Red Echo

May 16, 2007

I did a little exploratory dabbling last night with the tree of light. Instead of fiberglass, which looks to be prohibitively expensive, Leah P. suggested bamboo. I bought a bundle of 6′ garden stakes and wired them together in triplets to get long, flexible 18′ poles. They flex nicely, and I like the organic, random character of the bamboo, but I’ll have to streamline the wire-wrapping procedure if I want to make scores of them. I’ll also need to devise some kind of stress test which will simulate a good strong Black Rock windstorm; I’m afraid the bamboo would snap and send bits of wood and electronics flying.

1 Comment

  1. Bamboo is stunningly resilient and flexible
    That said, the little garden stakes have usually been treated in such a way that they are about the most brittle bamboo you can get
    You may want to see if you can find some larger stuff for the “trunk” and then some smaller diameters for “branches”

    The other trick you might try is splitting the bamboo like they do to make a fishing rod. A google search for “make bamboo fishing rod” reveales several sites.
    These are also quite flexible and light but it’s not trivial either.

    The American Bamboo Society may have something useful as well.
    About half way down they have several “Consruction” links

    Comment by norm — May 17, 2007 @ 7:37 am