Completing the Bamboo Bike - Part Three: Everything Not Bamboo

Welcome to the third part of my series on building a bamboo bike. If you haven't seen part one and part two, please feel free to check them out.

Since I'm also using this post as a contest entry, I'd like to direct your attention to the joined contest by #naturalmedicine and #build-it tribes. The deadline has been extended till the 21st, and there are some great prizes to be won. So go ahead and check it out if you like. Now let's see about this bike:

Joining the Bamboo Parts

In the first two parts I finished all the pieces that were made of bamboo. In the case of most bamboo bikes merely the frame is made out of bamboo, sometimes the fork as well. For my bike I wanted as many parts as possible to be out of bamboo, including the handlebar.

With the headset and the stem I could combine these parts, which was fairly simple... once I recalled the proper way of doing it: that's right, banging the crown race in place on the fork was the first step. The subsequent steps pretty much offered themselves. Since Bamboocycles is more of a bamboo workshop focused on making bike frames, they did not have bearings hanging around, so I just used the bearings in the cage ring that came with the headset, with a generous amount of grease. Finally, since I enforced the middle area of handlebar by wrapping it in carbon fiber, it fit well into the stem. Now, having all these pieces completed, I was ready to build the rest of the bike.

The Most Essential Parts: The Wheels

What is a bike, really, if you strip it all down to the basics? Some may say it's the frame, but I would argue that nothing is as essential as the wheels. So far I've only built one wheel, the rear one for my Zorra Roja, my touring bike I rode down from Canada to the Mexican border. I have such fond memories of that wheel building practice, that I insisted on putting together the wheels for this bamboo bike too.

Since the guys at BambooCycles don't build their own wheels, I talked to the mechanic who comes to the shop to do it for them, and he was happy to guide me through the process. It all seemed super straight forward.

This time we didn't do a lot of calculations, and there were no debates regarding two-cross, three-cross, or four-cross. The rims were made for 36 spokes, and we used the three-cross method. The hubs were already assembled, so all I had to do was insert the spokes. Then he showed me how find the first two spokes I needed to cross, and where I had to attach them to the rim. From there on I only needed to take the next one, cross them in the same way, and proceed until I had attached all of them. Then I had to do the same thing on the other side (rinse and repeat), and then came the other wheel, first one side, then the other.

The rims I was using were these brand new ones (just like all the other components) in the modern style with huge sidewalls. I never understood the point in them, but one thing is certain: the pose a challenge in putting on the nipples. Fortunately, the wheel-building mechanic was well prepared for this task, with a simple home-made tool, really just a piece of spoke with a nipple attached. You can screw another nipple onto it, then use the extension to poke it through the extra deep rim, and attach it to the spoke coming from the hub. With such a nifty device this job became fast and easy.

Once both wheels were done they needed to be trued. My most favorite activity in bike mechanics. I remember truing a good number of wheels while working at Recyclistas, usually late at night when the shop was closed, while listening to some crazy music that customers would not like. This time, just as I was getting in the mode of truing my wheels to perfection, I noticed how I only needed to tighten them uniformly, as they were already pretty close to being true. Sweet! Adding the rim tape, the tubes and the tires was no biggie (though it was frustrating as hell, causing my thumbs to blister up from it).

The deep rims posed another challenge to pumping up the tubes, since even the long Presta valves only managed poke their ends through them, so the pump could not grab a firm hold of them. Okay, I'm officially no fan of these deep rims! Fortunately, I had still had a Presta-Schrader adapter, which extended it sufficiently so I could pump up the tubes firmly.

Putting on the Drive Train

The rest was easy-peasy, though I really had to put myself mentally back into that month of volunteering at the bike shop to remember it all. Putting in a bottom bracket? Adding the cranks? Putting on the pedals? All pretty basic, but I had to realize how strange it all seemed after not working on bikes for a year-and-a-half, except for personal maintenance and roadside repairs.

Once the cranks and the wheels were all set, I had to add the chain. It became a tight call, but in the end I left just enough slack to be able to take off the rear wheel without breaking the chain. That's quite useful! Putting it on, I needed to straighten the wheel, and pull it out so that the chain is nice and taught. Once I got that, that's where I had to tighten them (no quick release on this bike!).

Positioning the Saddle

Finally, the seat was the only remaining part. The seat post, which usually goes all the way down into the frame, encountered a bit of an obstacle: a clump of epoxy resin inside. On the frame it was used to hold the pieces of the frame together with carbon fiber, but inside the frame was no place for it. If I wanted to insert the seat post, I needed to attack that clump with a file. Some heavy filing later, I managed to insert the post sufficiently. Since the frame itself is lower than my touring bike, I didn't even need to lower it further, and there is still ample length of it, in case it needs to be set higher.

The Revelation of a Name

So that's it then, a super basic, fixed gear, bamboo bike! Of course I could not go around naming it, but just like with my other bikes, I waited for it to tell me its name.

Meet the Jungle Baby!

I'm not sure if it's its bamboo appearance, its minimalist nature, or the fact that all the components are brand new out of the box. Until the last stages I had no idea what it was gonna be, but once it was revealed I knew there could be no doubt. Now, the next stage is going to be an extensive test-ride.