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Anyone know of a local (Cincy, Louisville, Lex) area that sources bamboo? I'm looking for 6 bamboo rods that are at least 4 feet in length and preferably 1-1.25 inches in diameter. I will buy green or heat treated rods.

I have a river bed full of the native. Some of those are 15 feet tall but not very big in diameter but I bet you can find one at least 1.25 inches. PM if you want me to cut a few down for you.

when you say "rod", are you talking about fly fishing poles?

No, not fly fishing. I'm curious about the strength of bamboo as compared to the aluminum that's usually used in exercise equipment. I want to compare 6061-T6 aluminum poles with varying Outer Diameters (OD) and Wall Thicknesses(WT) to some samples of bamboo. Ideally, the bamboo would be of the same OD as the aluminum. I have a machine that will apply a load perpendicularly to the a rod that is fixed at two ends. It allows you to observe the force at which the material "fails" and the mode of failure. I also want to see what the weight/foot of wet and dry bamboo rods are compared to aluminum.

Anyway, a 1.25 diameter fly pole would be kind of funny. Though I'm not a fly fisher so maybe there's something I don't know about.

Go harvest some behind Miguels??....various sizes available unless they all burned down in the 'loveshack fire. By the way, I never know if it's supposed to be foot-pounds or pounds-feet. It's labeled one way and often read the other way. How about just sticking with Newton-meters ?

is this for the cam contest? that would be one unique, bad-ass homemade cam!

woodchuck,

What I want to know is the weight of bamboo per unit length. Such as "this bamboo weighs 2kg/meter". Aluminum pipe is routinely measured in this manner as is most lumber. Foot-pounds and newton meters are torques (ForcexDistance). I would be measuring the breaking strength as a function of force, not of torque. These units will be newtons(N) or pounds-force (lbs).

A friend of mine was a supplier of bamboo in the Louisville area. He had several species available. If you are interested in going to Louisville or speaking to him, I can find out if he is still dealing in it.

PM me if interested.

There's some growing behind Michler's Florist in Lex. I don't know if they sell or give away or what, but it's worth a shot. It's typically about 20+ ft tall and the base diameter is probably 4-6 in.

absolutsugarsmurf wrote:woodchuck,

What I want to know is the weight of bamboo per unit length. Such as "this bamboo weighs 2kg/meter". Aluminum pipe is routinely measured in this manner as is most lumber. Foot-pounds and newton meters are torques (ForcexDistance). I would be measuring the breaking strength as a function of force, not of torque. These units will be newtons(N) or pounds-force (lbs).

Oh, I got ya' now. Yeah, like how much wt. per linear foot, like when they label ropes as how many oz per foot, etc. Wasn't sure what kind of physics experiment you were up to. Thought it was about force measurement, thus Newtons and meters of distance. We have alot of educated physicists and math smarts kind of people at this site as you probably know. Climbers are traditionally well educated folk.