Bamboo Core - What's Wrong With Idea?

Again, you can use just about anything to make a boat or a core for sandwich construction methods, but what do you gain with the change? Cost is a concern, but how does this stack up against the physical requirements and preferred attributes for the application? This is the butt kicker for the usual bamboo approaches. You might get greatly improved compression strength, but lose considerable elongation or maybe gain a significant weight penalty. You can make a boat out of popsicle sticks (seen it done), but was the tediousness of gluing all those stick together worth it?

 

I don't think it would be a good idea to use bamboo as core. Take balsa. The orientation of the fiber is vertical or end grained when used as a core. This gives it a high compressive strength just like the honeycomb.

Core must be light and strong in shear, so unless the soft inner core is used and the dense outer layer is discarded, it won't work or replace end grain balsa. Rattan inner core might work (the part usually thrown away). Diced and glued together, oriented in vertical grain arrangement, it will work.

The outer fiber of bamboo is high density, strong in tension, and is best as fibers in outer layer. Problem is the thick random orientation of the fibers at the nodes, not to mention the short span. Unless supported by frames/bulkheads, these knuckles are weak spots.