The usual complaint I see against bamboo products is that they use hard bamboo that grows like trees, but promote a sustainable image based on the idea of soft bamboo that grows like grass. I haven't heard it's less sustainable than wood, just not any more sustainable.
It takes 4-5 years to grow according to the article, and you can make Strand Woven Bamboo out of it. You can get a feel for the hardness of Strand Woven Bamboo here:
"Even though a Janka rating of 8 is considered ‘hard’,
many Australian timber species achieve ratings of 12
and above."
Strand Woven Bamboo has a Janka rating of 14.
As it happens I live in Australia, and so have tried to bang the odd nail into an old house, which are often made from Australian hardwood. Almost all of us live in new houses made from pine, and so all make the same mistake. If you are lucky, and after more than a few bent nails, some old codger will take pity on you and tell you it isn't possible. You have to pre-drill.
Different species. Bamboo is actually a family of 1,400 individual species, not one individual plant. The grassy and woody varieties are just different plants with different material properties.
As a general rule, the structural properties of wood can’t really be changed without just injecting a shit load of petroleum products[0], which isn’t really what we’re after here. If a type of wood, bamboo or otherwise is too soft for an application, then there really isn’t a way to “harden” it. This is the reason we tend to use hard species for flooring, such as oak, as you need to rely on the natural characteristics of the wood for strength and hardness.
0 - For example OSB, which is basically 5% oil by weight. Even still, our ability to adjust some properties is limited. OSB is strong and cheap, but it’s not that much harder than the wood species it was made from, and hardness is a desirable property for flooring to resist dents. Also, OSB is ugly.
