Building a bamboo bike part 2/3: the sanding years

Our Dave has been interested in building a bamboo bike for a while, and he's finally bitten the bullet with a kit from the Bamboo Bicycle Club, which purports to contain everything you need for the job. With the possible exceptions of hand-eye co-ordination and patience.

If you missed the first part of the series then you missed Dave knocking up the jig that holds the frame while it's being assembled and joined. The next job is to actually start getting some tubes in there. And that requires plenty of sanding. As you can see in the video at the top of this story. And in part two, where more sandpaper is worn out in the pursuit of the perfect mitre...

Dave's stated aim is to rock up to a 3rd cats race at some point in the summer to general derision, and race this bike, and with that in mind he's beginning his summer racing season next week at our local Odd Down closed road circuit. He's not on the bamboo bike, yet, but at least we'll have some kind of performance benchmark. We'll be running a new video in this series every Friday until Dave either completes his race, or sets fire to the bamboo bits in a fit of pique, or permanently bonds himself to a work surface with epoxy resin. The next video will be on our Youtube channel this Friday evening, and involves some sanding but mostly rubber gloves and messy gluing and fraying strips of hemp sheet. Enjoy!

If you're interested in the kits, they cost £275 for the road bike and you can get hold of one here.