How is bamboo lumber made? (2016)
bambooimport.com
bambooimport.com
Compared the properties to the wood I wanted to use for parts of it (mainly the core/neck and fretboard) and decided to go for it.
So the second build [1] is 40ish % bamboo with purpleheart veneers in between layers of bamboo and purpleheart/olive for the body. Next build will be around 80% bamboo. Trying to source some strand woven bamboo boards to try them out as fretboards as well, but for a part time builder like me, getting such small quantities of bamboo boards is rather hard.
But yeah, fascinating material even outside of construction use. The boards I used for the guitar builds were nice to work with, easy to sand and finish (using wipe on poly).
In the end I went with some 150x4cm oak strips of varying width from the left-overs bin of a wood vendor. 5€ the piece was a pretty good deal back then.
I really wanna build one almost completely from bamboo (with various veneers to get some accents/lines in) but it's really hard to source boards now. Meh... but yeah, who would have thought that "tonegrass" would become a term someday haha.
I saw the picture above, looks very good!
> tone grass
I honestly believe that the key to building a good guitar is stiffness ... This will create a very high pitched instrument, as it does not lose the high frequencies in the wood. But that can be sorted out later vis EQing
I noticed you use the Planet Waves tuners. I love those as well, they're much more practical as they cut the strings for you. I wonder why they don't make them in more traditional colors, or why other manufacturers don't provide similar solutions. Everyone else makes just regular and locking tuners, not the locking-and-cutting tuners.
For a performing amateur musician, the ability to change your string quicker and without having to carry extra tools is certainly beneficial, and people spend a lot of time fretting about much less important details in their guitars.
I do like the current trend in youtube guitar videos talking more about playability, usability and reliability, and doing things like switching jacks or nuts, instead of endless pickup sound comparisons.
https://www.amazon.ca/Kluson-SD9105MN-Vintage-Tuning-Machine...
I think it's fairer to say your build is 40%-ish bamboo composite. When we're calling it bamboo we're doing that industry's greenwashing marketing for them.
Cool guitar!
Lots of the Ikea "wood" furniture is made this way, some apparently from relatively small scraps.
5% glue is far from something like carbon composite, where most content is epoxy. Common wood surface treatment is probably more than 5%, yet we don't call it a wood composite.
IMO, total surface sealant makes more of a material difference than 5% glue on the inside.
The problem with saying it's 38% bamboo is it implies it's in some meaningful sense made out of bamboo. It's not. There isn't a way to go in there and cut out a piece and have it be bamboo--unless it's really, really small (maybe). Whereas it's totally possible to take a piece of wood from an old piece of furniture, surface it four sides, and have essentially wood (albeit a little smaller).
I think also that you're a little off on two things: 1, common wood surface treatments are < 5%, and 2, composites vary but 60/40 fiber/resin by mass is a reasonable place to start.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDQz4H7tz6Fwu5_5rg4W6pA
There were two guests on, both sounded like environmentalists, with the first one (Michael Green) saying that mass timber was
"currently the best tool we have to address climate impact and in the building materials for a large building"
while the second guest (John Talberth) was arguing:
"The idea that we can cut down our forests and turn them into two by fours and build our way to a stable climate is absurd, and it's just another one of these false narratives of big timber corporations are using to get us to buy more of their product and continue to subsidise their record profits",
and Talberth advocated Bamboo, mentioning it multiple times as an alternative. It kind of went back and forth a bit with Mr Green saying
"Bamboo, for instance, is not structurally a material that can actually satisfy the demand of three billion people that need a new home because it doesn't build large buildings"
and Mr Talberth saying
"Believe it or not, bamboo can actually be put together in the structurally with high structural integrity beams to make taller buildings"
It kind of left me wondering who was right... though Mr Green (an architect) sounded like someone with actual experience making buildings, where as the Mr Talberth (an economist) sounded like he might have been doing a bit of ill-informed wishful thinking about Bamboo.
