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Wood Bike Building Zen with Boo Bikes

Written by Cory Benson Dec 30, 2015 9:00 p.m. ET

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Boo-Bikes_James-Wolf_woodworking-bike-ninja — *photos courtesy of Boo Bicycles*

A few weeks back Boo Bicycles put together the transcript of an interview with one of their co-founders, the master woodworker behind some of the early ideas of combining wood craftsmanship, bamboo, and bicycles to take a new approach to bike building. James Wolf tells a pretty good story, and covers everything from swords and traditional Japanese wood joinery, to the Zen of creating things with your hands from natural materials. Hop past the break for a deeper look at bamboo and bike building Zen…

A lifelong craftsman, Wolf figured out a way to turn his passion into an innovative career. Besides making things and riding bikes, he picked up a number of other hobbies along the way and managed to meld a bunch of them into the traditionally inspired bike building that Boo does today.

After studying industrial design at RISD, Wolf turned his childhood knack for working with wood into some well thought out product design. His love of Japanese culture and traditions gave him direction, bringing together centuries of master wood building technique and cutting-edge contemporary product design. After apprenticing in Japan with an artisanal furniture maker, Wolf was introduced to the merits of bamboo for its unique performance characteristics and hasn’t really looked back. With Boo, he combines old tech with new carbon fiber methods, and still percieves bamboo as a high-performing material that holds a huge amount of potential in many industries, and not even just for its sustainable character.

Wolf sees the Zen in building bamboo, as it just consumes so much focus. As you move a tool through the grain of the natural material, each stroke is minutely different than the last, and as a craftsman you learn to feel the material and react with it. That’s something unique to the material, but combines nicely with the hands-on layer-by-layer construction of carbon fiber joinery.

While sustainability wasn’t the driver to work with bamboo, it is something that Boo really appreciates. As Wolf puts it “If you think about the impact that every human life does, how much energy you consume in your life for whatever, a whole number of things, I can cut it down for myself. But as a product designer, I can cut it down for users of my product and make an impact.”

Check out the full interview at BooBicycles.com

Cory Benson

4,151 articles

Cory Benson is the EU Tech Editor of Bikerumor.com.

Cory has been writing about mountain bikes, enduro, cyclocross, all-road, gravel bikes & bikepacking for over 25 years, even before the industry created some of these names. Prior to Bikerumor, Cory was a practicing Architect specializing in environmental sustainability, has designed bike shops & bike components, and worked as a bike shop mechanic.

Based in the Czech Republic for 15+ years, he is a technical mountain biker, adventurous gravel rider, and short & medium-haul bikepacker. Cory travels extensively across Europe riding bikes, meeting with key European product developers, industry experts & tastemakers for an in-depth review of what’s new, and what’s coming next.

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Stackr

8 years ago

I have always wondered how much this technique saves, the joints of the bike frame are the biggest load bearing part of the frame, and the straight runs need not carry a lot of the load. So a typical carbon fiber frame can’t contain a hell of a lot more carbon fiber material or resin than this boo technique, I would think.

It’s admirable, and I am all about things that reduce, and help our world, but…

onion

8 years ago

Once you’ve shortened the length of bamboo at any segment to only a few inches — what’s the point? It’s probably even detrimental to the ride quality (and certainly to overall weight).

Sustainability should never be a talking point of these bikes; they’re just for grabbing attention. Please show me a thorough analysis of the overall embodied energy in one of these frames compared to any other.

sspiff

8 years ago

Industrial design at RISD is about where I stopped paying attention. Me? I prefer performance products made by a engineers and scientists.

Veganpotter

8 years ago

Chances are, the carbon and bamboo bikes use even more carbon than your typical carbon bike. That’s kinda the only safe way to combine carbon with another material. You’ve gotta overbuild where they connect. As stated before, the parts that are now bamboo would barely have much carbon anyway. It’s only admirable if it’s smart. Otherwise it’s actually taking steps back. I’d much prefer to see the industry make cleaner carbon or stretch flax to it’s limits

haromania

8 years ago

Chalk this up to something I would love to try. No idea what to expect, but I’d love to give one a spin.

Dave

8 years ago

I can’t wait until this metaphysical nonsense runs its course. Claiming these bikes represent “sustainability” is absurd. As others above have noted, the lugs, carbon reinforcements, etc. needed to keep these things together cost more environmentally that a bike made of conventional materials.

It like ethanol in gasoline, it makes the “environmentally aware” feel good about themselves but is truly more wasteful.

Jackson

8 years ago

I think a frame made completely out of carbon. With the tubes shaped and painted to look like bamboo would be more appealing.

JBikes

8 years ago

I second Dave. If one wants a sustainable bike, get a steel one and take care of it for a long, long time.
Outside that, these may be great frames. Who knows. I’ve never ridden one. I do have respect in that I see a lot of Boo employees ripping it up on local singletrack in the frontrange of CO on their Boo frames (or Boo requires all buyers to ride with Boo kit…)

Sevo

8 years ago

It’s always fun to read comments from people claiming some superior knowledge of something they have never actually used (much less have even a beginner’s proficiency in the material).

Bravo. Sure your bosses are happy you’re working so hard.

