GreenFlip

The last few years have seen big changes in how people decorate their outdoor living spaces. Furniture designs keep improving, color schemes keep becoming more varied, and tech products keep becoming more affordable. One area that’s really been growing is using bamboo in outdoor décor. A sustainable, eco-friendly product, bamboo has many applications and can help create a unique look in any outdoor space. Here are some of the latest uses for it:

Furniture

When it comes to wood outdoor furniture, so much of it looks the same with the exception of the finish. With bamboo, you get something that’s truly different. Its round shape with clean lines is perfect for getting a modern look while retaining an Eastern or even tropical feel. It’s also one of the strongest wood plants on Earth, so your furniture will last for years with proper maintenance. Tables, chairs, benches, bars – there’s truly no limit to the bamboo furniture options out there.

Fencing

Going with a bamboo fence has become a popular option for those looking to make their home as green as possible, as you eliminate all the harvesting of trees that goes along with a traditional fence. While it’s a lightweight material, the strength of it makes it supremely durable, so damage from high winds or storms is a non-issue. It’s a great way to set your home apart from all the others with those same, boring wood designs, whether you se it as a high privacy fence or just something short to line the front yard.

Shaded Area

A covered area of some sort is key to having a great outdoor living space, as it lets you still enjoy the area no matter what the weather’s doing. One trend gaining steam is using bamboo in your covered area. Some homeowners are opting to have the whole thing constructed of bamboo, giving it almost the feel of being on an island resort, while others are covering the inside of the shelter roof with bamboo, making a much more appealing look than the drab wood or metal that’s up there. Whatever your preference is, it’s definitely worth looking into for a new home or remodeling job.

Accessories

The little things are what tie any room, indoors or out, together, and that’s another area where bamboo is really shining. All sorts of outdoor accessories, from fountains to planters to wind chimes, are now coming in bamboo designs. As we’ve said before, the light weight and strong nature of bamboo makes it ideal to use, as it’ll look good for years with minimal maintenance.

With all the advantages of bamboo, from its strength to its good looks to its eco-friendly nature, it’s easy to see why it’s becoming so popular in outdoor décor today. Try adding some bamboo features to your outdoor living space – your friends and neighbors are sure to be impressed!

About The Author – Tina Foreman is a writer with Outdoor Living and a green design enthusiast, specializing in outdoor remodeling projects. For more info, you can write to her at tina.foreman999@gmail.com

Bamboo can find a medley of new application areas that have a tremendous market opportunity, potential as well as value addition. Bamboo products could find application in high absorption and mass consumption industries like roads and housing because of its attributes of high strength and low weight. The use for bamboo grids for reinforcement of roads is an innovative application, which has not been used elsewhere in the world. Bamboo makes for excellent construction material and Ecuador has used bamboo extensively and successfully in construction of homes. Bamboo offers a low-cost but strong housing solution. Bamboo briquettes are also a new application as far as India is concerned, but they are widely used in other bamboo growing countries. Another market that could be tapped is the niche market of bamboo shoots. It is a highly popular delicacy across the world and its consumption in India needs to be promoted. Bamboo’s capacity for regeneration makes it an eminently suitable replacement for wood and it is perhaps why bamboo is referred to as “tomorrow’s timber.”

 The last 15 years has seen a mushrooming of the variety of commercially available bamboo products. As well as traditional products, there is now successful commercial production of bamboo flooring, laminated furniture, building panels (similar to timber based plywood, chipboard or MDF), high quality yarn and fabrics, activated carbon, bamboo extracts and so forth. These are no longer novelty items but are successfully competing in the marketplace and gaining market share. These recent developments have created new opportunities for leveraging bamboo as a basis for rural industrialization and poverty reduction. In particular, the emergence of new higher added-value processing increases the sector’s potential economic impact, especially in poor rural communities, compared to traditional lower value processing industries.

Unfortunately not all of the bamboo plant can be used to such effect. Premium processing needs premium parts of the bamboo (typically the middle lower part of large culms). So modern bamboo industries need a mix of different businesses producing a variety of products, with premium bamboo parts going to premium uses (e.g. flooring, laminated furniture), mid quality parts (e.g. upper mid section) going to medium value added processing (e.g. blinds, mats, chopsticks) and the leftovers, sawdust and other processing ‘waste’ being used in the bulk processing industries such as paper, charcoal or chipboard.

But the use of bamboo in these industries would be possible only if it makes commercial sense. Unless it makes business sense to replace existing materials with bamboo, the crossover would not be possible. To make bamboo and its products economically viable, the intervention of a number of facilitators and stakeholders is required. 

From a production perspective, it is possible to divide the sector into distinct sub sectors, each of which can exist on a standalone basis or in combination with the others:

1. Handicrafts: characterized by high levels of semi-skilled and skilled manual processing of relatively small volumes of bamboo culms.

2. Bamboo shoots: essentially a high value agricultural crop that can either be grown primarily for shoots or in parallel with the production of culms.

