Making Bamboo Furniture

Hsiao-Hang and I like very much the fine Japanese bamboo crafts and the minimalism and modulability of Japanese furniture and architecture. So, in the spring of 2018, when I saw that bamboo was growing naturally in the land and the forest surrounding our new house in Taiwan, I was very excited by the idea of harvesting bamboo poles to build our own furniture!

What we love about bamboo are its amazing qualities as a building material. It is very strong while easy to work on, even for woodworking beginners using relatively simple tools. It can grow very quickly, even on poor soils or steep lands, which makes for a wonderful renewable material. And — maybe the most surprising — it grows virtually everywhere, from the tropics to cold mountains under temperatures dropping as low as -30°C (86°F)!

This latter asset encouraged me to share my researches and designs, as I know that they could interest and benefit so many people around the planet!

Connecting With Nature

But despite these main directions, you will also find here furniture in which I combined bamboo with other material, building processes that call for an electrical tool, or monofunctional objects. After all, what I like the most is just experimenting!

So, if you are also a bamboo lover, and if you also want to create your custom renewable and modulable crafts and furniture using simple tools, then keep reading! I gathered some information for you, from designing to building.

In 2018 and 2019, as we were living in the mountains in Northern Taiwan, I naturally started some explorations and experiments on bamboo harvesting and crafting. Among other experimentations, I measured the length and thickness of bamboo internodes.

Bamboo Furniture Hi Res Stock Photography And Images

In parallel with my first experiments, I got a lot of inspiration from amazing bamboo creations that people share online. If you haven’t yet explored what already exists, I handpicked in the resources section below 6 beautiful and inspiring videos. Observing what people do is a good way to get started in the bamboo craft journey!

Now we live in France and I don’t have an easy access to bamboo, so I don’t do a lot of bamboo experiments.

In the future, I may share new designs and techniques. One potential research direction that I might like to explore is the combination of bamboo and mycelium for building small objects and crafts. But this is still at the idea level!

A Must Watch: Making Bamboo Furniture

I selected a set of simple techniques and tools, necessary and sufficient for beginners to build almost any bamboo object and furniture, with a simple and elegant style.

I have started working on these 4 posts (splitting, drilling, sanding, joining). But to focus on the most useful work, I am now waiting for your feedback! Would you be happy to read about these topics? Or one of them in particular? Let me know in the comments below.

Inspired by craftsmen and craftswomen from around the world, I started to design and build bamboo crafts for our own use. Here I share 4 examples of my designs. Ideas are not lacking, so I am likely to update this list with more creations in the future!

Bamboo Furniture • Insteading

Overall, manual tools are sufficient to make these designs, but sometimes an electric driller can make things much easier. Most of the time, they call for bamboo as the sole building material, but at times, I also use strings or small metal pieces. And if my preferred joining method is bamboo dowels, strings are more adapted in some cases.

It is a good way to start with bamboo crafting. You can make it entirely with manual tools while learning all the necessary techniques for the larger crafts we propose.

Compared to other homemade bamboo speakers we can find online, this one stands out for its four pods, creating an aerial and minimalist style.

How To Restore Bamboo Furniture (protect + Repair Rattan)

We designed and built this large bamboo furniture to serve as our main shelf for underwear, clothes, linen, and many other small objects hanging on the sticks and branches.

And, as surprising as it may sound, it does not require other techniques than what you need for the bamboo trivet: sawing, splitting, drilling, joining!

Here the difficulty comes from the complexity of the structure, the size of the bamboo pieces to manipulate, and the building time.

Making Income From Bamboo Furniture

Among the many bamboo craft ideas that I have every week, only very few of them eventually exist! Most of them remain ideas, and a few reach the stage of prototypes.

Here are some open-source prototypes that I am happy to share, in case you would find them inspiring, fun, or if you would like to improve them and make them yours!

As for my other bamboo crafts, the leading idea here was to develop a simple design, closely adapted to our needs, and to enjoy the specificities offered by bamboo.

Joinery Techniques In Bamboo Furniture Making

Hence, I used the natural flexibility of bamboo poles to create a beautiful spontaneous arc shape under the weight of the light bulb.

The main idea here was to enjoy the fact that bamboo is already a tube with various diameters, ideal for creating a telescopic structure easily foldable and transportable.

When we moved from the forest to Taipei, a huge city, we started to wonder how we could still grow things in our 18 m

The Bamboo Chair + How To Make A New Seat

As soon as I saw that our bathroom had such a large window, with so much sunlight entering, I could not resist designing this bamboo window farm!

To share my experiments, I write a monthly newsletter, called my 🔭 Laboratory Logbook. I send this letter on the 1st day of each month to my gracious readers to update on my work in progress, my observations, my — hopefully

Free letter, monthly (every 1st day of the month), 200+ subscribers, unsubscribe in 2 clicks. Of course, I don’t share your e-mail address.With all the complicated manufacturing technology and automated processes around us nowadays, it’s nice to take things back to basics every now again and remind ourselves how brilliant good-old-fashioned handiwork can be.

The Process Of Making Chairs Of Bamboo Very Unique — Steemit

Traditional Chinese crafter Li Ziqi doesn’t need computers or fancy machines to make furniture; all she needs is a ruler, some hammers, chisels, saws, and bamboo to make her own sofa and table.

It’s nothing short of astounding how she makes the whole set from scratch. From cutting bamboo stalks in the forest to preparing them for the crafting process, she does the entire thing by herself.

After prepping the stalks, she carefully measures each one and cuts them accordingly. Connecting two pieces of bamboo is usually done by cutting a hole in one shoot and slotting the other into it. Gravity and the tightly spaced stalks take over from there and provide as good an adhesive as any.

Diy Bamboo Chippendale Chair Makeover

For more critical pieces that keep the construction together, Li Ziqi doesn’t use metal nails… she uses more bamboo. In keeping with the whole bamboo motif, she hammers in pegs of bamboo that she then cuts after they are in their final, arranged place. It won’t be easy to disassemble this particular sofa, but then again we’re not talking about Ikea furniture designed to be transported via subway here.

A technique of Li Ziqi’s that’s particularly interesting is how she makes the material pliable; after heating the bamboo, it easily bends to its master’s wishes and conforms to any shape.

With the backrest and the frame of the sofa complete, she starts to set in stalks to fill in the empty spaces. This involves placing many smaller bamboo stalks within the framework of the sofa and squeezing them in tightly together.

Incredible Bamboo Video From China

She does the same process (albeit on a slightly smaller scale) for making the table: slot in giant bamboo stalks, fill the spaces in between with smaller ones.

Li ZiQi’s YouTube channel has a ton more videos of her making traditional Chinese designs so be sure to check it out!