Seeing the process here gave me a bit more perspective on the discussion. Given the labour involved and the fact that you are working with 20mm x 5mm cross-sections of bamboo, I can see how it would be extremely expensive to build a large building out of bamboo, and the $300 euro price tag on a sheet of plywood at the bottom of the page added more confirmation that it's not going to be a practical replacement for large-scale building.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-oct-20-2...
Managed forestry has the ability to, relatively trivially and particularly when compared to other “carbon sequestration alternatives” lock in decent magnitudes of carbon as we figure out our energy system.
Particularly helps when comparing to other building material options (bricks, concrete, steel all very energy intensive and not decarbonized yet).
> A bamboo stem reaches its maximum height in just a few months and shall not grow taller or thicker over time. In the following 4 years the fibers will "lignify" and get their extraordinary mechanical properties in terms of hardness, strength, density.
That seems pretty fascinating to me. Are there any other plants/trees that grow like that? I mean, from my naive knowledge, trees go wider with a new ring every year.
A normal tree (which is slow growing) typically will get taller and wider each year until it starts maxing out something like water transport, or dies due to disease and competition from other trees.
The rings you are referring to are generally gathered from the base of the tree as that is the part most likely to grow (for sure). If you go to the top of the tree, it’s a bit harder to tell what has been going on.
And the ring itself is formed when the tree stops growing as part of the yearly seasonal cycle.
Bamboo doesn’t have rings.
Most won't but some do grow really very fast. Like the Willow.
I live in an area with lots of Pollarded Willows. We have about 30 of them in our garden. They grow a ridiculous 2-3m each year (6-10ft). Often in just a few months.
We'll cut them around now (autumn) down to 1.50m, and next year august they'll easily be 3-4m high again. Pollarding is rewarding but a lot of work.
Coincidentally they’re a PITA to get rid of too - id argue worse than clumping bamboo.
They're one of the only trees that use C4 photosynthesis (more commonly employed by grasses like bamboo) than the C3 process most trees use. This lets them grow up to 20ft/6m per year, and they're able to be harvested commercially within five years.
They're also good from a woodworking perspective: traditionally, parents of daughters in southern Japan would plant a kiri tree on the birth of a daughter and then cut it down to make chests, drawers, and boxes for their daughter's marriage ceremony.
I has a higher strength:weight ratio than balsa wood, and is pest and rot resistant.
Other fun fact: they resprout from the stump after cutting, similar to coast redwoods.
What glue is used, and how does it break down when exposed to the elements?
Occasionally uproar originates from someone's personal motivation, but that requires a rare alignment of drive, capability and charisma.
Now is the creation of the glue environmentally unfriendly? I don't know.
In case you are not aware, engineered lumber, whether used as structural elements, finishings, or even furniture, continuously releases formaldehyde into the environment. Consequently, there are health and safety guidelines to minimize exposure, which depending on the jurisdiction can vary around 0.03ppm and 0.01 ppm.
Those who handle MDF in industrial contexts need to take a lot of precautions to be safe regarding the half dozen types of cancer linked with it's exposure, but the risk isn't limited to that context. Risk is determined by the degree of exposure, and lower-level but continuous exposure throughout longer time periods, which happens when you stay home, also presents a serious health risk.
Vinyl flooring that has become very, very popular recently is probably worse than wood composites with regards to air quality and overall toxic effects.
Unfortunately, a lot of the effects from these materials aren't immediate and typically don't affect a large portion of the population, so it can be hard to get people to realize it's bad on a large scale.
There has been more of a focus on indoor air quality over the last decade, I expect that to continue and that we'll see more of a push for materials that have better air quality properties.
Alternatively, could we revert back to safer traditional animal-based glues as a practical/viable option? That said, I'd guess that these days cost would be prohibitive as well as having environmental concerns not to mention their long-term reliability in that composites made with them may be prone to delamination, etc. (my experience is that animal glues get brittle with age).
