has anyone tried flooring strips of bamboo for lams. good idea or bad idea not knowing what kind of glue used or hows its put toghether thanks.
Yup, works great. Make sure it is vertical compressed bamboo. I bought it from 'i flooring'
It is sold by the case, and if you need to have it shipped, it is on the expensive side.
Maybe someone else will post with a better and or cheaper supplier.
I was at a Lumber Liquidators awhile back and he said they were discontinuing one of their vertical bamboo lines and had some discounts going on. I don't have a thickness sander so I didn't pursue it.
Plenty of "Actionboo" lams used in bows come from vertical laminated flooring or stair riser stock.
Smooth-On epoxy works great.
I just ordered a carton of verticle bamboo. Material was $58 shipping was $50. 8 pcs 76" long 4 5/8" wide 5/8" thick. Shipping trippled in 3 years.
Vertical Morning Star from LL $72 per carton. Moso old growth in the amber color.
I'm actually using horizontal bamboo flooring. Its just way more work to prepare. The horizontal is three 5 mm pieces laminated into a tongue and groove formation. Unfortunately you can only really use the top surface lam cause the others are crappy quality. So if you're buying new definately get the vertical flooring BUT if you got a batch of old stock for free, the horizontal CAN work too :)
I got a box of vertical grain bamboo flooring off craigslist. Somebody had installed flooring in their house and had some left over. Score!
I have used it too. I'm about to post some pics of a bow I just made using it. I got a case of flooring from Lowe's a while back it was on sale for $50. One the first set of lams I cut from it, I noticed voids in the factory glue lines. So the side to side joints are great, but these boards are made of three layers, about 1/4 in thick each. There has been at least one void between the horizontal layers in each board. Easy to work around, but you have to be aware. I get 6 lams from each piece of flooring.
GA