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What is the difference between bamboo and rattan furniture?
May
1. There are some differences between bamboo and rattan or wicker rattan as follows:
Wicker Rattan
- Rattan is a solid timber vine that is quite flexible, can be woven into wicker.
- Wicker rattan is a woven product made from a rattan cane.
- Rattan cane is native mainly to the tropical rain forests in Vietnam, and from some plantations, but it is not widely cultivated.
- As one of the commercial products, rattan is mostly restricted to use in the furniture and household accessories industry, although in rural areas it is widely used to weave baskets, mats and thatched roofs.
- Despite being one of the world’s strongest woods, rattan is flexible and can be shaped into intricately designed furniture. Therefore an easy way to check if your furniture is rattan or bamboo is to see if any of the canes are curved or bent and if so, your furniture is rattan.
- Both bamboo and wicker rattan are categorized as sustainable products for their fast-growing properties.
Bamboo
- Bamboo is a tropical woody grass with hollow stems.
- Bamboo can grow in various different types of climate and is widely commercially farmed.
- Bamboo is used to make flooring, furniture, handcrafted items, baskets, clothes and paper, and it is used for food and fuel as well.
- Both bamboo and wicker rattan are classified as sustainable products due to their fast-growing properties.
- Bamboo cannot be bent, therefore it is never woven.
- Bamboo does not bend. It is harder than mahogany and cannot be curved.
One of difference between bamboo and rattan is Bamboo is a hollow tree and rattan is a solid climbing palm vine.
2. Which is stronger between rattan or bamboo? Why?
Based on my personal experience when I was a kid to be caned at times, rattan was the preferred choice than bamboo for a stick of thickness below 1/2 inch.
Rattan is solid core while bamboo is hollow, and rattan is more flexible than bamboo which is why it is used for making furniture as is to be able to be bent.
So we would say that rattan is stronger than bamboo for the same thickness in such applications.
But when thicker material is needed in large quantities, as a support along it’s length as used in scaffolding in many countries in Asia, bamboo being less flexible and stiffer, is the preferred choice to offer the strength needed to scale such height.
Thus in this application, the strength is along its length on the longitudinal axis. It’s just like our own bones in our body to be hollow to have longitudinal strength, provide. I’ve not seen rattan in such thick diameter as what bamboo can offer to be more than a couple of inches in diameter. Bamboo is a very fast growing plant which makes it more available for such application even to now be available for making floors like stranded bamboo being engineered and compressed to give hardness far superior than most regular hardwood flooring.
But if rattan being a solid core would probably be of higher density material than bamboo, and if it were to come in such big thickness diameter over 2 inches thick, it may still be strong than bamboo if used for making scaffold, but that would make it heavier as well, which is not desirable in such application for it to bear its own weight after stacking them up.
So the strength of each material depends on it’s application of where it would be subjected to the stress on the 3 principles axes the material. A hollow material subjected to non longitudinal stress will collapse easier than on the longitudinal position, just as if we press down on a toilet paper roll with the tube facing the sides, it will collapse easily. But if we turn it such that the tube is facing up, it will be much harder to press it down.
Probably I’ll still stick to rattan being a stronger material, assuming that the density is higher than bamboo for the same thickness of material as it is a solid core.
Reference source: https://www.quora.com