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Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel

cbc.ca

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Re: Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel

#141

Post by krick »

tootie wrote: post #135
TomK32 wrote: post #63

"We use chemicals to partially remove lignin. And after the first step the wood becomes soft, flexible and somewhat squishy" "The compressed material showed very little tendency to bounce back to its original thickness." I love the soft and squishy part, wondering whether it could be pressed into a form to make a bicycle frame to get away from the complicated process of laying carbon layers or the heavy weight of ste…

Isn't the exact thing Kiwami Japan did on his YouTube channel a few years ago? https://youtu.be/kKH63_r0OCA

Uh, did he? If I'm not mistaken, he just used really dense wood, no crazy chemistry in that particular video.

Re: Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel

#142

Post by varelse »

01100011 wrote: post #128
varelse wrote: post #24

When I was a kid I used to launch Estes rockets. They came with mostly balsa wood fins that would frequently break on landing. The balsa wood also absorbed paint unless you hit it with a clear coat first. This for some reason gave me the idea of rubbing Elmer's glue on to it, letting it dry, then sanding it and then painting it. Not only did it paint easily but I never lost a single fin again. The closest I came to t…

> gave me the idea of rubbing Elmer's glue on to it Not to diminish your inventive skills but I'm pretty sure this was known back in the mid 80's when I was doing rockets as a kid. Googling it shows it to be a pretty common technique going back to at least the early 2000's.

1970s in my case and I told people about it and they did it too. What's new here is I didn't know anyone else actually listened or came up with it on their own.

Re: Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel

#143

Post by krick »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #98
mdpye wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Careful. Plastics lock up carbon in "basically non-decomposable form" and that is proving problematic. And the problem isn't that we mined the carbon. Death (decomposition) is a critical part of the circle of life...

From an emissions perspective, the problem with plastics is that they lock up a tiny portion of the CO2 that was previously locked up as petroleum (the remainder is released into the atmosphere as byproduct). If we had “mined” plastic directly out of the ground, it would be fine to use (again from an emissions perspective), though not a net win since it would have already been “locked up” whereas wood only temporaril…

Sure, everything you are saying is correct, but you two are basically concerned about different problems, and, FWIW, I'm honestly more concerned about your "opponent"'s one. All this CO₂ emission stuff got way more political lately than it perhaps should be, so I can easily imagine selling stuff made out of bastardized wood as "eco-friendly" to the concerned customers, while in reality, production and everything else accounted for it will be more net-harmful for the ecology than the "traditional" (plastic or otherwise) alternative. And (risking to start another flamewar here) even that being put aside, I'm not even sure we should be as much concerned about CO₂ emissions as we currently are...

In the meanwhile, we somehow stop focusing on the whole bunch of other problems, that definitely aren't gonna solve themselves as well. Like, the fact that the oceans are turning into a huge dumpster for plastics that aren't going to magically dissolve in the next couple of hundreds of years. Or like we are only concerned about burning oil not being "green energy", and somehow skip over the fact, that we are literally burning millions of tons of substance each day, that we cannot produce and that doesn't renew itself (practically speaking), while being the ONLY substance suitable for making thousands of materials that we use to build basically everything for the last 50 of years (and it doesn't seem like we are going to find a better alternative soon).

Re: Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel

#144

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

SamBam wrote: post #130
whyenot wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also created hardened wooden nails and hammered them into wooden planks. That seems like a better example.

Kind of. It took nearly two minutes to drive that skinny main though three skinny boards. A metal brad of the same size would go through that would in 3, maybe 4 whacks. The way they were hitting it looked either like they had never hammered before, or that they were afraid of shattering the nail.

Look at how the person is holding the hammer makes me suspect they've never used one before, or at least never been shown how to use one properly.

Re: Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel

#145

Post by robbedpeter »

This looks like it can be accomplished with minimal basic chemistry and a hydraulic press. I'd love to see what type of acoustic guitars could be created using this material. Super thin tops and super rigid bodies are exciting.

The NileRed YouTube channel goes into the lignin removal chemistry here https://youtu.be/x1H-323d838

There's also great progress in using nanocrystalline cellulose to produce super strong composite materials. Embedding graphene or carbon nanotubes gives you super light, super tough material that is suitable for replacing aluminum and steel structures.

Re: Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel

#146

Post by joe_guy »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #80

Cutting cooked meat seems like about the worst possible demonstration they could have come up with because we already have disposable wood cutlery able to easily cut meat that you can readily buy by the hundreds at Target/Walmart/Amazon. The standard food demonstration for sharpness is slicing ripe tomatoes, and demonstrating toughness needs an uncooked winter squash. > "Surprisingly, our wooden knife is actually thr…

This article was frustrating because it seemed to not understand the value of why we use what materials we do.

I could make a knife from wood now and it would be sharp enough to cut steak. It, just like cheaper steel knives, wouldn't remain sharp as long as it's higher value counterparts.

They mention wooden nails but don't mention if they'll fill an important role nails do -- their success isn't only that they're hard enough to nail through wood, but that they can bend. Houses move. The nails have to have that bit of movement too.

Yes yes, you've made wood roughly as hard as steel, but steel has more than hardness going for it.

Re: Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel

#147

Post by themodelplumber »

User23 wrote: post #140
themodelplumber wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm... I don't think you're reading closely. The point is not whether I already know (IOW the properties of my subjective past are not needed). The point is that there are definitely possible future outcomes that I do not know. Can you see why that might be helpful in thinking about the future of technology?

> IOW the properties of my subjective past are not needed Your website in your profile already establishes that you're a professional bullshitter[1], so I don't think we need to dwell on that. Even so, things of value can grow in manure. Do you actually have anything concrete to say or is it just handwaving all the way down? What's a superior alternative to steel for the general knife use cases? Maybe nanocarbon-quan…

From this passionate reply it sounds like your feelings have been hurt, 100%. But is it really fair to expect me to read a 20 page pdf on the strength of some rhetorical hand-wave? You could just say it: The unknown makes you uncomfortable. Do you think everything that was invented was just a cheap copy of what we had in the past? The logic here is underwhelming. The strange emotion is also unimpressive.

Re: Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel

#148

Post by rfrey »

excalibur wrote: post #11
mikro2nd wrote: post #2

Lovely idea. I would like to see a comparison of the energy requirement for hardening wood this way vs. making steel. Would give a better sense of whether this is a technology worth pursuing as one path toward decarbonising the future.

Also what chemicals are used, where do those come from, how sustainable are they, are there adverse environmental impacts in their production

I heard an interview on the CBC and they mentioned sodium hydroxide.

Re: Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel

#150

Post by User23 »

themodelplumber wrote: post #147
User23 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IOW the properties of my subjective past are not needed Your website in your profile already establishes that you're a professional bullshitter[1], so I don't think we need to dwell on that. Even so, things of value can grow in manure. Do you actually have anything concrete to say or is it just handwaving all the way down? What's a superior alternative to steel for the general knife use cases? Maybe nanocarbon-quan…

From this passionate reply it sounds like your feelings have been hurt, 100%. But is it really fair to expect me to read a 20 page pdf on the strength of some rhetorical hand-wave? You could just say it: The unknown makes you uncomfortable. Do you think everything that was invented was just a cheap copy of what we had in the past? The logic here is underwhelming. The strange emotion is also unimpressive.

See how the bullshitter recoils on being named and doubles down with more bullshit.
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