Skip to main content

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.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Fixing Weber-type Charcoal Grill Legs

Do you have a charcoal grill? After awhile if you have moved it around do the legs come out? I have two of these grills and they both have this problem. But then again I did get both of them out of the trash! I suppose they were in the trash in the first place because their owner was tired of dealing with the legs coming out. The problem is that the legs are typically just crimped as you see below instead of firmly attached. Well, we are going to fix this! First, what you will need is a drill, a small-ish drill bit, and either 3 screws long enough to go all the way through the leg with nuts to go with them, or 6 rivets and a rivet gun. The drill bit naturally will be sized to fit the size of the screws or rivets. I like rivets because with screws there is a chance the nuts will come loose and then you are going to have wobbly legs again. Rivets are a permanent fix. So now that you have everything you need, drill a hole through the leg where it attaches to the grill. Make sure ...

Shovel Handle Repair

Don't you hate when this happens? There you are digging in the garden and try to pry out a sapling stump and SNAP! If you can part with an old friend it is time to go buy a new shovel. If not (can you tell how much I have worn down the tip on this shovel?) it is time to replace the handle. Step one: Remove the Handle Notice where the rivet is installed through the handle.  Find the pre-formed end.  Look at the other side.  If it has been flattened much bigger than the hole through the shovel you will need to cut it off.  A Dremel tool with a cut-off wheel is the way to go.  Don't forget the safety glasses.  Now take a punch and hammer and knock the rivet through the shovel shaft.  Now you can knock the piece of the broken handle out of the shovel shaft. Step two: Fit and Drill the Hole in the New Handle But where to get your new handle?  I just read an article that mentioned the House Handle Company (http://househandle.com/index.ht...

Making My Own Salt

My sister-in-law got a free rental weekend for a house in Nags Head. I had just read an Instructable on making sea salt and since we were headed to the beach it seemed like the perfect time to try it.  I found a few more articles and blogs on it and the basic process is Get sea water Filter out the sand and other junk Evaporate the water either by leaving in the sun or boiling or both Grind up to the consistency you want I got a nephew to got out in the surf with me and get a gallon milk jug and a couple two liter soda bottles of sea water.  First lesson learned - bring a bucket and wide mouth bottles or a funnel.  It is too hard to get the water in the surf to go through the little hole in these bottles and jugs.  It would have been better to have a bucket and then pour it in the jugs, filtering it along the way. When we got home I filtered it through some coffee filters which was a very slow process. I went back and reviewed the instructions and they all ...