You got me at “wood harder than steel”, but I doubled down at “forget wood so hard you can drive nails with it, you can have wood so hard it becomes the nail”. 😉
Yup that's what i am here for in fact i have created in game hardwood brigandine that with mending and occasional piece replacement functions similar to plate armors
When it comes to fantasy games theres really no reason to keep it strictly to realistic degree. Ive been working on a setting for my DnD campaign where the elves would grow trees in forms of armor pieces that are put together when its ready. Remember, elves live a really long time so taking environmentalism to the extreme in this way sounds cool to me. Treating the armor with druidic magics while its slowly growing to fit the intended wearer and making it stronger over time.
I'm a baseball bat maker and engineer, and have been looking at wood densification for baseball bats. One thing to note, the hardness goes up but also the density goes up. The strength to weight ratio is actually very close to that of real wood, so densified basswood made at ipe level density will have roughly ipe level strength. It isn't a magical performance increase and its main benefit is cost efficiency over performance increases. It's good for going beyond natural wood capabilities, but strength to weight ratio does not go beyond natural range. It has major issues with moisture and movement in service. Epoxy impregnated wood is brittle and has reduced specific strength. So super hard wood is still a niche product, not for the industry yet. Otherwise, it'd be everywhere by now. Now, the process that seems most promising to wood industries and is currently implemented is the process currently used with wood veneer, which is surface densification. Think of it as case-hardening, but for wood. You harden and compress the surface of the wood while the core remains natural and light. This has the effect of reducing wear and tear while not making it super heavy. It's like how you hammer bronze to work-harden it. They're all the same effect. Case hardening carburizes steel to make the surface harder. Hammer bronze to work harden the edge. Compress the wood surface to make it harder while density doesn't go up as much. Ironically, this has been done unknowingly by baseball and cricket players for centuries, called boning the bat or knocking the bat for cricket, where you rub a bone, hammer with a mallet, or rub a hard metal bar to compress the wood and close the pores. It is effective and very well known and i believe this process might have been used for ancient weapon makers, although sources are hard to come by. I can imagine it so, since it's so easy. The effect of compressing the surface also makes fitting attachments easier since the wood will expand with moisture, filling the gaps. This is prevented with a good sealer and finish, but it isn't perfect. Shellac and tung oil is the historical finish of choice, but it can sometimes pop the grain, which ruins the densification I rub a steel bar on all my bats and players can tell the difference
@@RubSomefastOnIt not me personally but my buddy tells me it's too brittle. He tried vacuum and oven dried cherry and walnut and impregnated with epoxy, densified it to the high density bat level on a 271 turn model. Getting an evenly round surface is hard and the results were underwhelming. It hit just like a regular hard ball bat and then flaked off. The effect of the epoxy had the slight benefit of making large barrel turn models hit like higher density turn models, but at that point, might as well get a High Density bat. Surprisingly enough, hardness in baseball is not as important as rebound. It's just that wood has poor rebound, so hardness is used as a substitute to prevent energy lost to deformation. A brittle process that is good against scratches will be bad for baseball
@@Tevatron044 I have to tell you I rather enjoyed your read here. I actually find this practical as someone who's constantly bushcrafting and looking for small ways to use time to better improve my tools around a camp site. The knowledge you just dropped wasn't things I'd normally consider and I'm grateful you took the time to post it.
I believe the extreme case hardness of Bamboo it what gives it extraordinary properties, The technology is nothing new, It was adopted in the industrial revolution to manufacture bobbin spools for the weaving industry . I think lime wood. I recall a wood turner talking about it in a demo.
@@HavanaWoody lignostone is probably the oldest variant I've seen in the industry. It's laminated beech (a good strong wood in of itself) compressed into thin veneers and then bonded with epoxy resin. It's actually very famous and used everywhere for insulating transformers. Resin impregnated wood was used in WW2 for airplane components when they ran out of metal. So yeah you're right, this is nothing new. The new component is compressing the wood to remove the space between cell walls and removing the lignin. That is new, but like i said, it ain't special
One thing a lot of people seem to forget is that people nailed things together with wood all the time back in the day. They just started with a drill. The whole process is called "pegging," and it was the preferred method of attaching things on ships, even when nails were available. The main benefit I can see to this research into hardened wood is the ability to keep making modern materials after we exhaust readily available supplies of limited resources, like oil, which is necessary for plastics. I don't see it replacing steel anytime soon, but sooner or later we will have to replace our reliance on various plastics with something else, and this could be part of the answer.
