Bamboo as mast and spars

plant one on your boat so it will be self healing if broken

 

anything can be made to work in a boat, boats have used just about every type of wood available, not to mention every other construction material (even concrete!).

The structural properties of bamboo, even with fine strips laminated with epoxy in to a solid beam, are not very good compared to common lumber.

I am not familiar with how the different species behave, but the material I have seen does not have a very good strength to weight ratio as compared with Doug Fir or even Cedar, and it has very little rot resistance. So even if it can be made to work, it seems there are better alternatives that are available locally. No need to import materials from halfway around the world to get middle to poor performance.

If you have it locally cheap, and select carefully, it can be made to work fine for smaller sailing rigs, but I would not go out of the way to get it from an importer when I have better wood material growing in my back yard.

 

Yeah, pretty much what I've found. In small sizes, it's an option if you can't get anything else, but not very good as a spar comparatively.

 

Bamboo spars were used for many years in the UK for many classes of boat until the source of bamboo in China stopped at WW2. Some classes moved to wood and some to Aluminum. I know of classes of racing boats up to 23Ft and weighing around a ton that used them. They lasted a long time when kept undercover out of use.

I'm believe this class did, http://c8.alamy.com/comp/BCE4CN/reb...rt-at-three-rivers-race-at-horning-BCE4CN.jpg

and know this class did, http://www.yachtsandyachting.com/photos/thamesarater/2004upperthames1.jpg.
Though they weren't as extreme in mast length then.

 

I'm not suggesting bamboo hasn't been used, as it certainly has, though I am suggesting there are far better materials.

We use to use grown timbers, but discovered hollow. We use to "build up" some pretty complex hollow wooden spars, just to discover metals and once these got a huge stranglehold on the industry, goo and fabrics turned up. Simply put, each evolution has permitted larger, skinnier, stiffer and stronger (pound for pound) spars. Bamboo is at the bottom of the list of considerations in this regard, no matter how you shake it. It's not that it shouldn't be used, but it is to say that pound for pound, modulus for modulus, there are better choices.

 

The amount of time and effort in going from raw lumber to useable spar is pretty good for bamboo though, so there's a convenience factor for the lower performance/lower sophistication recreational craft.

I think bamboo tended to be dropped before WW2. In "Sail and Power" Uffa talks about the 14ft class dropping a rule that made bamboo spars compulsory in 1928, and that they pretty much disappeared in that class then. What he says also make me think that lengths in excess of 15 or 20 feet were unusual.

 

Given the rig loading in the first quarter of the 20th century, compared to a modern rig, bamboo is less desirable, though sure, some small, relatively low aspect rigs can get away with it. Maybe we should go back to tar and hemp rigging, too?

 

Hi Ishmael, I'd PM rather than reigniting this thread...but that option is not available to me.

I've experimented, more successfully than anticipated, with a carbon mast for a kite launch and control system for a harryproa. That mast was not designed for my purpose but bamboo looks to be nearly exactly what I might need. You mention splitting and sealing your bamboo. But you didn't mention a borate, or other pesticide treatment, or drying. Could you give more complete details?
Thanks.

 

Trevor,
Ishmael hasn't been on the Forum since 2015.