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Henry Ford’s Hemp Cars (2020)

themeaningofwater.com

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Re: Henry Ford’s Hemp Cars (2020)

#11

Post by masswerk »

Animats wrote: post #4

Oh, that thing. The hemp fans kept trying to get that into Wikipedia years ago. It ended up at "soybean car". In the early days of plastics, cost was high and phenolic plastics were brittle. So there were many attempts to add some kind of cheap filler material. Sawdust, agricultural waste, etc. This sort of worked. Not too well. Adding a filler which absorbed water caused the material to bulge when wet. Not too good…

See also "Duroplast", made from cotton and phenol resin (carbonic acid), used in the production of the (in)famous Trabant in the GDR.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duroplast

There's an interesting passage in this Wikipedia article, regarding its limitations in industrial use:

> Because it can be made in a press similar to shaping steel, it is more suitable for volume car production than fiberglass. However, in comparison to shaping steel, duroplast needs much more time for hardening in the press. This was one of the reasons why it was not possible to scale-up production of Trabant to the volume that was demanded.

(I guess, the same may be true for other organic filler materials, e.g., hemp.)

Edit: While the German edition of Wikipedia doesn't mention the Trabant in the context of duroplast at all, the entry on the Trabant cites a curing time of about 20 hours.

Re: Henry Ford’s Hemp Cars (2020)

#12

Post by [deleted] »

masswerk wrote: post #11
Animats wrote: post #4

Oh, that thing. The hemp fans kept trying to get that into Wikipedia years ago. It ended up at "soybean car". In the early days of plastics, cost was high and phenolic plastics were brittle. So there were many attempts to add some kind of cheap filler material. Sawdust, agricultural waste, etc. This sort of worked. Not too well. Adding a filler which absorbed water caused the material to bulge when wet. Not too good…

See also "Duroplast", made from cotton and phenol resin (carbonic acid), used in the production of the (in)famous Trabant in the GDR. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duroplast There's an interesting passage in this Wikipedia article, regarding its limitations in industrial use: > Because it can be made in a press similar to shaping steel, it is more suitable for volume car production than fiberglass. However, in co…

[deleted]

Re: Henry Ford’s Hemp Cars (2020)

#14

Post by GLGirty »

arminsergiony wrote: post #13

Hemp was campaigned against by "big paper" because it might do what? Big paper would switch to hemp if it was better, so why wouldn't they? Like farmers, they grow trees like they grow corn, but they might easily convert to growing hemp instead.

My vague recollection of the claim was that the owner of an influential newspaper was also an owner/steakholder of a cotton processing business. Urban legend as far as I can tell.

Re: Henry Ford’s Hemp Cars (2020)

#15

Post by drieddust »

rocket_surgeron wrote: post #2

There seems to be a conspiracy theory when it comes to hemp: that "big-x" is keeping it down and the reason that use of this "miracle" material has not taken off is because of concerted efforts to stop it from taking off. It is true that in the United States, hemp production was illegal for many years, limiting research and development into its use. It is also true that in many countries, covering populations much la…

> It is also true that in many countries, covering populations much larger than that of the United States, hemp production was never made illegal and continued unabated ...

Only India and China are more populous than USA and it's illegal in India despite being an import and useful ingredient of Indian medicine system.

I am not claiming hemp to be a miracle material. But covert lobbying, scheming to obliterate the superior alternatives does exist.

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