice and dark.

i found this instructables really helpful/inspirational:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Bamboo-Bike-2/?&sort=ACTIVE&limit=40&offset=120#intro

There I was thinking that I was special :P

That's another good one, I'll read through it in more detail at some point :) I find it a bit odd that he chose to keep his seat tube as metal, then cut it out and bond bamboo. Another method for the same effect I saw was to use a bamboo seat tube, but insert a metal part and glue it with epoxy and high density filler etc. Either way, I can't use his method because the seat tube on my frame is the reason it is scrap!

How about a disc brake mounted to the rear dropouts?

Not sure about popdown and benh but mine is going to be fixed gear with just a front brake, less to think about really.

Mine's fixed as well but I may put a rear disc brake mount on for future SS use, especially as I plan to get a front disc brake soonish.

yeh mines going to be fixed as well. either of you thought about belt drive? im very tempted to give it a go!

I was sorely tempted but my first one was a bit bendy, and belt drives are very intolerant of that. This is my first time using carbon tow which should make it much stiffer in the joints, so I might consider it in future. The Gates bits are just too expensive for me atm as well...

I have a belt drive Strida and I hate it... although that's probably more to do with its geometry etc

A little bit ahead of myself I know, but here are some components I'm planning to put on the frame when it's done. I'm going mostly for carbon just because I like it... and I don't know how heavy the frame will be so I want to keep things light-ish.
The cranks are pretty heavy, but I think I can live with it. BB, saddle stem and brake are all quite light!

Serious thread I can't wait to see how it works out. Have any of you guys toyed with the idea of using the 206 hardener as opposed to the 205? The 206 is a slower hardener so it gives you a bit more time to work with the batch of resin you mix up, always found that useful when doing layups for RC projects.

I've never used any epoxy before (unless araldite counts which I don't think it does really). As such I just went with the same stuff as I saw in one of those blogs. I think I am going to do a "dry run" of each joint so that I know what I am doing though.

I found 205 slow enough for the really very small areas you're working on at a time. Maybe a bit slower would let you put another layer on all the joints from one batch of epoxy though... I'll think about it.

Awesome, seems like you have it worked out.

So, lots of inactivity due to exams, but I only have one left so I spent my evening in the garage. Done a fair amount of sanding, most of the paint I need to remove is now gone and I'll touch it up with some stripper at a later date. Also I have produced my extremely low tech Jig, using spare bits of wood and an old axle. I still need to add some brackets to hold the BB shell in place. I should probably have spent less on components and more on tools but oh well.

I put in some brackets for the bb shell, and my nice shiny (expensive) track ends arrived:

I would be scared shitless going down a big hill for the first time on a bamboo bike I had built. I'd be wincing hoping all my joints are spot on...

Good luck though, interested to see how this turns out.

I'm trying not to think about that... we don't have any big hills in cambridge thankfully. I am going to make my joins as strong as I possibly can