On a wood chemistry course I took recently, we ended up discussing this article, focusing on the innovative aspect of the research and validity of its results (not to diss on the authors). I was a little bugged out by the applications they chose for the material. The knife test seemed devised to grant their hardened wood the best results. There is also the video of someone trying to cut a steak with the wooden knife that doesn't look very practical. And then there's the nail that does not seem that useful. Besides that, as my professor pointed out, the chemical bath they used to extract lignin and hemicellulose is nothing new. It is the same one used in Kraft pulping (sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfite). Even compressing the wood isn’t exactly new, they just used a powerful hot press. Putting that aside, the research is very solid, and we just wished they applied the hardened wood in more useful and less "clickbaity" stuff. Anyways, great video and very good insights!
I'm not as educated as you but I also suspect issues with chosen materials and applications. This being applied to something like bamboo/rattan to get the grain all in line seems like a good idea when you don't need a lot of thickness. Likewise, the shapes for their chosen objects leave a fair bit to be desired. For example the common round nail shape is more about ease and cosr of production via wire extrusion than the most ideal shape. The material here lends itself to being pressed into molds of the older flat-style which are still bought by woodworkers due to superior mechanical properties. Likewise, a straight edge blade may be fine for steel, but there are plenty of serrated designs this would take to better than plastic and which would work with the material properties to make a knife that's plenty effective. Further, they could also allow for more difficult to produce edge geometries like convex and concave (with or without serrations) to be easily be produced by molding. Trying to stick to shapes and manufacturing methods designed for other materials isn't going to yield the best results.
... structural members for composite aircraft and boats, from softwoods that are much more common than the hardwoods that are currently considered the minimum acceptable materials? Also, if you can mold while pressing, you can cut down massively on processing and waste.
@@miketheskepticalone6285 The problem with that is that this wood is in a bad middle ground. It's much more work to make than just farming hardwood, but not much less difficult (in theory) to make than fiberglass, aluminum, or steel. (Practically, we of course have all the industry for metals and synthetics already, making them easier.) And that's assuming the chemical waste isn't a problem, which it would be. It uses similiar chemicals to paper making, which is pretty nasty stuff. Basically, to be practical, it would require a world in which demand for wood outstrips the ability to grow it, but metals and synthetics are for some reason a problem. Oh, and also a situation where bamboo won't work, for whatever reason. That stuff grows FAST.
A good thing to remember is hardness isn't everything. When it comes to "strength" of a material you also have to think about directions of stress. ie shear, compression, and tension. I'm curious how this material is against stress.
If, when and how it shears would be interesting... If you plabe the edges how well does it hold a blade? Etc I vaguely remember a comment or story that was attributed to the Spanish conquistadors speaking one of the weapons the tribes was a paddle shaped implement made of Brazil wood. They claimed it could decapitate a horse with a single swing ... thats extremely impressive!
Just wanted to say this. I have a hunch it will not hold up well as a polearm or staff. Plus the only reason you can harden the really soft wood so much is because it has a low density and then you compress it more. With already hard wood, you wouldn't be able to compress it that much, and it stands to reason that you won't be able to get wood as hard as bronze, because it's still made of , well, wood. And lastly, the transparent "wood" more of a "just for the sake of it" kinda thing. A youtuber (NileRed) did this, and it involves burning away some components of the wood, and then replacing them with epoxy to the point where you slab is more than 50% epoxy. So it really has no applications (other than decorative) and it's very hard to pull off.
@@mrkiky Absolutely true on density vs. material. Lignin and cellulose have their limits as a basic material and no density will overcome them. As to making transparent wood, it's the same issue. You're not really making the wood transparent so much as replacing lignin with other materials. From a fantasy perspective, anything is possible, but hard sci-fi and you're no longer really using wood.
Also a factor that is very important in engineering is the specific strength, so the stress a material can withstand in comparison to its mass Some woods can have better specific strengths already than steel or aluminium (In specific directions) Would be interesting how this stuff measures up
I love the way you respect the ressearch and its intended uses while pointing out its shortcomings. That's exactly what a scientific process is. Congrats Skall. Big fan here!