I’ve ridden a few bamboo bikes and if it weren’t for my own efforts in other areas I’d own one. The ride of bamboo is ridiculously good. Also, the material itself far exceeds the durability of any carbon bike out there.

My first experience was riding another brand with joints wrapped in hemp and not nearly as well made as the Boo. Riding the streets of Denver talking with a buddy I smacked into a sizable pothole….but the jolt I braced myself for never reached my arms. The frame magically absorbed the brunt of the force. At the time, I thought of Bamboo as a neat gimmick and nothing more. Then that happened. Wow. Cool sh*t!

I bought an Aluboo cross/gravel frame a few years ago and built it up. Weight/price was in line with a nice steel frame. Yet stiffness and pedal efficiency ranked up there with $3000 carbon frames I’ve owned. Road vibrations being soaked up effortlessly. Still wish I had that bike, it was pretty dreamy really….and that just had 3 bamboo tubes. A real sleeper of a bike.

I’m probably not buying any fancy bikes for awhile, but I do put a full BOO bamboo/carbon on my list if I did go build a nice road/gravel bike.

Drew Diller

8 years ago

@Veganpotter “Chances are, the carbon and bamboo bikes use even more carbon than your typical carbon bike.”

Having built one, it’s shy of two pounds of carbon for a very sturdy result. Many carbon frames hover in the 3 lbs range +/- a few ounces. I do not know of many sub-2-pound carbon frames.

I’m only half interested in the sustainability stuff (some of it is true, some ehhh)… that said, some of you in here appear to dislike fun. I’m going to get back to building some bamboo frames just to irritate you by their mere existence.

Veganpotter

8 years ago

Drew, there’s no shortage of carbon bikes under two pounds. They’re getting more and more common and cheaper every day.
That said, I’ve ridden a Boo and a few locally made bamboo bikes in the Philippines. While it was better than I expected, I’d take the ride and performance of a modern $2000 carbon bike over the Boo I rode on any given day.

sspiff

8 years ago

Sevo, one of the things about the internet – you don’t know who you’re talking to. Best not to make assumptions about them. I, for one, have ridden several and (briefly) owned bamboo bikes, both low and high end (including boo). I admit its been a few years and maybe things have changed, but I gave them a chance… I’m with veganpotter, while better than expected, overall they don’t hold a candle to a high end metal bike (pick your material!) or even a midrange carbon bike.

sspiff

8 years ago

A question on “two pounds of carbon.” Does this include resin, or just the carbon itself (which seems more likely as I imagine it’s sold by mass pre resinified)? High end carbon frames are now well below 2 lbs total. Just curious and admittedly ignorant.

Nick Frey

8 years ago

This is actually a pretty “positive” set of comments, considering how these sections usually go 🙂 Thanks!

Everyone: we do NOT purport to be sustainable. That’s not why we use bamboo. My background is mechanical engineering and professional road racing. These experiences shape what I look for in a bike: stiff, responsive, incredible efficiency, and brilliant ride quality with surefooted handling.

I’ve never found another frame material or combination of materials that rivals bamboo and carbon fiber in the optimal mixture of these traits. You can never have your cake and eat it too, everything is simply an optimization problem. I personally believe we make the best optimization for what most people love using their bikes for: long, hard, adventurous riding.

Our bike isn’t the stiffest, the lightest, the most responsive, the most durable, the best ride quality, the best handling, or the best looking. I actually think having a bike that is “best” at something is not optimal, because of what you give up in the other categories. If you want the “best” car, you wouldn’t get a top fuel dragster, or a low rider, or a rock crawler. But those vehicles would actually be the “best” for a specific task. Instead, you’d get the best optimization of those traits you value in a car.

So PLEASE don’t think we’re all about sustainability. It’s not that we don’t care–we believe strongly in making durable products that last many years so you don’t have to worry too much about the initial impact of production because it’s amortized over a longer time scale. But we don’t purport to somehow be making something that will change the world with its sustainability. We freaking drive an old school bus thousands of miles a year and air ship a majority of our frames!

We use bamboo because it freaking rocks. I’m guessing many commenters haven’t ridden one. Please do. We’re located at 1750 Laporte Avenue in Fort Collins, Colorado. Reach us at (970) 444.2228 and we’ll get you setup. THEN you can hate the bikes, but I doubt you will 🙂

Drew Diller

8 years ago

@sspiff – including resin.

For these sub 2 pound frames, are we talking road or MTB? Bit of a difference in weight. I was in MTB mode, and I see low-but-not-below 2 pound frames. I see plenty of sub-3 pound frames.

It’s pretty similar to the weight of removing the carbon main tubes from a carbon frame. It’s the weight of the lugs. It may be 3/4 similar to a full carbon frame, but 3/4 as much of something is not more than something. There’s no “chances are” involved.

Veganpotter

8 years ago

The Boo a rode was crafted well but from 0-10, at most, any of the main things I look for in a bike’s performance would score anywhere from 5-7 for the Boo outside of cool factor. Ti, steel and carbon bikes can be made with nothing worse than a 7 and early hit a 9-10 on some things. Even some new aluminum bikes rock. 5-7s don’t rock, they eh…