It’s a present that can be endlessly shaken without revealing its identity, will keep the family occupied well beyond Boxing Day and is useful all year round – Bamboobee is the world’s first build-it-yourself bicycle kit.
Singapore-based engineer Sunny Chuah’s fondest memory is of hs father teaching him how to cycle – an experience that inspired Bamboobee. He hopes the interactive DIY kit will allow parents and children to strengthen their own bonds by building a bicycle together.
No previous bike-building experience is necessary and all the essential equipment is provided. Sunny estimates that the average person would need 3 days to craft a bamboo bicycle frame.
Win your own Bammboobee
The kit costs $169 (about £130 including shipping) , but we have one to give away. Simply leave a comment at the bottom of this page and let us know how a Bamboobee would improve your Christmas. We will draw a name on the last Friday before Christmas.
Custom, vintage and self-build bikes
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Gloria
This looks great fun. I can imagine the looks I will get riding this bike around town. This will be a brilliant family project. My daughter and I will have a ball putting this together. A real talking point and a fabulous innovation.
Krzysztof
This bamboo bike might make a nice commuting bike and I would love to see it under my Xmas tree!
Will
This would remind me and my dad of the old days where we both spent the afternoon building some colossus out of lego/mechano/knex…….
Cass
It wood make such a cool Christmas present to myself!
John Lewis
I want to learn more about bike maintenance and a build it yourself bike would help with that
Chris
This looks awesome! A Bamboobee would definitely improve our Christmas because it’s likely to be cold, wet and even snowy – all conditions which my normal road bike’s slick tyres slippy and unsafe to use. I’m not certain, but I’d like to imagine the Bamboobee would have some interesting handling – perhaps more fun in those conditions?
Greg Hay-Moulder
This is a really interesting idea and gives the buyer/builder quite a sense of achievement and customisation. I would love to know how this frame material rides like. Currently steel is my favourite frame material, but this sounds very interesting and at a very good price. Winning one would be even better though 🙂
Dave Nunn
Perfect gift for my Father who’d love the idea of building a bike from scratch and riding it on boxing day! It would really complement the bamboo socks I’ve already bought him!
jason davis
My kids have grown up so I’m no longer needed with the Lego! So miss my Christmas building days. I’m off on the trails Boxing Day so I can’t imagine anything better….
Alastair Seagroatt
it would improve my Christmas by letting me ride out on a beautiful, unusual bicycle,and giving others a chance to ride it as well.
Eric Ludlow
A bamboobee
Is the one for me
As a bike made of wicker
Will clearly go quicker
And will also be wholly rust-free
Michael
Would be an interesting dull January project. I can probably find the parts to complete it.
Peter Milligan
Building this at Christmas would be SOOOO much betteron so many levels, than watching The Great Escape (again)! And I might even regain my mad professor status as I tear into the University on it!
Dom
This bike would beat a white Christmas! A project and a beautiful bike at the end of it. I would give it a very good home.
Ken Hodgson
A nice little project for long winter evenings!
Rebecca Bowens
This looks like the perfect light-weight bike material to suit my very light-weight 4-year-old who loves riding her bike but can’t get up hills on her “heavy” aluminium-framed bike with no gears- wonder if it comes in her size!?!?
Robert Holland
Looking for a second bike project and this would fit the bill. Cycling is a pretty green activity and cycling on a bamboo frame would be greener still!
Val
I would adore one of these bikes, to make with a youth project I work with.
Here’s hoping
Al Napp
The bamboobee sure appeals to me
I’d like one ‘neath my Christmas tree
The though of plonking my arse
on a bike made of grass
Fills me with seasonal glee
Ben
Building this bike would be a good way to put off doing my tax return….
Gary Bird
Perfect for collecting the Chinese takeaway on a Friday night
Katherine
A bamboobee would brighten up my Christmas by finally letting me use the amazing cycle path that runs past my house, maybe I could even get to the other end of the cycling coast to cost
julie pritchard
it would be really fun to unwrap this and spend the day making it would make xmas so much more fun
Ray hope
The great thing is its environmentally friendly to produce and servicing is cheap, just take it to your local garden centre!
Sarah S-J
Bamboo is such a sustainable product. This is truly sustainable transport!!
caroline
Husband / dad Ivan builds bikes for all , using recycled frames and bits from Sheffield Bike jumble and ebay whilst teaching the kids as he goes along (that’s why there’s oil on the living room rug!)