It also reminds me of the fact that we shouldn't overstate and exaggerate things beyond what is reasonable. Had these articles not claimed "it's stronger than steel", Skallagrim wouldn't have had to point out in this way that it is not in fact as strong as steel. Without that exaggeration, we could have, from an unbiased viewpoint, been impressed by how that wood is almost as strong as bronze, or perhaps even stronger. You can so easily ruin that sense of awe when you put things into perspective where it's not really reasonable to do so
@@Skallagrim One small request about 4:04, though: please don't call people who write such wannabe tech-journalism drivel "journalists", but rather address them as what they actually are: bloody hacks and muckrakers who only give _actual_ journalism a bad reputation. (Full disclosure: I admit that I might be a bit sensitive about that because my mum is a retired journalist who used to write for various reputable German and Austrian newspapers for 25 years.)
@@Skallagrim here in the USA we have a tree called a HONEY LOCUST TREE that was commonly used in the place of nails to make pegs / pins to hold together buildings and furniture & boats . These trees have thorns that grow up to 4-inches long that make very good wooden nails do to their hardness . Do these trees grow in your country or have you ever heard of them ?
I agree; his analysis of the paper sounds a lot like what I have seen or would expect during the peer review process. (actually, he is much more respectful than a lot of peer reviewers can be...)
When you mentioned *ebony* as an option I felt I had to mention that ebony is currently illegal to harvest in most of it's native countries, and illegal to import into many western countries without certain certificates. Ebony trees are currently endangered due to the wood's popularity for carvings (from souvenir trinkets to piano keys to chess pieces) contrasted to how much ebony you get per harvest and how long it takes the tree to grow. The black wood that you know as "ebony" is actually just the _core_ (the "heartwood") of the tree, a tree that is is 6 inches in diameter only contains a core of about 4-5 inches in diameter (roughly 60-80%, depending on the species of ebony and the individual tree itself). Additionally, ebony trees grow _remarkably_ slowly and reach "maturity" at 60-200 years old (for comparison; it takes a Canadian maple tree 10-30 years).
That kind of makes me wonder if you could use this method to make farmed pine have similar properties to ebony as an ebony replacement? Musical instruments tend to benefit in interesting ways from material densities, and ebony used to be used quite a bit before (and after) it became endangered.
Imagine fighting someone with a transparent quarterstaff. It would be kinda tricky to keep the weapon in your sight. Also, a hardened wood quarterstaff would be brutal.
Transparent weapons seem practical until you consider actually using them. Once they get blood or even just dirt on them, then they're just back to being the same as visible weapons. Though, this might be an interesting concept for Bows and Arrows, if you can make the wood both transparent and flexible...
@@MyrmidonRadd They're transparent, not invisible. You would still see the weapon, but during the fast chaos of combat it's easier to lose track of. A tiny bit of blood or dirt won't change that, you'd have to soak the whole thing in sticky mud for it to actually matter
speaking from experience, you really don't need to see your weapon, any more than you need to see your arms or legs to know were they are. in a fight your eyes are on your opponent and their weapon, not yours.
the reason it goes so hard is to do with density of the fiber so the harder the wood is the harder it is to get even harder since they're already extremely dense. i think the reason they went for basswood is rather simple they used it because it has the most void spaces than any other wood hence producing the best results possible
chemically washing wood till it becomes a sponge and then impregnating it with a harder substance (fibreglass resin) and allowing it to harden under pressure/vacuum has been done for a long time. it gets incredible results... but its almost exclusively used for furniture guitar parts fret boards and decorative purposes as going full composite usually bears better and stronger results/uniformity etc
Perhaps using thin veneers of hardwood in the chemical treatment process would allow for a better penetration of the hardwoods. The treated veneers could then be laminated in the pressing process. Playing around with layer orientation and choice of laminate adhesives could add some strength maybe.
Having read the article, the fact that they don't give a stress-strain plot of hardened wood compared to steel (or aluminium) indicates to me that it probably can match soft metals in hardness, but it's probably more brittle with less total capacity for strain energy. Intuitively this makes sense, hardening materials often comes at the expense of reduced elasticity.
I wonder if you could use the pressing part of the process with different species of wood. Think of having a "mild" wood and a "hard" wood being laminated as you would weld mild and hard steel in a San Mai knife construction.
@@zach4505 The issue, i think, is that you'd still have a sandwich of different flattened pieces of wood on top of each other. One of the advantages of metals compared with alternatives like composites or ceramics is that you can fuse any two (or more) metal components via welding, whereas one a composite or ceramic is cured or fired, that's what you've got. You need to use fasteners or adhesives to connect pieces. Here, you might be able to arrange some kind of interlocking wood surfaces that prevent sliding once they're pressed together, and use an adhesive to keep it from separating. But at that point it becomes a question of that this offers that a composite (i.e. the carbon fiber/resin used to substitute for aluminum in larger parts of the Boeing 787). If it's only renewability, bioplastics might be a better option. And it's not like metals are non-recyclable.