In a similar vein, one of the major problems with MDF, medium density fiberboard/particleboard, is the fact that the amount of binder used is quite inadequate which means that it has limited durability/lifespan. This is a two-edged sword of course, the more binder the more expensive it will be but its durability will be increased; on the other hand, unless the binder is environmentally friendly then sooner or later we'll have a polution problem. Nevertheless, the high-grade high-density stuff can be extraordinarily durable (thus it's much less likely to end up in landfills). It seems to me that we urgently need new very durable glues and binders that are also cheap, safe and environmentally friendly.
That logically segues into the matter of artificial wood. I know, that process has been pitifully slow for obvious reasons but it seems to me we need a solution urgently as we're fast running out of both building and cabinet-quality grade lumber.
(Whilst, we may be able to keep up supply with fast growing building-grade lumber such as pinus radiata (and importantly bamboo), quality timbers are in desperately short supply and will continue to be so into the foreseeable future. For example, we've precious little of timbers such as sandalwood, lignum vitae, ebony, and various Dalbergia genus rosewoods (retusa/Cocobolo, nigra/Brazilian rosewood, melanoxylon/African blackwood, etc.), as many take several hundred years to mature and no one had the foresight to plant forests of them back in the 18th Century! Thus, all of them are on the CITIES watchlist for good reason and have been so for decades.
Moreover, they're essentially unprocurable for any practical purpose, and even if you can buy small quantities of them legally, then they're hideously expensive. For instance, African blackwood costs a fortune at well over $10,000/cubic meter, and when it comes to sandalwood we actually buy it by the gram ($85/100g): https://ventured.com/most-expensive-woods-in-the-world/
Thus, there is no solution other than to artificially manufacture† excellent, high quality, chemically-similar (complete with lignin, cellulose, etc.) facsimilies of these wonderful and very beautiful timbers.
__
† Even if we're still a long way off from having artificial timber as a practical reality, there seems to be an obvious way forward for at least part of the manufacturing process - that of additive manufacturing/3D printing, as the number of textures and designs it affords are essentially endless.
Comparing the illustrations in TFA to the thing I'm leaning on, I think it is constructed of a core of side-pressed pieces, with a thin layer of plain-pressed pieces giving the working surface and underside.
I've had it for < 1 year. It is a little soft, and shows dents and scratches where I set down moderately heavy objects with too much force, but it still looks nice. I guess I can think of the marks as evidence of actual use and life.
FYI, women are also really hard on touchscreens - fake nails/nail polish is the hardest and most abrasive thing they come in contact with over their life except for drops on pavement. It's the main reason all decent touchscreens now have glass top layers.
The German term for "to lead" would be "führen".
There’s definitely a sense of ‘getting a head start’, ‘being at an advantage’ to Vorsprung that is hard to capture in a single English word.
Perhaps one way to translate it would be: Privilege through technology
If Audi wanted to say ‘progress through technology’, why isn’t the slogan ‘Bewegung durch Technik’? Bewegung very much has the sense of ‘progress’, but also has a double sense of ‘movement’, both in the sense of physical movement as well as a social movement. All of which are strong connotations the English word ‘progress’ captures. And would be a good slogan for a car company, too.
But that isn’t the word they chose, so progress is a slightly unsatisfactory translation.
Most manufactured wood building materials contain one of these two types of formaldehyde-based glues:
* Phenol-formaldehyde (PF)
* Urea-formaldehyde (UF).
Its water resistant properties make phenol-formaldehyde glue more effective for production of exterior wood materials. Urea-formaldehyde glue, cheaper and less tolerant of excessive moisture, is most often used for interior materials including wall paneling, flooring and cabinetry.
In its natural state, softwood lumber emits a tiny amount of formaldehyde. While PF-glued products typically emit 10 times the formaldehyde outgassed by softwood, UF resins can release at least 100 times more formaldehyde than the natural wood.
A typical particle-board subfloor made with UF glue can release enough formaldehyde to result in a 0.3 ppm concentration of formaldehyde in a room. For healthy people who are not bothered by formaldehyde, the levels in softwood lumber and PF glue are usually not considered a serious health problem.
