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 Manufacturing Bamtex Bamboo Flooring
Note:
We do not farm bamboo, but harvest it in a controlled manner when
it is mature (5 years old) from the forest in Southern China. Our
bamboo is never clear cut; therefore our harvesting procedure has
a minimal impact on the local ecosystem.
The bamboo flooring manufacturing process involves converting bamboo stalks into one of two
final styles: vertical or horizontal.
The bamboo is hollow in the center and therefore is cut into long (3-4 meter) strips.
These long strips are then milled into rectangular shapes on all four
sides. Shorter strips are to make other bamboo products such as baskets and chopsticks. Waste from the milling process is used to make
a variety of other products, such as, paper and particleboard.
The next process is a soaking process in borax that will last
several hours in order to rid the live product of any insects and
arrest any decay causing agents.
At this stage, these long strips are still in a blond color which
is the natural color of bamboo. If we wish to have them colored into
a darker color, we put these strips into a steam and pressure chamber
to color them “completely through the fibers” into a kind
of brown, honey color we call "carbonized". After this stage,
we have either "natural" or "carbonized" colors.
We now go to the drying process, and put the products into kilns for
several days.
At this stage, we have long strips that are ready to be assembled
together. Our strips are sorted according to color to achieve the
best match. Since bamboo is a natural product, color variations will
occur.
The strips then are covered with glue and assembled together to produce
large boards, and the strips can be put together either vertically
or horizontally. In either form the bamboo is placed into presses
that exert up to 1,000 tons to insure a strong, stable bond is achieved.
We therefore obtain large boards that will be cut into a variety of
dimensions from 15.7" wide x 72" long to 4’ x 8’. Also,
at this stage we can cut and mill the boards into flooring products.
Except for vertical-grained flooring, which has only one thickness, these large
boards will be put together by layering several of them depending
on the thickness we wish to achieve. This may be up to six plies.
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