@@zach4505 "I wonder if you could use the pressing part of the process with different species of wood." Not really. There is a reason they used a tiny piece of bass wood. *Real* wood can take a *lot* of weight. A piece of real hardwood in a useful dimension would probably take far more force to compress than we could economically deliver. I seriously doubt the biggest presses in existence today could do it. When you start looking at a dedicated facility to do the job and you factor in economy of scale, I would say *maybe* but I would be surprised.
Like a brick you get a material that has extremely high compressive strength but without the fibers you won’t have a good tensile or shear strength. Different hardwoods also have varsity different grain structure resulting in pros and cons for different applications.
also, wood isn’t renewable, it literally takes decades for a tree to grow. seriously go to one of those old mining camps and towns where they cleared basically the entire forest. an it’s been decades since and the new forest is no where near as big as it once was. wood is NOT renewable. an as for replacing plastic, we already have more eco friendly replacement for plastic...COMPOSTABLE plastic....plastic you can actually use in fertilizer and it breaks down much easier and safer. (also plastics have various qualities other than their durability and flexibility that makes them hard to actually replace) as for replacing steel... maybe in smaller applications freeing up more metal but highly unlikely it’s gonna replace steel on the whole.
Look up the company lignoloc they created the wooden nail, not only it's stronger but the nail contracts and expands at the same rate as the timber so no creaking
There used to be a product called "gamma wood", which was ordinary wood soaked in resin. The resin was hardened by exposing it to radiation, presumably gamma rays. It was much stronger, harder, but also heavier than normal wood.
I've been following this tech for years. It has HUGE applications in the construction sphere, beyond just flooring and wood nails, which would be great in cabinetry applications.
Based on the paper it wouldn't surprise me at all if basically all other properties are negatively effected by this process. You are completely destroying the structure of the wood and just making it denser, not necessarily stronger in any way apart from hardness. Nails (as used in modern construction) need to be soft
@@miles11we Densified carbon composite strands. That's basically what you're left with. The only reason we like softer nails is that the steel loses sheer strength as we make it harder. For a wood nail, composed of a different material, this may not be the case.
I don't remember the specifics but it might of been Norway that has wooden sky scrapers, they used treated wood for the support and there are videos on the process with benefits and drawbacks.
@@palarious but it likely is the case. Look at something like gaboon ebony vs something like oak. The ebony is sooo much more dense and hard but its incredibly fragile in comparison. So take that and remove all the stuff that keeps the fibers connected to eachother, thats basically what you get. Not saying it won't have applications but let's be honest, they totally tested other properties but chose to not include that data.
@@miles11we my guess is that you're not going to see any improvements on compressive strength or tensile. But I don't think you're going to see losses, either. Eliminating the hollow spaces in the wood isn't the same as taking a metal and changing the chemistry. You're collapsing and compressing a complex structure along one dimension. Add to that a plywood layering approach and you probably WILL see significant improvements in material performance. After all, wood is already stronger than steel on a weight for weight basis. Compressing it, even with losses, still creates a competitive product with far less space usage and the ability to mold into complex shapes for far less cost than equivalent steel custom solutions.
Every transparent wood I've looked into is impregnated with resin to gain both it's transparency and strength, so it's really more wood-fiber-reinforced transparent plastic.
@@joshuakarmann7488 Of course. But it helps to be realistic and to not oversell these "alternative" products. The way that the media portrays oil as being obsolete is very irresponsible. The whole world runs on it and it's a vital asset that should be protected.
@@trequor agreed. Renewable and sustainable tech should be developed sure. But thinking that means dropping oil 100% is just stupid. The vast majority of things we manufacture have at least some ties to oil.
@@trequor Oh I agree it is a trend to over exaggerate how good some 'alternative' products are. And don't worry I don't think oil is going away anytime soon. We humans are shackled to it.
Great video! As a Bladesmith and a Bowyer, I can say definitively that hardness has nothing to do with how strong a piece of wood or steel is. The exact type of wood and steel, the exact way you are using it and the way it's treated is far more important than the surface hardness. There are just too many trade offs in the real world to make absolute statements or cherry picked comparisons. Like silica glass is generally harder than carbon steel and purple heart is generally harder than mild steel but all of these things break a lot easier that a car tire. It's a valid and fascinating field of study but I feel like they were asking all the wrong questions and presenting all the wrong points.
