Bamboo Veneer: Properties and Regular Applications

Wood is often the most voted choice for many of the furniture makers as well as home owners these days. However, wood is not a cheap option for many and this is a reason why many homeowners and furniture makers these days choose bamboo veneer over wood veneer for making their furniture sets. Why bamboo is a more practical choice than wood veneer? How to do the regular maintenance of bamboo veneer? Here are the answers.

The best bamboo veneer is found in China

China is often dubbed as the bamboo capital of the world and all of the top producers of bamboo veneer are still nestled in this country. Some of the earliest bamboo products, majority of which are household items, were found in China. Before the invention of paper, Chinese people used to write on bamboo slips. It thus became a key component in spreading Chinese culture. If you thought that the west has never embraced the idea of using bamboo for making furniture items and other sorts of things, here’s a trivia. The first telephone invented by Graham Bell was made of nothing but bamboo. Also, Thomas Alva Edison used bamboo in some of his earliest inventions. However, bamboo has been traditionally seen as the poor people’s lumber in the west and no manufacturer has taken up bamboo building materials seriously until a few days back, particularly due to the scarcity of sustainably harvested bamboo. But the picture is changing.

Properties and use of bamboo veneer

Bamboo is a variant of grass with a hard stem. Bamboo grass reaches full height in a year. Therefore, bamboo is an eco-friendly resource. Intense harvesting of bamboo has no impact on the ecology and the planet as a whole. Many bamboo veneer manufacturers in China have access to the rich reserve of bamboo found in the hinterlands of China. As a result, it becomes easier for them to use the abundantly available resource to make different types of component materials for modern interior and exterior designing and modern home and office furnishing. They treat the raw materials to make eco-friendly and sustainable component materials which can be used for making different types of furniture items.

Some of the top manufacturers of bamboo veneer in China use European quality glue to bind the materials together and this way, they can easily produce excellent bamboo flooring component materials. In China and in many parts of East Asia, bamboo is commonly used as home building materials. In Vietnam, you could find many bamboo made homes even in cities, and on countryside as well. Bamboo is also a popular and eco-friendly building material in parts of India, particular in India. Europe is gradually coming in terms with the material.

Sustainable harvesting is the future

Since bamboo grows in an invasive manner, and the roots fast form into intense underground networks, it becomes easy for the manufacturers to use and re-use the self-sustaining materials. The cost can be kept to a minimum and a lean manufacturing method can be followed. The bamboo grove remains alive when the stems die out. Basically, the culms are used in manufacturing bamboo veneer. Also, the peasants of countries where bamboo is easily available do not bother using pesticides, fertilizers and irrigation for farming as bamboo on their backyard grows real fast and without any sort of human and machine intervention.

Popular uses

A wide range of furniture items are manufactured from bamboo veneer, flooring being one of them. Bamboo furniture has an earthy and light feel, which is why the veneer is considered ideal for patios, porches as well as balconies. Bamboo veneer has excellent structural integrity. Also, the maintenance costs are incredibly low, making it one of the most affordable flooring items. There are manufacturers who offer indoor flooring, outdoor bamboo decking and many other products. In Europe and in the USA, there are some manufacturers of prefab homes who source their building materials, predominantly bamboo materials, from China based manufacturers of bamboo products.