UF glue, on the other hand, has been implicated is causing people to become hypersensitive; a good reason for healthy people and sensitive people to avoid UF glues altogether"
More details here: http://www.healthyhouseinstitute.com/hhip-780-Formaldehyde-B...
You need to look for "NAF" (No-Added Formaldehyde) tested and certified bamboo products.
More details at https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/documents/frequently-asked-...
NAF glue alternatives and details: https://amienvironmental.com/formaldehyde-free-adhesives/
In my mind I can see bamboo lumber just made with the Hardened Wood process being extra “green” as no glue would be required.
Also during the 4 year wait for it to harden it doesn’t increase in size. So there wouldn’t be a decrease in the amount of bamboo harvested, it would just allow it to be harvested every year instead of every 4.
Why isn't bamboo wood a bigger industry? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18844258 - Jan 2019 (98 comments)
Bali’s 'magic' bamboo homes [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18521724 - Nov 2018 (78 comments)
Then there were these:
Bikes built from Bamboo - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2846074 - Aug 2011 (2 comments)
Bamboo Bikes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=683085 - July 2009 (4 comments)
From bush to bike - bamboo bicycles - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=682329 - July 2009 (1 comment)
Bamboo Bike Maker Grows His Frames, Bonsai Style - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=316325 - Sept 2008 (1 comment)
This works great until someone destroys the soil by killing all microorganisms with pesticides or fertilisers. Forests are very good at producing a lot of biomass without help fertilisers, even when a lot of trees are "harvested".
And those elements don't get used up. Toss your wood on a compost pile, and you can re-use them?
The atmosphere ain't actually infinite.
But they are allmost unlimited in the ground. A intact forest, with deep roots in symbiosis with lots of fungi and other microorganisms retrieves them and make them avaiable to the rest of the forest via leave fall.
So taking out some trees at a time is sustainable. Chopping down all of them, is not.
Sure it can be added via fertilizer...if we'll be able to source such a quantity. It's not very abundant.
Leibig's Law of the Minimum states that it is the specific nutrient which is limiting of growth or metabolism which is most crucial. This is a point missed in numerous dicussions of growth or limits. Typically this is a fairly major nutrient such as nitrogen (fixed from the atmosphere, but at high metabolic cost, largely through microbes which are sybmiotes with legumes). Phosphorus and potash are the other most heavily utilised, and most frequently limiting nutrients. In parts of Australia, a land that is remarkably inactive, tectonically, critical micronutrients arrive as wind-blown dust, much from India or volcanic eruptions in Indonesia. A few grams per hectare can make a significant difference in crop yields.
Soil alkalinity is another major factor, as is drainage charcteristics, with sandy, clay, or high-carbon soils all being favoured or unsuited to specific plants. Then of course, climate, temperature, and precipitation.
But not fundamentally different.
Again: nitrogen fixation is exceedingly energy intensive, and few organisms can achieve this on their own.
Where nitrogen is removed from soil faster than it is replenished, it becomes a critical, growth-determining, nutrient.
Carbon is available in the air, but also comprises a major constituent of topsoils. Though soil carbon itself isn't a plant nutrient, it provides a vital role in supporting plant life in its role in supporting symbiotic life, in managing alkalinity, and in moderating water and nutrient flows.
In many agricultural areas, soil carbon is being depleted at roughly 10x the rate at which it is formed, leading some to term such farming as "topsoil mining". Accumulations over a period of 10,000 years (since the previous ice age) are being degraded over a period of centuries.
Presence in the atmosphere != availability from the atmosphere.
Modern forestry machines strip off the bark and a little of the phloem (the living layer) in situ.
But yeah, there is a slow loss. Partly made up by the micrometeorite dust that falls everywhere, and in some places by dusts from other places. For example, the Amazon rainforset is replenished from the Sahara.