This is true. See my post above explaining that since hardness, unlike tensile strength or Young's modulus, hardness is not a fundamental property of materials; making it impossible to compare/convert hardness between dissimilar materials.
The first question I have when we start talking about utility with hardness is what's the shear strength. There's a huge difference between armor that would deform, armor that would shatter, and armor that would budge at all. All of which also apply to modern day practical uses too
From watching other videos about it, I think it's just a gimmick, sadly. Basically the end result is just a plexiglass window with some bleached/leeched wood fibers in it. You get a clearer window by just using plexiglass by itself, so the only real use ends up being an aesthetic one. Admittedly, it does look neat.
@@pedromoura1446The problem remains that the only real use is aesthetic. Sure, if you want to use it, you, of course, could. That doesnt change the fact that it's essentially just an overpriced plexiglass window. You could use them for a skylight, but what practical purpose do they serve that a tinted plexiglass window couldn't do better and cheaper? None, because the only value these transparent wood windows bring is aesthetic.
I wonder what the resonance qualities of these hardened softwoods are, and if they might be able to replace exotic hardwoods in musical instrument construction that are endangered. The fact they added oil for water resistance does make me think the hardened wood might be particularly susceptible to water though
Cellulose is kind of hygroscopic. I bet if you left this hardened compressed wood out in ambient air, over time (weeks/months) it'll draw in water and swell. This would reverse the compression effects.
Interesting concept, something there that needs researching. Maybe that way we can leave the harder wood trees and build beautiful instruments from a softer fast growing wood.
@@defenestrated23 Not sure how much water it would really be able to draw in with the natural ductways collapsed. I remember reading a study done with linseed oil and tung oil, showing how the polymerization basically just massively shrunk (but did not completely seal off) those ductways, and that seems to be good enough to make wood highly water resistant. I imagine the compression would have a similar effect of blocking moisture from penetrating past the outer portions, and their polymerizing oil treatments would obviously reduce that even more. Unless it just gets soggy and disintegrates or something, then you really need to seal it up well
Could be done quite efficient, laminate silk/linen/thin layers of hard wood with a good glue and you'll get something comparable to plywood and trespa, put a good laquer or paint coat and you're there. Even shaping it over a mould would give you a good start on shapes.
When I was a kid my dad had an iron wood letter opener that was sharp enough to cut skin and draw blood. A wooden sword made from the right material and indexed correctly would still be lethal, imo.
Skallagrim there are actually some chemistry youtubers I know of that might be interested in collabing with you in order to make such a weapon! I would speak with NileRed (Canadian!) or CodysLab both of whom have done all sorts of weird chemistry experiments. NileRed actually already attempted to make some of that transparent wood, so the hardened wood sounds like it'd be right up his alley! Once you HAVE the hardened wood though, there are all sorts of blade smiths, metalworkers, and other kinds of arms and armour makers in the community who would love to work with this kind of material! So I think this is definitely something we can make happen!
Hempwood is an interesting composite. looks similar to oak, but is stronger- they're using it currently as a sustainable alternative for oak furniture and flooring.
@@willofdodge1 basically every plant is more sustainable than wood, trees take like 30 years to grow enough to harvest so it really isnt actually sustainable since you will always need to be cutting down old growth trees, hemp on the other hand as well as all other domesticated crops grow very fast by comparison
I'm remembering a quote from Discworld. I think it was in Last Continent (which is set in a pastichè of Australia). To paraphrase: "You might laugh at the idea of wooden weapons, until you see the wood that grows here".
Take any porous wood like pine for example, and paint or soak in liquid super glue.Wait until dry, finish unpainted holding area, let dry. Paint multiple layers make stronger, will be harder than some metals. Great for making wooden swords, or even wooden gears, or spockets, and etc.
its amazing how advanced all these medieval history channels like metatron and shad and skall have become going from nerds messing about to actual intellectual conversations using studies and explaining the science behind it all
Even if this makes for a more economical and timely replacement for slower growing and rarer hard wood, that would be amazing! Like, if you could grow a field of pine or basswood in a year and convert it into a harder wood for furniture or whatever else you would usually use hardwood for, instead of using pine or maple that take years and years to grow, that's amazing.
