Why no wooden bikes, Kind?

March 1, 2008

We get this question quite a bit. We do believe that alternative renewable materials will be the future for bicycle frame production. When we started, we tried to get recycled steel and aluminum for parts of our frames. Engineers from tubing companies and good ol’ regular metallurgical engineers said it was basically impossible to melt used metals, extract, roll, weld and heat treat a frame that is to be used in everyday cycling, even at a recreational level. This really miffed us, so we still continue to explore how to extract recycled metals pure enough for frame tubing, but so far no luck.

Back to wood. We have had an eye on wood as a frame material for a while but thought that it was years away from being a reality on any scale. Looks like we may be proven wrong.

Calfee’s bamboo bikes were first a curiosity. Craig Calfee has pioneered using bamboo for a high end road frame that is stiff and light. Though the cost seemed to be prohibitive for wide scale use (a frame goes for over $2500). Calfee also introduced a one-off at the NAHBS this year but it was seen mostly as a novelty item. News that he has developed (with Columbia University) a frame of bamboo and resin that can be sourced locally in developing nations for very low cost is the biggest step we have seen so far in normalizing this exotic material. In a nut shell he see this as inexpensive bamboo frames for the masses in developing nations. This makes so much sense. 90% of the worlds bikes are made by people in impoverished situations, so the irony of giving people in impoverished nations bicycles is not lost on those involved. Calfee has potentially figured a way around these issues. Very cool. This project has been around for a while so we are not sure why the bike industry has started to notice now. This is a remarkable breakthrough in both design and advocacy philosophy.

There are others looking to wood as a viable frame material. Some look like they may be practical and some, not so much. But we probably all said that when we first saw a bamboo bike.

We still don’t see Kind using purely natural products for our frames in the immediate future. We continue to explore how metals can be used in a true cradle to cradle fashion. If a natural material develops to the point that it is viable using it en-mass, then we would have no reservations doing so.

For now we applaud Calfee’s breakthrough and look to his unique vision as a model to emulate.

Filed in: Kind Blog Comments (1)