Deciduous forests are better at this. Deep tree roots break down rocks in the subsoil, recovering minerals that way, and leaf fall creates a realtively rich soil. Undisturbed virgin deciduous forests with deep soils have near 100% mineral recycling. The micrometeorite dust makes up the rest.
and assuming a clearcut/monoculture approach to tree farming (because the comp to foodcrop agriculture also ignores regernerative/permaculture techniques)
forestry is massively disruptive to the soil, because it obliterates the ecosystem/community which allows forests to produce so much biomass.
also, because the harvest cycle is measured in decades rather than years, the soil destruction also happens at a slower rate. Doesn't mean it isn't as destructive per harvest cycle, just that the cycle rate is slower.
James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State opens with a description of how "rationalised" scientific forestry in Germany lead to a precipitous decline in the health of the soil and ultimately yields of timber, but over the course of 150--200 years. He's largely citing Richard Plochmann, Forestry in the Federal Republic of Germany (1968), and Chris Maser, The Redesigned Forest (1988).
[0] https://www.flooringstores.com/blog/refinish-bamboo-flooring...
"Most manufactured wood building materials contain one of these two types of formaldehyde-based glues:
* Phenol-formaldehyde (PF)
* Urea-formaldehyde (UF).
Its water resistant properties make phenol-formaldehyde glue more effective for production of exterior wood materials. Urea-formaldehyde glue, cheaper and less tolerant of excessive moisture, is most often used for interior materials including wall paneling, flooring and cabinetry. "
More details here: http://www.healthyhouseinstitute.com/hhip-780-Formaldehyde-B...
I wondered if this number was a typo. Quick research shows that presses can produce tens of thousands of tons of pressure. [1]
(for reference, I've operated a 10kton press at a previous job, which was roughly 30 feet high + underground hydraulic lines. I don't know how many presses of this scale are even left in the US)
I'd guess that, on average, the bulk weight of the press loosely determines its maximum pressure... Just because it needs a certain amount of steel to confine and direct that pressure without damaging itself.
Over time, the engineering gets tighter and with less excess. You know that phrase, "anyone can make a bridge that stands up, but you need and engineer to make a bridge that just barely stands up" It probably becomes an economic issue, especially given the bigger your press is, the less people are going to need it for something.
Ensuring that large presses exist is important to national security but not important to most business.
Anyone know why? Why is pine nearly 10x cheaper despite turning less light into carbon, growing in places with less light, requiring semi-manual harvesting and having a far longer plant-to-harvest time?
Note, little to no bamboo lumber used.
I think these kinds of homes are an excellent idea for the billion or two people living in suitable climate for it.
And maybe a bamboo lumber building can survive in harsher places, too. We will need to experiment to find out.
Yes, but people and bamboo have coexisted in these places for a long time, and majority of buildings aren't made of bamboo. So obviously other materials are cheaper/easier to work with otherwise I suspect they would have selected it as building material of choice.
They're not even saving energy in doing this. Mulching those chopsticks would probably be much more energy efficient.
Normal wood is kiln dried similarly to bamboo, and glued panels are done in a similar fashion.
Plywood is in a way more processed than bamboo.
In fact a stand of young poplars doesn't look too dissimilar from a bamboo grove; lots of narrow straight trees.
I cut two dying poplars on my property a few years ago and there's now a stand of dozens of 4" diameter smaller trees, sprouted out from the root system.
It doesn't appear (at least on the website linked) to be particularly cheap - a full sheet of 20mm bamboo plywood is almost €300! You could probably buy 3-5 sheets of 18mm baltic birch for that price - hardly the cheap material they're claiming.
I bought a cheap chair made of bamboo once and it was very soft - it didn't give me the impression it would hold up very long. Perhaps some of the processing steps for plywood improve that?
He salvaged enough to roof his houses in barns near the Florida coast and never worried about hurricanes. I have a couple chunks of it that have outlived the steel frame of the flatbed cargo trailer they're floor for.
Personally I'd use the mahogany ply for something furniture-related if it didn't have ugly knots or cracks in it. It was a rather nice looking wood the few times I've seen it, so it seems a shame to use it for something purely structural.