A bamboo bike would be our family bike-build project and you know we’ll do it and post our own Appelqvist video for all to see
Elspeth
I’d love to spend Christmas building this novel bike with my son and grand-son!
Elspeth Macfarlane
I’d love to spend Christmas making and riding this novel bike with my son and grandson!
John O’Reilly
A Bamboobee would make my Christmas even better as it will go nicely with the Panda outfit I’ve asked Santa for! Then I can power round town looking super cool, throw a pair of fat tyres on and have a blast!
BAMBOOBEE COME-TO-ME!
PandaPedalPower!
Pedro Mendes
A bamboo bike would be so much cooler than my current aluminium and would put me closer to the natural elements. The frame must be a much smoother ride absorbing all those nasty London Road bump shocks. Would certainly make my Xmas special and my local bike group community a chance to try such an unusual ride.
Marion
I will use it to ride to my allotment 🙂
John
The roads in the farthest north where I live are usually salted 5 months of the year, so the advantages of a non-corrodable bike are obvious to me.
Jamie J
Can’t imagine anything better than spending at least three days with the grand-daughter trying to piece it together…
Amoeba
What’s greener than a bicycle? A bamboo bicycle! Green from start to finish.
Even greener than walking.
Eddie
Lovely idea, but it’s not a bike – it’s a frame. It will cost more that twice as much before it can be ridden (if the rest of the parts needed were new)
Paul Bird
Very nifty. My Dad’s a carpentry instructor and would love this to add to his library of examples for students!
TimA
My son and I would love that quality building time together…
Paul Rock
That would be a great thing to do!
Steven B
We’re doing a hand-made Christmas this year, so this would fit in perfectly!
Macjim
I’d end up bamboozled trying to build it
Gary Bird
At least if it breaks down in the middle of nowhere, you burn it to keep warm!
Jon
A bamboobee Christmasee. A bike I can fit under my Christmas tree.
Eamon
What a fabulous idea and thing of beauty. I would love to build one of these with my daughters over Christmas, it would be an inspirational project for the whole family. I especially love the way the pieces are bound together. Eco and eccentric in wonderfully equal measure!
Richard Thomas
I’d love to build it with my kids in the living room – on our bamboo floor!
Ned Prideaux
An excuse fettle to in the shed on Christmas Day. Perfect!
Tracey
A year ago I damaged a bike frame but kept all the parts from the bike. The Bammboobee would improve me and my families Xmas in three ways. I will have captive help. On Xmas Eve my teenage niece and nephew who love puzzles would be able to help me work out how to make the thing. Once dinner is over on the big day we can assemble the bike on the table. With the bike finished on Boxing Day, we can all go for a ride along the canal. The weather won’t matter, excitement will be at fever pitch. I can also show my partner that hoarding bicycle parts has been a good idea and that allows me to do so again.
Tim Earl
I’ve long coveted a bamboo bike. As well as style and interest factor, it’s a geat idea for sustainability.
Jane Collier
Great for sending to our bicycle charity link in Malawi – so much lighter to freight over.
Andy Giddy
A sustainable and biodegradable transport system – what else would make such a great Christmas present?!
Louise
It’s-a made of sticks (doo doo doo do-do-do)
Sticks not bricks (doo doo doo do-do)
I can get my kicks (doo doo doo do-do)
On the BIKE OF BAMBOOOOOOO!
Joanne Driver
I can see it now Christmas morning opening the box and everyone amazed at a bamboo bike. Then spending the next hour or so trying to put it together, Then utter frustration as nothing seems to fit together and everyone giving there opinion as to how to put it together. After endless re-reading of the instructions that to you make no sense you have to put it to one side as you are about to lose your temper. After a huge dinner and copious amounts of alcohol and a snooze you’ll try again and then sometime in the late evening when everyone is having another snooze after a tea of turkey sandwiches you’ll somehow manage to put it together and stand back and admire your work. Then take it outside in the dark and enjoy having the first go on the bamboo bike.
Paul Hanson
What a fantastic invention! It would make my Christmas because i need a bike and can’t afford one!
Peter Clark
Makes for a better Christmas Day afternoon than putting most new toys together – only to find you don’t have the right batteries
James Russell
As I get my little one out of his bamboo cot, unwrap him from his night-time bamboo nappy, whilst all snug in my bamboo top, looking out of my window at the bamboo garden canes, there is something in my life that is missing. Something that is better in Bamboo, but I don’t have yet.
