I've never been a huge fan of carbon fiber on cars, but most of the time I'm not the one pushing a car. Since moving to the San Francisco Bay area, I've been walking like nobody's business. Any time I have somewhere to go, my feet take me (sometimes there's a bus or ferry on the way, and I won't complain about that) but it's been a very good thing in general.
Anyway, I bought an old bike for $10 yesterday, and I have every intention of building a new frame for the perfectly serviceable components on it. The problem is the frame that came stock. It's far from any "standard" diamond-style frame you'd see sane people riding. Instead, it looks like this:
I did some pricing on carbon fiber frames, and the supplies needed to make a carbon fiber frame, and how other people had done it, and decided that it was a silly idea. Instead, I'll use some fiberglass, hemp fiber, resin, and ... bamboo... to make my new frame. It'll look a little like this, if all goes according to plan:
This happens to be an amazing design by Brano Meres, who also made a carbon fiber frame (before the bamboo frame, and actually prefers his bamboo frame). You can find his site here:
http://www.bmeres.com/bambooframe.htm
I'm really interested in doing this project, so my first step is going to be building a jig to make the frame and riding the ever-loving shit out of the old bike to test out the components.
Now, for the actual design, I went with a combination of Brano Meres and CalfeeDesign bikes. Calfee offers some of their sizing information on their site here:
http://www.calfeedesign.com/cross.htm
The cross bike is really ideal for commuting, and the bamboo is nice and flexy (compared to steel or aluminum even moreso) so it'll absorb some of the shock from the road and bumps, allowing me to run lighter tires. Basically, the less weight I'm hauling around, the better.
Based on the pricing I've done on both bamboo and carbon fiber stock, I should be able to build the entire frame (and a jig to build the frame on) for around $200 total. If anybody's interested how the progress of this bike goes, I'll be happy to add a section to my site for "alternate transportation" and I'll keep everyone up on how it actually rides in the meantime.