So a better comparison would be something like [1], which is a lot more expensive than standard birch plywood.
[1]: https://www.arbeitsplatten-shop.de/epages/61566463.sf/de_DE/...
But you can't compare the 13 layer plywood made from peeled wood with the stuff made from 3 layers of sawed wood. They are completely different types of product, and the cost is also very different.
Apart from mechanical properties, the 3 layer stuff is also much nicer optically usually (eg. they use camera sorted boards to achieve nice and even patterns). That's why it is more expensive.
Regular birch plywood is indeed often the cheap stuff.
Baltic birch will be void-free and of a very consistent quality and made from thinner veneers. It's much more stable and high quality product, although you're correct that it probably won't be as pretty on the surfaces.
I just googled it and saw that it looks exactly like the birch plywood I have been using, so I assumed that it has similar properties.
I consider birch to be "good" plywood, it's very easy to work with, strong, and seems somewhat resilient to warping. However, because the layers are so thin you often end up breaking bits off when working on it with a router, and the surface somehow doesn't get as smooth when sanding.
The 3-layer boards (not sure what they are called in English) seem to be easier to sand smooth, easier to finish with oil, and are not as finicky when routing.
Just from looking at pictures, I'd assume the bamboo boards are closer to the 3 layer stuff rather than the 13 layer stuff.
It's fast growing and spreads like crazy. Be careful with bamboo in your garden, it'll shoot out underground and resurface couple meters (yards) away from the main plant if you don't encase it in concrete.
Now if it yields more then a fast growing tree? Don't know.
https://www.guaduabamboo.com/blog/american-bamboo-species
https://www.indefenseofplants.com/blog/2017/6/26/north-ameri...
But I'm guessing your question is more about the processing of that bamboo (chemical and energy to produce):
https://bioresources.cnr.ncsu.edu/resources/environmental-im...
Indeed this matters for regional supply and reducing shipping. But does it matter for other reasons I’m not thinking of?
As a layperson this kind of statement could as easily have said "they show more swelling" and I would have been equally as credulous.
Laminiating strips or sheets in addition to the strength from the glue (typically in plywoods this is done with perpendiclar grain directions) can counter this.
For a solid wood panel door for example you really want a very stable hardwood species for the frame and for the panels to be fitted without glue into recesses with room for them to expand and contract.
I'd love to pot some of the fast growing stuff at home and harvest it to muck around with.
But it forms decorative elements: fencing, window blinds, or window framing[0]. Also tools like sumisashi (an ink pen) or poles for carrying things. Even scaffolding even on high rises![1]
[0] https://www.dreamstime.com/japanese-windows-bamboo-strips-ba...
[1] http://actuallyshop.blogspot.com/2013/01/hong-kong-bamboo-sc...
Bamboo certainly does have seeds. Bamboo blooms are big events.
Blooms are big events because bamboo will go several decades at a time without blooming. But it has seeds.
Its has two modes of propagation: spreading its roots(rhsomes) or, at the end of it's life flowering and setting seeds.
So, you should be able to dig up a good chunk of root (dinner plate size) and propagate from that.
A good tool to have is a sharp billhook. its good for managing roots and branches.
Does anyone know what this refers to? too heavy for what??
At a density of 1200kg/m2 it's almost twice as dense as some other hard woods like walnut (~650kg/m2) or particle board (~700kg/m2).
I guess for a kitchen countertop it wouldn't matter (stone countertops are popular and even heavier), but for most furniture it would probably be just way too heavy to be practical. Someone needs to be able to carry your furniture :)
It's called rayon and it's about as synthetic as you can possibly get.
For those who are interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayon
Sure, for rayon the cellulose extraction process is chemical, unlike the physical process used to get cellulose fibers out of cotton, but the raw material is still natural, plant grown cellulose.
