I was driving around town the other day and saw this store. Bamboo Hardwoods is the name, the URL is below. I had heard a piece on the radio a little earlier about Thor Hyerdahl (sp?) and the two thought combined to form an image of a strip built kayak from bamboo poles. Well, I went to the store and learned they only had poles as small as 1" diameter, and that was at the small end, the larger end was perhaps twice that size 15' or 20' away. But as I browsed, I saw at least three products that could be used to give form to a boat.

1 -- Splits. These are lengthwise strips of bamboo cut to a uniform width, approx 1/2" and thickness, approx 1/8". I found them in 6' lengths. They are the kind you would find in a roll up window shade.

2 -- Flattened boards. These are bamboo poles that have been slit, flattened and surface planed on two sides. The effect is something like a 4" to 6" wide group of splits. It's just that they are all mostly still connected to each other. The board would easily roll back into it's original cylindrical shape, offered a nice amount of flex through the face of the board, but I did not notice much flex through the edge of the board.

3 -- Woven mats. Not strictly strip built design material, since the mats are put together in 4'x8' sheets. They are composed of very thin material, like grass or leaves (yeah, I know bamboo IS grass) and come in 1, 2, 3, or 4 ply. The strips are about 3/4" wide and plain woven at a 90 deg angle. The mat is very easy to handle, cuts with sharp scissors. I imagine the way to use this material is to treat the mat as a sheet of plywood is treated in S&G methods. The one ply is quite pretty. There are some pictures of boats on their website, but the maddening animations (for all the products) do not make for a pleasant browse through the catalog.

So the questions:

How much strength of the boat comes from the core material? How much from the fiberglass? How stiff must the core material be? How thick, since the fiberglass layers work better together at greater separations? Am I encroaching on any fiberglass/bamboo taboos? The mat material is very light, maybe fewer than two pounds per sheet, could I depend on an essentialy fiberglass boat with the mat giving form and visual texture to the glass? What about a "skin on frame" design, taking the strength from the frame, not the mat? I included a link to a picture of the mat used in a room dividing screen. The woven part in the background is the best view of what the mat looks like.

All responses welcome.

Ed Valley