When I get downstairs, I find that my life is complete. There, by the fireside, delivered by Santa, is a bamboo bicycle in a box waiting with my name on it.
And then I wake up with a start, as my wife gives me another vicious dig in the ribs for snoring again. Oh well! One day all dreams come true!
Howard Breakspear
Instead of rusting, will it put out little green shoots?
Mark B
I would love a wood bike I would.
Steve Hutley
I ‘wood’ be ‘bamboo’zled by this bike if it was ‘plant’ed on my doorstep for Christmas! I’d ‘stick’ it together as soon as I could! No ‘panda’ring about! I’d want to ‘shoot’ out on my new steed and give it a ‘cane’ing!
Liz MacGregor
Just think of the inspiration cycling into college for my son who is doing a 3D design course (rather than the road bike he currently uses). Christmas hols spent building a 3D bike whilst planning the next 3D project – how much inspiration can a young man take!
Andrew Jackson
It would give me something positive to do rather than indulging in the usual Christmes excesses.
Hilary Robinson
Wow! Great present for my daughter!
Alan Jones
This would improve my Christmas because pandas would chase me. I could lead them into a trap and then dress them up as Santa Claus and release them, causing panic in the streets of Cheshire as people flee from a pack of feral, hungry, hairy father Christmases. The schadenfreude of everyone else’s pandemonium strewn Christmas would improve mine.
Ian Duffield
I really dont know what to do
I am wanting a bike thats brand new
something thats quirky
to brighten up days that are murky
‘I know’ one made of bamboo.
If I won this bike made of Bamboo
to build it would give me something to do
From natural product thats feld
there’s no need for a weld
all thats needed is PVA glue.
Martin C
Would be a lovely run around for my wife who lives part-time in another city and needs a bike up there. We’d need to keep it away from Edinburgh Zoo so it doesn’t become panda lunch!
Peter Chisnall
A truly sustainable bike1
Julia Wilde
It would be my broomstick bicycle with which (excuse the pun) I could fly to wherever I could peddle.
Paul Mansell
Better than a jigsaw to keep you occupied over Xmas
Ed Dymock
Simply brilliant
Graham
I’ve no IDEA when it comes to IKEA so I’ll be all at sea with the Bamboobee
andy lee
Would love to make this, and even more so would be great riding around on, in the knowledge I’d built it myself.
Naomi Simon
What a fantastic idea, so different. My godson in Australia and his Dad would have a ball building this bike and it would help occupy their minds while his mum recovers from chemo.
Chin Yee
Brilliant kit – want one!
Toni Hayden
BAMBOOBEE MINE THIS VALENTINE!
yonas
This would be great opportunity to own something new and original. Not only is it environmentaly friendly but also adds to the whole point of going green. Love the idea and would love to start the year with positivity.
Clive
Would love to do Forestman or The Big Woody triathlon on one of these.
Caroline Bulcock
I have just had my bike stolen and this would be an amazing Christmas present! I love the ethos behind it and would buy one if I could afford it. If I won I would really enjoy involving my son in building it with me and then teaching him to ride it- what a first bike to have!
jon
Get me away from the telly.
Luke Tutt
What an amazing way to help repay my father and bond over a practical project. He has supported me to do a two week steel bicycle frame building course which I’m only two days into. We could build it together in 3 days and go for a ride on hand built bicycles together!
Andy Copper
I wanna commute on a green shoot,
Cycle on a grass,
Do what I do on a piece of bamboo,
Visit my Aunt on a plant.
I wanna my transport grown,
Like a potato or a bean,
Growing naturally, like a bicycle tree (?),
Funky, clean and green.
Adrian
Sounds like the perfect bike to soften the horrid Sheppey roads.
Jon S
I know people that have built there own bamboo bikes before and think it’s great that there’s now a kit to support the everyday modder and have-a-goer.
We live in a society with massive gaps between the skills of ‘how to use’ compared to ‘how to make’. A present like this to close the gap is an awesome idea.
I wonder if I could get my school to try it as a project?
Coo
I love wood and I love bicycles. A Bamboobee would tick all my boxes. I know bamboo is really a grass – but then banana’s are really herbs – so what’s in a name…
Dick Willis
Fantastic idea, well done that man.
David Hunt
I remember regarding the review and thinking “how cool it would be to have one of these!” How cooler still would be it be to win one to open on Christmas Day!