There are plenty of things that are made by taking natural ingredients, shoving them in a vat of toxic chemicals to transform them, then taking them out to use, which are generally still considered ‘natural’ products: leather, bleached flour, pressure treated wood, dyed cotton…
I assume the layperson will respond: "Synthesis uses chemicals, and manufacturing doesn't!" (visualizing a bandsaw or a punch-press machine)
Of course manufacturing uses plenty of chemicals, but we don't always think about that when visualizing mechanical assembly processes.
Every word is weird if you think about it too long.
At least in the US, this is pretty simple, even if it offends the sensibilities of category pedants.
"Natural" fibers are cotton, wool, linen, etc. Processing is fine, so long as it isn't "too processed".
It is "Synthetic" if it ends in '-on', or feels like plastic or rubber.
But thinking of Rayon and viscose as ‘synthetic’ means people assume it is not biodegradable, which isn’t the case. It’s about as biodegradable as cotton, or cardboard.
In fact cardboard and paper are good analogs - I think people are comfortable thinking of them as ‘processed’ natural products, but not ‘synthetic’. There is value in getting people to think of rayon as more like that than true synthetics like nylon and polyester, which create non biodegradable micro plastic pollutants.
:)
The old bad stuff is CCA, which uses arsenic. It's been restricted (in the US) for about two decades, though still available for some applications. Home Depot does not carry it.
The newer stuff is ACQ (several types) which are Al and Cu-based. Not considered toxic by the EPA, however some people (including myself) are still not comfortable using it for, e.g. garden beds.
Sawdust of all woods is considered an irritant, toxic, and a possible carcinogen.
Work outside, and/or use good dust collection. Always wear a dust mask.
This applies to a lot of wood products like plywood and MDF not just bamboo.
Looks like some people are investigating it:
https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/using-lignin-as-a-sustainable-...
Isn't epoxy made from fossil fuels, or am I completely off?
Engineering bamboo (flooring doesn't always use UF) has ~5% wt. UF, so 20 kg of lumber requires ~.4 kg of ammonia. Using a methane feedstock that translates to ~.85 kg of CO2. 4% of the CO2 captured by the bamboo, for context. Ammonia can also be made from water, via electrolysis- .64 kg per 20 kg of bamboo.
[1]: UF does not contain an epoxide group. Note also that epoxide is an incredibly generic type of chemical- all it means is that two pairs of radicals and an oxygen form a triangular bond. Epoxides can take all kinds of forms and be made from all kinds of stuff. For instance Epichlorohydrin is used to make some of the most common epoxy resins and is produced from glycerol, which comes from plant/animal sources generally. Not all of it, but most of it.
[2]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/chemical-engineering/ur...
It's also much more expensive than synthetic glue. This does not mean that a glued lumber product is necessarily unnatural or unsustainable, but rather that the price may end up being higher, and the properties different, when using a natural glue.
(For folks who aren't familiar, though, animal glues aren't really substitutable for things like plywood; the ability to undo a hide glue joint is valuable in furnituremaking but not in plywood composition.)
Hoof glue might be better for ply.
Notice though that the article doesn't talk about sustainability, ecology, or being natural at all. It just shows how bamboo lumber is made. Which is interesting in its own right.
The world, for some strange reason is dominated by absolutist thinking. It is part of the reason why we dont compromise any more. And it is a worrying trend.
There are always more externalities we don't consider. To me, the question is whether bamboo worse than other composite wood products. Does it store more carbon? Does it store the same carbon but more quickly? Can it grow using less land? Does it last longer than what would be used instead? If it is at least neutral on all the other questions, does it have other properties that make it preferable?
By comparison, plywood manufacture is a simple process. Entire logs are shaved into veneer sheets, rough cut, laminated together then finish cut.
302 Euros for a 4x8x3/4 sheet of 5-ply plywood that's inferior in most ways to hardwood plywood is crazy. By comparison, the same sheet of hardwood A-B grade plywood would run somewhere between $40-$80 a sheet.
Trees are a great sustainable and renewable resource, they just take longer to grow.
I mean... Some species are ready to harvest in 90 days(not sure if those are applicable, though).
But typical hardwood is decades of growth time to harvest.