Horizontal bamboo flooring

[ocd]

I am curious as to why horizontal bamboo flooring cannot be used for core laminations. If you were to grind away all but one layer of bamboo why wouldn't this be a usable lam? When I have ordered bamboo laminations from suppliers it looks exactly like a single layer of horizontal flooring bamboo. The one argument I recognize is the violation of the nodes; however they are violated in the supplier bamboo laminations?I have ground some horizontal bamboo down to a single layer and wound up with .070 thick parallels.

[Sam Harper]

It would work if you could grind it down to one lamination, but that would be hard to do.  The reason horizontal grain flooring is not good is because the glue joints will be under a lot of shear forces, and whatever glue they use to hold it all together doesn't reliable withstand those shear forces.  Vertical grained bamboo works better because the glue joints are not under shear forces.

[LittleBen]

What sam said. If you get it to one layer of bamboo, you're fine. But thats alot easier with the vertical because you dont have to worry about the glue lines between the layers of the bamboo.

[ocd]

Thanks guys I have a huge supply of this horizontal stuff and I really don,t mind the little bit of work it took to get them down to a single layer. Well I do mind ; however money is tight and this stuff is here.

[Sam Harper]

If you were going to try to get it down to one layer, it seems like you could just rip it with the band saw, the lams down on each side of each lam until you get to one lam. Then maybe you could get a few lams out of each board.

[Troy D. Breeding]

I've used lots of horizonal bamboo flooring. The top layer and the bottom layers are normally fine. It's the middle layer that will have all the bad material.

On average the top and bottom layers are thick enough to get atleast .125" to .150" laminations.

The waist of the middle layer is why I stopped using it. Why buy something that 30% will be thrown in the scrap pile.

Troy

[JamesV]

The carton I found at the thrift store was solid bamboo, no filler material. The pieces look to be 5/8" wide 1/2" thick and 36" long

OOPS....................MY bad

After cutting into one of the planks they are infact 3 lams thick, NOT solid. Guess a un-opened carton is still worth $20. Used one for an I beam and it turned out great.

[Dan Bonner]

It will work. Most any wood will work between glass. As Troy said the middle layer is not desirable but it too would work. I am convinced that most anything that will stick to glass and veneer with smooth-on will make a shootable bow. The question is performance characteristics.

Bonner