Measuring the bamboos

(Photo by Kevin Rowell)


A lot has happened during the past weeks on the site especially with the bamboos. During and after our two-week learning period with Kevin the work has progressed nicely. The last batch of bamboos are being prepared for treatment, the first batch has been almost completely turned into elements already and the rest are somewhere in between.

(Photo by Kevin Rowell)


After the bamboos have been let to dry and stabilize in a vertical position and selected into beams and columns, the next phase is measuring. The strongest part of the bamboo are the nodes so all the loads should be transferred through the nodes instead of the internodes. For the same reason the pieces cut should always have nodes as close to both ends as possible. This way no mortar or concrete filling is needed to block the ends of the elements because there is a beautiful bamboo node wall at the ends of the piece.


(Photo by Kevin Rowell)

In measuring the bamboo pieces you need one person in each end of the measuring tape, you pick the right measure from the tape and you start going along the bamboo node by node to get both ends of the tape to hit a node. There is a so called three-finger-rule in measuring the pieces: furthest you can cut from a node is the width of three fingers. Otherwise the end of the piece starts getting to weak. If the measure needed takes you further away from a node than that move along to the next node. The node of the bamboo is the dark line you can see in the picture and the discoloration on both sides of it. That's where the node wall is inside so it is impossible (or vey difficult and foolish) to cut so the edge of the discoloration is the closest you can go to a node.

(Photo by Kevin Rowell)

Sometimes your measure just doesn't work with the pole at hand. Then you just pick another measure and try again. Sometimes you might have to turn a pole once picked as a column into a beam or vice versa to make the measures match or move on to the next pole completely.