New source of bamboo "lumber"

ridiculously expensive

It’s beautiful to work with but it IS, WAS, and always WILL BE grass. Bamboo plywood gets shipped in plastic bags that are sealed. Why? Because once you unwrap it, it reacts to humidity with great excitement. It’s still grass. If you can keep it in a relatively controlled environment, you’ll enjoy it. But man, does that stuff move and you’d better plan for it and prepare for it. :)

“ridiculously expensive”
- comparable to walnut or padauk, unless those are also ridiculously expensive

“But man, does that stuff move”
- I have a cutting board made from it which goes through the usual wet/dry daily cycle. Flat and true just like the day I bought it.

Bamboo wood looks nice. I am glad you had a good experience with your order. I bought a piece of Bamboo a while back to sculpt a box from it. Not from woodworkers source but another source. Woodworkerssource.com says 1”x12×48 in one spot and 3/4” in another location.
Anyway, the piece I bought warped a lot and I ended up not using any more of it. Too costly to take a gamble again…and besides…I bought some QS oak from WoodWorkers source a few years back and got some warped lumber from them. I am very hesitant about buying any lumber I cannot see and pick out myself.

-- Every step of any project should be considered your masterpiece if you want the finished product to reflect the quality of your work. http://www.FineArtBoxes.com

comparable to walnut

That’s more than double the going rate for walnut around here.

-- "hold fast to that which is good"

Yeah, twice as expensive as I pay for walnut. Padauk here is about $10/bdft.

Let’s be fair and not compare rough sawn lumber from mill to to select and better S4S stock (glass smooth mind you) without knots, defects or checked ends from small retailer.
As with any engineered material quality could be all over the place and will depend on the source. Now, it’s all hearsay, but from what I heard from professional kitchen installers routinely working with bamboo the product is very stable when comes from a reputable source with high manufacturing standards.

The Tiger Strand bamboo pieces I got from my buddy are very stable (some of it had been on the wet snowy ground for days before he saved it for me). It is different than some of the bamboo I have seen: it is 3/4” thick composed of 3 layers laminated at right angles to each other. Greg- I can’t imagine sculpting this as it is REALLY slivery (is that a word?)

-- " I'll try to be nicer, if you'll try to be smarter" gfadvm