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Bamboo bikes offer bountiful learning at North Van school

Aluminum, titanium, steel, carbon fibre … bamboo? Bike frames can be built from a multitude of materials, including even certain perennial flowering plants that have an extremely tensile strength and are common in many parts of the world.
Bike

Aluminum, titanium, steel, carbon fibre … bamboo?

Bike frames can be built from a multitude of materials, including even certain perennial flowering plants that have an extremely tensile strength and are common in many parts of the world.

That’s partly what a group of roughly 50 students in Grade 7 to 9 have been learning in a new course offering on technology and communication at École Andre-Piolat in North Vancouver.

“Part of the curriculum is to play with tools and build things and do what we call the cycle of design,” explained Andre-Piolat director Laurent Brisebois.

“Because we have this passion for cycling at the school level we thought of designing bike frames and looking for different ways to build something that is simple but strong and sturdy and could really be used as a regular real object rather than just something you (3D) print to put on the shelf.”

They decided to experiment with building bike frames out of bamboo.

Students this week were able to apply the theory and classroom work they’ve been studying for the past few months by finally getting their hands on the pieces of sturdy stems.

“I think it’s such a great feeling to put your hands on something and build something from scratch,” Brisebois said. “They’re really excited about it.”

The program has been partly inspired by well-known frame builder Craig Calfee, who came up with the bamboo bike idea years ago while on a trip to Ghana, Brisebois said.

“When he was down there he realized that people needed simple bikes for transportation for going to school for getting water and so on. He developed a very simple technique that we just adapted to the school situation so that kids with very little tools and very little knowledge can follow step-by-step guidelines and make their own bikes.”

Brisebois said the process for putting the bamboo bikes together is relatively simple but time consuming.

Bamboo pieces of a variety of sizes are selected for different parts of the bike frame such as support for the chain, seat and frame itself. The pieces are then set on a jig, measured according to the angles of a bike and then cut.

“You have to measure 10 times and cut once, if you miss your cut we’re not going to get another piece of bamboo. There’s a lot of geometry and a lot of measuring,” Brisebois said.

After the bamboo pieces are cut into proper proportions the students will then glue them together  and the joints are wrapped in cast tape, which locks the pieces in place.

The bikes will then be sanded, smoothed and painted over. Done.

“What I like about it is it really brings it to life. It takes the curriculum to a level where the kids can actually build something they can ride on and they can use,” Brisebois said.

But he added that after the students finish work on the bikes in February or March next year they’ll be donated to communities in developing countries abroad.

It’s expected the classes will build five or six bamboo bikes in total.

Andre-Piolat has participated in the La Grande Traversée, a national road-cycling relay for high school students, for the past six years. It’s something that has fueled the school’s culture of bike enthusiasm in general, Brisebois said.

“We have quite a few students participating in it,” he said. “That kind of started a passion for cycling, for riding, for being fit.”