| Summary: | The growth of human population and its prosperity are bound to cause even greater demand on timber, for housing. In the process, serious problems of overexploitation and destruction of tropical forest may occur. In order to protect forest from degradation and shrinkage, one needs to search for substitute materials for timber. Bamboos grow rapidly, can be cultivated easily, have good mechanical properties and can be preserved employing simple techniques. However, bamboo joining has posed structural problems. It is often accomplished using conventional methods with pins and ropes, resulting in very weak joints. The use of bamboo as substitute material for timber is limited only because of lack of knowledge on how to make strong
joints.
Research has been conducted experimentally to improve the method of joining bamboo with timber filling developed by Morisco and Mardjono (1996). Less epoxy has been used to reduce the cost, and steel clamps have been employed temporarily to strengthen the joint.
Results of the research show that the new method can reduce cost of the joint materials by 48 %, even strengthen the joints significantly%' The optimum ratio of bolt and bamboo diaMeter can be concluded theoretically.
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