A few weeks back I spoke to the owner of a local bicycle shop about a titanium bike frame hanging up on his wall, and I was surprised to learn he only sells two of them a year, max. Or maybe he said he gets at most two queries about them a year.
I was surprised by this. While carbon fibre and aluminium obviously remain massively dominant worldwide, there’s plenty of information online about titanium and also bamboo bicycles - but very little about them in relation to Taiwan.
You can definitely get titanium bikes here, as rare as they seem to be, and in fact I’m about to have one built by my local bike shop. But I got curious about the status of bamboo bikes here after learning that a lot of the bamboo used by bamboo bike companies around the world is exported from Taiwan.
I couldn’t find much evidence of companies building bamboo bikes in Taiwan, although that’s just as likely down to my unfamiliarity with the language. I saw mention of precisely one company on a website about Taiwanese bamboo dating from some years ago, but nothing to indicate if they’re still around.
If there’s no home-grown market for bamboo bikes in Taiwan, or even as something worth exporting (as separate from growing bamboo) is that because no-one’s tried, or there’s just no interest in such things here? And if not, is there an identifiable reason why?
you can skip taiwan and head straight to china. they’re selling bamboo e bikes and bamboo folding bikes by the truck load. these raw materials you’re talking about, taiwan do not produce.
Bamboo Bicycles Beijing started in 2013 as a fun social project. It has since organically developed into a community-drive social enterprise that strives to empower local community to take ownership over their mobility and environment through shared tangible action and creation in our workshop spaces.
Calfee and Bamboosero, among others, source their bamboo from Yushan national Park in Taiwan - or at least they certainly did at some point if they don’t now. I’ve found multiple mentions online of Taiwan’s exported bamboo being used for bicycles.
Do the guy building the bike know how to weld titanium? They’re not hard to weld, but they’re hard to weld right. I tried this just for shits and giggle:
This is NOT a good weld by the way. If there is ANY color whatsoever before brushing the titanium, grind it off and redo it. Hot titanium absorbs atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen and it makes the weld brittle. It’s not like stainless steel. Now this isn’t going on a rocket ship or anything critical so I don’t really care, I’m just using this piece as a welding platform… There’s nothing chabuduo to do with anything titanium, or else you’ll just have an expensive bike in pieces while you’re riding down a hill at about 20mph…
He’s not welding anything - he’s selling me a Performer Leap 2.1 frame (or he will, when I’m back in his shop, hopefully this week), and transferring most of the bits and pieces from my current aluminium frame to the new frame. Assuming they fit, anyway.
Ok, for some reason I kept thinking he’s going to weld a bunch of tubes into a bike frame. I’m not that good of a welder, and I’m learning, but even if I’m good at welding I would never dare build even a steel or aluminum framed bike (which is really not all that strict as far as welding goes) because of liability for any customer.
But hopefully everything fits…
Just don’t try to weld bits to it… you can with any TIG welder but you need a large gas lens, a ton of argon, and possibly a purge chamber (ideally a purge chamber to eliminate the possibility of any oxidization).
This makes me lose faith in any welding done in Taiwan. This is what happens when you try to stick weld a thin stainless sheet metal with 3.2mm welding stick with the current set too low. It will never maintain a stable arc and so looks like shit.
I’ve seen a lot of carbon bikes in Taiwan and it seems only a few brands and model are insanely popular in Taiwan (subject to change monthly) and almost nothing else sells.
I don’t know… First of all I’m not really a bike expert, and like I said, one or two model sells like hot cake NOW, then next few months another model sells like hot cakes, but they probably account for the lion share of the entire bike market. What makes you think if I built a bamboo bike, that I’ll sell more than 2 per year? I got enough trouble selling guitars as it is.
Also if a guitar breaks, the worst that can happen is a customer gets mad at me and I make it right at my expense, or refund him. If I build a bike and it breaks, I can expect to go to court, and possibly go to jail if someone gets hurt.
If someone decides to club someone else with my guitar, he goes to jail because that wouldn’t be my fault. Also if someone uses my guitar as pull up bars, and it breaks, and he falls to his death, it’s also not my fault because it’s a guitar, not a pull up bar.
I’m NOT saying these companies did that but a LOT of companies worldwide hide the true origin of the bamboo they use which is invariably from China.
I have seen companies claiming origin from Taiwan, Japan, US and Australia when it’s actually made in China.
The reason is that China has by far the best technology and eocsystem for bamboo product manufacturing, their skills are pretty awesome. Price is also the best. But the Made in China in label is resisted by many consumers.
There is a solid bamboo industry here but they generally don’t make the most complex items.
Well bamboo comes from China so it makes sense they have the best, but somehow China’s bad so no matter what they get a bad rap. This is why “Made in the USA of global materials” is a thing, because if they said “made in China” nobody would buy it no matter how good they are!
I thought falsifying origin is kinda illegal, so how do they get away with it?
I don’t really have a dog in the fight with bikes. I thought about going into bike repair but I know even less about the bike market than I do about guitars. I can learn how to fix them but without an “in”, I don’t have a chance. All I do is ride youbikes. They are decent and cheap.
There is a wooden bike group in Taiwan. Perhaps a facebook search - these guys make their bikes from scratch usually. I met around 20 of them a few years ago on the east coast and they let me ride one of their bikes. It was pretty amazing, very smooth and comfortable.
It just seemed surprising to me that bamboo is grown here, and that bamboo at least used to be a major market, but it isn’t used so much. I’ve become aware, now, of how much more of a big deal the use of bamboo is on the mainland. But it does seem like most people here prefer to buy expensive carbon bikes. Or that’s what i see on the road, apart from the old-men-riding-beaters variety. But is it because that’s what people want, or all they know about?
Probably marketing. Taiwanese companies can’t market that well, as most of their business is basically OEM. But other brands like Velocite or whatever, they’re great at marketing, and they see professional athletes use carbon bike so that’s all what people want.
Basically you gotta get some professional athlete to use your bike or else Taiwanese would never, ever touch it with a 9 foot pole unless it was free.
Very much follow the sheep mentality here. They buy stuff based on what they see others use, not what value it provides for them.
It’s like with guitars. I can’t get any Taiwanese to even want to touch my guitars. Only way this will work is if they see Eddie Van Halen or someone of that caliber use it. As much as Mike wants to help out him using my guitars don’t do jack shit for me because he isn’t famous on the international stage. Even if Jolin herself used my guitar it wouldn’t matter either. It has to be internationally famous celebrity. Taiwanese really care a lot about this. Heck even if it’s a POS guitar Taiwanese would lap it up just because some international celebrity used it…
