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Making a Bamboo Trellis


I like to garden and this new house has a patch of bamboo so I figured why not make a trellis? So one day I headed out to the back yard, grabbed a few pieces of bamboo and started working. First thing learned - bamboo is very brittle especially old bamboo. I tried cutting it with various hand saws only to have it splinter all over the place. Hmm, finally I got out a hand saw with a very fine metal cutting blade. Perfect. Oh, and cutting close to a "knuckle" if you can limits the amount of splintering.


Next came connecting the pieces. The first couple of sets of holes I could do on the drill press which worked nicely because, again the brittleness, I could go nice and slow and got decent holes with little splintering. It only worked for a couple sets of holes and then I couldn't make sure they were straight through both pieces of bamboo so I had to go with hand drill. Second thing learned - bamboo has a flat side where the stems come out so you can turn that side to the table and if you are careful drill through the curved side.


Hmm, now connectors. I have this copper wire left over from setting up the grounding pole to the electric fence at the bee yard. I could cut off a chunk of it, bend a piece on the drill press bench, put it through both pieces, and bend on the other side. It should turn nice and green with time. Hopefully!

So I made several "rungs" and then stood it up on end. I bet plants will have a hard time making it from one to the next. So I went out, got another piece of bamboo, made more rungs, and cut the height between them in half.


Now it is complete and in the back yard waiting for the peas to grow on them. Final lessons learned - I should have found straighter pieces. I thought it would be cool to have them natural and picked pieces at random. Kinda looks a little goofy. It is also a little boring. I think next time I will make the rungs in an X shape to give it a little more character. But this version is done and waiting for growth.

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