3. Industrial processing: semi-mechanized and mechanized processing of comparatively large volumes of bamboo culms. Industrial processing industries can be further divided according to the value of the processing and grade of material used:

i. Premium processing (e.g. flooring, laminated furniture, Ply board)

ii. Medium value processing (e.g. Incense sticks, Blinds)

iii. Low value and bulk processing (e.g. charcoal, paper & pulp)

4. Unprocessed culms: supplied to the local construction industry or used for domestic household applications.  

From a production perspective, it is possible to divide the sector into distinct sub sectors, each of which can exist on a standalone basis or in combination with the others:

1. Handicrafts: characterized by high levels of semi-skilled and skilled manual processing of relatively small volumes of bamboo culms.

2. Bamboo shoots: essentially a high value agricultural crop that can either be grown primarily for shoots or in parallel with the production of culms.

 3. Industrial processing: semi-mechanized and mechanized processing of comparatively large volumes of bamboo culms. Industrial processing industries can be further divided according to the value of the processing and grade of material used:

i. Premium processing (e.g. flooring, laminated furniture, Ply board)

ii. Medium value processing (e.g. Incense sticks, Blinds)

iii. Low value and bulk processing (e.g. charcoal, paper & pulp)

           4. Unprocessed culms: supplied to the local construction industry or used for domestic household applications.

Laminated bamboo furniture is a modern invention but has already become popular in many countries. It is produced from molded bamboo components and to the uninitiated eye the furniture is unrecognizable as having been produced from bamboo. A huge range of furniture can be produced, such as table and chairs, bookshelves, beds, cabinets and recliners. The furniture is durable, practical and has a modern appearance and in recent years elegant designs have been produced in China and Japan.

The laminated bamboo furniture unit is a relatively large-scale venture requiring start-up capital and a number of experienced personnel. By innovating new designs and seeking out new markets the unit will be able to develop rapidly and there are significant opportunities to open up exporting markets for laminated bamboo furniture in more affluent countries. The unit can easily be established at the community level, ideally as a cooperative venture. In view of the scale of investment required it might be preferable to establish the unit with the assistance of state agencies or NGOs to ensure the venture is successful and the community is the true beneficiaries.

Drawing the profile
In Furniture construction, full-scale drawings are utilized to enable one to pick measurements off the drawings while actual construction is on. For this purpose, the design is drawn full scale.

Bending with Heat
Following the practice of the cane furniture manufacturers of the North East, blow lamps were used to apply focused heat on to the poles and force bend it on a Wooden Horse (Mould). Basically the mould or horse is made out of solid wood. While one beam is perpendicular to the ground, there are two support beams parallel to the ground. The artisan makes a notch in the perpendicular and after hitching the bamboo in the notch, applies direct heat through the blowlamp. The notch is basically locking the bamboo in place and manual pressure is applied towards gravity to bend the heated pole. From time to time, a wet cloth is run onto the heated area of the pole so that the bend cools and solidifies. The pole is taken off the horse regularly, and measured on a drawing /profile to check for accuracy.
Though tedious and labor intensive, the method is able to achieve almost 100% accuracy. There is loss of the surface thickness as the excessive heat scorches the bamboo and the scraping the black skin reduces the thickness of the pole. However if totally solid bamboo is used, the loss of surface has a negligible effect on the strength of the bamboo.

Preparing the raw material
The outermost skin is scraped off to bring out the smooth luster and even colour of the bamboo. In the process, the knots on the internodes are also flattened /evened out.

For straight sections, the scraping is done before sizing. For sections that are to be bent into profiles, the bending is carried out before.

After the correct profile is achieved, the bamboo is then scraped to remove the outermost skin and the burnt marks.

Knot removing and planning surface
Various methods can be applied for surface finishing of bamboo. For knot removal, planer can be used to scrape the knots. The Team also explored using rudimentary sanding machine, and found it to be extremely useful in scraping the outer surface of the bamboo. This method reduces the drudgery of manual hand shaving.

Joinery and Assembly techniques
Most of the joinery used in Bamboo furniture is same as those used for wooden furniture. Simple joints like tendon -mortise joints work in totally solid bamboo. Plugs are inserted at hollow ends.

The furniture is an assembled frame-by-frame using carpenter vice. Bamboo dowels are used diagonally to seal joints. Before inserting the joints, industrial adhesive is used to add strength to the joinery.

Laminated blank making
Prepared sections of bamboo wood are coated with glue and then placed together in jigs to form the sub-sections of the furniture. Straight sub-sections can be pressed together in a standard hot-pressing machine, but curved sections require specially shaped jigs and are pressed by tightening bolts holdings the jig-forming elements together. They are then placed in a heated chamber for curing.

Finishing the product
At final assembly, the product is sanded before applying the termite resistant coating and melamine. Finishing involves the following stages, all designed to produce a high quality, uniform surface finish: Bleaching, prestaining, staining and coloring, wash coating, filling sealing or wash coating, glazing, top coating, rubbing, polishing and cleaning. Addition of upholstery and other fitting completes the furniture.

Market-Size: The consumption of wood other than plywood for making furniture is estimated at 3.36 million cubic meters in 2005 and set to rise to 4.62 million cubic meters by 2010. Bamboo as a substitute for wood to make furniture is expected to grow up to US$224 million by 2010. A range of furniture for school, office, showroom and home is made from bamboo. Bent-laminate furniture from bamboo is currently under prototyping. Consistent supply of processed bamboo is the key to the growth and development of this industry .

Source: Mayank, M (2008) Techno Economic Feasibility Study for Setting up of Bamboo SMEs, NMBA, India