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Bamboo
"Bamboo decks are not a fad, it’s not a trend,
it's a revolution . Get on board!"
Backyard is Bamboo
Every Backyard Skateboard is made of 100% 3 or 4 ply bamboo and is straight from the bamboo forests. Don’t be fooled by others who act like they are selling bamboo when it’s only 1 or 2 veneers of it and a mixture of other poor quality woods. According to the Wood Handbook (USDA), in a hardness comparison, the pressure to indent is 1639 lbs. versus 1450 lbs. in hard maple. The hardest is hickory pecan which is around 1820 lbs.
Bamboo is highly dense like hickory pecan, with a specific gravity of .66-.72 (lbs per cubic foot). Carbonized bamboo is even higher. Maple has a specific gravity of .52-.63. Density is a significant indicator of overall strength. Due to the bamboo fibers being small and tightly pressed, they have intense memory (rebound to its natural state) resulting in great pop. The modulus of elasticity is much higher again comparing bamboo at 10,600 MPa to 10,450 MPa for maple with a modulus of rupture of nearly 8,000kPa in favor of bamboo.
Bamboo is a Grass
Bamboo is a group of woody perennial evergreen plant in the true grass family Poaceae, subfamily Bambusoideae, tribe Bambuseae. Some of its members are giant bamboo, forming by far the largest members of the grass family. Bamboo is the fastest growing woody plant in the world. Their growth rate (up to .5-1 feet/day (1.5-2.0 inches/hr)) is due to a unique rhizome-dependent system, but is highly dependent on local soil and climate conditions. They are of economic and high cultural significance in East Asia and South East Asia where they are used extensively in gardens, as a building material, and as a food source. There are 91 genera and about 1,000 species of bamboo. They are found in diverse climates, from cold mountains to hot tropical regions.
Bamboo is the fastest-growing plant on Earth; it has been clocked surging skyward as fast as 121 cm (47.6 inches) in a 24-hour period, and can also reach maximal growth rate exceeding one meter (40 inches) per hour for short periods of time. Many prehistoric bamboos exceeded heights of 250 feet. Primarily growing in regions of warmer climates during the Cretaceous, vast fields existed in what is now Asia. Modern bamboos can only sustain their maximal growth rate for short periods of time, however, during the Cretaceous, bamboo growth could exceed 5 meters (16 feet) within 24 hours.
What Isn’t Made Of Bamboo
When treated, bamboo forms a very hard wood which is both lightweight and exceptionally durable. In tropical climates it is used in elements of house construction, construction scaffolding, as a substitute for steel reinforcing rods in concrete construction, Modern companies are also attempting to popularize bamboo flooring made of bamboo pieces steamed, flattened, glued together, finished, and cut. However, bamboo wood is easily infested by wood-boring insects unless treated with wood preservatives or kept very dry.
Besides its use as a construction material, it is also used for fence making, bridges, toilets, walking sticks, canoes, tableware, decorative artwork carving, furniture, chopsticks, food steamers, toys, bicycles, hats, and martial arts weaponry, including fire arrows, flame throwers and rockets. Also, abaci and various musical instruments such as the dizi, xiao, shakuhachi, palendag, jinghu, and angklung. The Bmboo Organ of Las Pinas, Philippeans has pipes made of bamboo culms. Bamboo is the traditional material used for fly fishing rods. When bamboo is harvested for wood, care is needed to select mature stems that are several years old, as first-year stems, although full sized, are not fully developed and are not as strong as more mature stems.
Bamboo canes are normally round in cross-section, but square canes can be produced by forcing the young culms to grow through a tube of square cross-section slightly smaller than the culm's natural diameter, thereby constricting the growth to the shape of the tube. Every few days the tube is removed and replaced higher up the fast-growing culm.
The fiber of bamboo has been used to make paper in China since early times. A high quality hand-made paper is still produced in small quantities. Coarse bamboo paper is still used to make spirit money in many Chinese communities. The wood is used for knitting needles and a rayon type fabric made of bamboo fiber can be used for yarn and fabrics. Bamboo fabric is notable for its soft feel and claims of natural antibacterial properties. Clothing made from bamboo fiber is popular for activities such as yoga. Bed sheets and towels made from bamboo have become luxury items (Woolworths, South Africa sells towels made of a cotton/bamboo mix) and are becoming more popular as an environmentally-friendly option compared to other fabrics, particularly since bamboo can be grown quickly without pesticides or fertilizers.
Sharpened bamboo is also traditionally used to tattoo in Japan, Hawaii and elsewhere. Bamboo is used for the stems of traditional Vietnamese, Chinese and Japanese smoking pipes, and was also utilized for crafting the stems of opium pipes. A variety of species of bamboo was one of about two dozen plants carried by Polynesian voyagers to provide all their needs settling new islands; in the Hawaiian Islands, among many uses, Ohe(bamboo) carried water, made irrigation troughs for taro terraces, was used as a traditional knife for cutting the umbilical cord of a newborn, as a stamp for dyeing bark Tapa Cloth, and for four hula instruments — nose flute, rattle, stamping pipes and Jew's harp.
Some skateboard and snowboard deck manufacturers as well as
surfboard builders are beginning to use bamboo construction.
It is both lighter and stronger than traditional materials and its cultivation is environmentally friendly.
Bamboo has been used in the construction of fishing rods since the mid 1800s. However, following the invention of fiberglass and graphite, bamboo use in fishing rods has declined dramatically. There is something of a resurgence of the use of bamboo, particularly for bamboo fly rods as demonstrated by some companies because of their aesthetics and impact on the environment. Bamboo is also used to make enclosures in fish farming, where cages can be made from a wooden frame and bamboo lattices. A single shoot of Bamboo can also be made into a didgeridoo, a wind instrument that is indigenous to Australia. Bamboo has gained increasing popularity in the culinary world as a material for cutting boards, as they are hard enough to withstand years of knife abuse, yet more forgiving to the knife blade, causing less damage to the edged utensils over time..
In Indonesia, bamboo has been used for making various kinds of musical instruments. The most popular ones are the kolintang and the angklung. A technique of making bamboo fibre from bamboo pulp has taken advance in East Asian countries. The industry will benefit many properties of this kind of clothing. Most recently, smock, a letterpress print shop in Syracuse, New York has created a completely sustainable bamboo paper. Free of pesticides or fertilizer and is harvested from areas in Thailand where no traditional or civil rights are violated.
References
backyardskateboards.com would like to recognize and thank wikipedia.com
and bamboosk8 for their assistance in providing this excellent source of research
on the nature of Bamboo. For additional information please visit www.wikipedia.ord/wiki/bamboo
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