Nile408

3. Bamboo splinters f'ing hurt!

Not to mention they tend to infect. A lot.

A week or so ago I found some mention of companies selling / exporting bamboo plywood. Maybe that's an option?

I looked into the plywood it's waaaaaaaaay to expensive for what im willing to pay, I emailed juergen the luthier from the link I gave he replied to my email really a nice guy.

thx, from your mail I couldnt see where you live, so some addresses here:

http://www.bamboocraft.net/poles_raw_materials.html

http://www.alles-bambus.de/

http://www.bambus-conbam.de/bambusrohre.html

As to working with bamboo, the easiest will be if you order some pre-fabricated bamboo boards then you do not need to laminate individual strips, which are hard to get.

Due to the long fibers, bamboo has the tendency to splinter, so you need to be careful if you want to use the router.

if you have additional questions, feel free to mail

Bamboo, sounds good to me!

Juergen

the links are in german, but that's alright im sure I can work through that. I also found a Youtube user Center77 he made guitars using bamboo I messaged him, he replied with this.

I tried to reply to your comment but there was some kind of error.

For bamboo neck blanks (another other stuff) email oafstore@myfairpoint.net Tom at Oakland Axe Factory is great to work with.

I looked up that Oakland axe factory really really unique and beautiful guitars, I liked his story about why he got into building guitars also gave me a good laugh. However I'm going to contact all of these leads to get this project going the 7 string telecaster will be a reality!

First Act actually makes a bamboo guitar pretty fair price at 400$ thanks for all the input guys appreciate it, btw that is a cool looking skateboard buter I like the divets in the material thats sharp. http://www.chefscatalog.com/product/20363-...ecode=AW4PF4070 now THATS a cutting board lol anyway I gave cali bamboo a call. The guy over the phone was very polite and helpful the bamboo plywood was a little pricey, however he pointed me in the direction of the bamboo lumber it looks a little questionable even for the sake of experimentation but fairly priced 100-200$ for 10 pieces of 2x4's. But it looks like kp crash is right I might have to order strips and do my own lamination http://www.juka-sound-craft.co.cc/intro.htm apparently thats what this guy ended up doing im gonna try to email him to see where he orders the strips from, the research continues! cool looking guitars though, kinda wants me to grab a chai tea and listen to some jazz lol def. will add carbon fiber strips though thanks agian buter

So treat it the same way that you would a plywood build. Goodness knows there are musings galore on this site regarding that (in fact, I believe my signature has a link to my favorite one). I'll be the last to get into a tonewood war on this, but it will be important to watch grain direction on the strips of bamboo you use if you were to try and make the lam yourself.

The link you provided is of course referencing a man-made ply/lam that while advertised as 12% harder than maple doesn't necessarily equal 12% more resistant to flex. I would still use a truss rod to reinforce the neck. Otherwise, I'd be quite interested to see how this goes.

Sorry if I gave the impression that I was arguing my bad, but yes good counter point on the article. Well I looked around and im going to give this company a call to see if they will ship me a board in my ideal dimensions http://www.calibamboo.com/ hopefully pricing will be fair thanks for the input.

The body shouldn't be difficult in bamboo - the neck I would question. While bamboo is quite strong, it's also extremely pliable. Vertical lam would be very strong - but I really think to do a neck in bamboo, you would have to create a lam that alternated grains in some fashion to overcome some of the elasticity - otherwise, you'd have relief issues. Again, this is theory.

As for getting it from a flooring shop - yes, it will be thin - between 8 and 12mm, but for a semi-hollow... it might work. Even the bamboo cutting boards (2-3" thick) that chefs use are lam strips and very expensive.

Not saying it can't be done - just from a physics standpoint it has some interesting challenges.

No I agree, but part of that is what has got me so motivated to do this. This guy built a baritone fretless guitar and according to his information he say's the bamboo is supposed to be 12% harder then maple so I thought it would make a ideal neck material. I am using information that I have gathered to try to make this possible, this guy made a telecaster out of bamboo http://www.bradslab.com/category/guitars/. Im confident that I can do it, just how to do it has got me scratching my head. Whats got me going is that I started a project guitar a little white ago when my friend paid me back by giving me a old dean explorer, the goal was to make a cheap guitar be as playable and sound good as cheaply as possible. It's gone so well that frankly im addicted to this and im trying to expand my skills into guitar building, I've already constructed a body made of white wood for another project based off my ibanez RG. I dont want to turn this to a "tonewood" war, in my eye's I think im gathering good experience working on cheap material before I start on something more. However, back to the topic I actually want to make another telecaster just like this one but a 7 string version instead. As for the pliability I was thinking to coat the neck and finger board in lacquer like a traditional 50's guitar I think that would solve any flexing due to moisture. Any Suggestions are welcome

http://www.unfretted.com/loader.php?LINK=/profs/ghd_fretless

here's my explorer project if you would like to check it out http://s842.photobucket.com/albums/zz345/M...ean%20Explorer/ not finished yet, but soon...

Hi everybody, I've been toying around with the idea of making a semi hollow electric guitar entirely out of bamboo. I've been looking and I havnt found a whole lot of direct information on how to go about this, besides go with bamboo thats vertically laminated From what I gathered people have said go to a flooring company to order material, but when I think of flooring I think of very thin wide sheets of wood hardly enough for a guitar neck. So if anybody could tell me specifically what to do or share there experience with making a bamboo guitar that would be great I am a newbie so please do not flame me