Some of those hardwoods tend to fracture easily, I wonder how this stuff holds up that way. Note: if you want to make staves or practice swords for sparring/impact practice, make sure to research which hardwoods are good for that, and watch out for grain structure (you want that as parallel to the length of your staff/wooden sword as reasonable possible).
I gotta say Skall, sometimes i dont watch your videos for a while but then i get the urge to binge all of the ones I've missed and it's like catching up with a friend you're always pleased to see. Gotta love those parasocial relationships.
It makes me happy to see Skala nerding out about materials science. I love composite materials and natural materials and this is a great combination of both
I wonder how hardened wood, compares to naturally hard wood. Take Accadia as an example, its flame resistant, shock resistant, and is in fact so dense you can't make paper or rubber from it. But it makes very good furniture, housing, and clubs, the Zulu Knobkierre is no joke thanks to this.
Pretty rings. Cool stuffs. Now, back to playing with our wood... The problem with replacing plastic and softer steels with wood is that it is much less simple to create, requiring more cost to obtain similar utility, and doesn't adapt well to industrial scale. That mitigates against widespread utility.
There is the problem of plastic being dependent of oil, which will eventually end. Having research on how to make effective substitutes is a good way to prepare for the future
It has drawbacks for sure, but on the upside it's renewable. And I would guess that it's probably significantly cheaper to produce than steel too. Boiling it in chemicals for a couple of hours, pressure treating it, drying and soaking in oil seems much less involved than running a steel mill with blast furnace and all that.
@@gustavocamargo3817 oh, absolutely. Also, getting people used to the concept of paying more for their conveniences. But realistically, this isn't really a bulk solution, merely an adjunct - albeit an interesting one.
@@Skallagrim you have consider the costs involved in creating, shipping, storing, and disposing of the chemicals safely too. Likewise, the costs of the amount of hand-work, as I can't see this product readily adapted to large-scale automation. Lastly, there's the necessary lead times and resource consumption in the substrate - lumber. Hardwoods, especially, take time - a couple decades - to grow to useful sizes. All of which moves it away from mass production and increases costs.
Which is not to day that I don't find this a fascinating concept, with real uses. Transparent wooden window panes? Yes, please! Lighter, more resilient, and more shape-adaptable than glass, and with a higher R-value, too. Architects and builders both would LOVE some of that. Wooden storage-wear that doesn't rely upon fasters, but is air-tight? Might be a bit boutique, but it would (wood) certainly appeal to a lot of people. Other uses, as noted, abound. So - interesting, and worthy.
An unbelievable amount of info in such a short video & an awesome setting. Thank you. I was curious what the weight to strength ratio of the hardened wood to steel would be.
Not a lot to add, but there is a certain fictional fantasy book. In The Malazan Book of the Dead, the warrior karsa orlong uses a wooden sword that is treated with some special oil, and then later even a magically hardened flint greatsword. But he is not a human, more like a 3m tall barbarian from the steppes... It really would be feasible, but in the end some metal is better suited for the task of whacking things :)
Nilered has a very detailed video of making this hardened wood and seeing if it can be bullet proof! I haven't seen anyone else mention it in the comments yet, but I definitely recommend it.
I think this has a potential being great for construction. Before steel was cheap, this would have been great for building ships, especially warships, and forts.
@@ActionCow69 the ease of working the material matters too Metal is very convenient to work with, but can you say as much for hardened wood? I'm not sure
"Before steel was cheap, this would have been great for building ships, especially warships, and forts" Not really... There's a reason they compressed a tiny piece of bass wood. *Real* wood can take a *lot* of weight. Far more than a pre industial society can economically temporarily apply in order to compress a substantial piece of it. So you may be thinking "bull, I need proof". Well, you can find video here on youtube of some guys restoring a german ww2 Elefant. It weighs about 65 metric tons. To take its tracks and wheels and stuff off to work on it, they support it on wood blocks. The total square footage of the blocks used to support the thing, in contact with the hull, is less than 20 square feet. So what's a useful lumber dimension for building a ship and just how much force to you expect this pre-industrial society to be able to quickly apply and remove from a pieve of timber? Hell, honestly, I have doubts that we can make real use of this idea *today*. *Maybe* something like a 300 tonne steam roller or something operating in their sterile conditions could do the job but I doubt it. Their idea seems to rely of an even pressure and a steam roller just doesn't deliver that.
As a follow-up, you could look into artificially petrified wood. I did a bit of research into it for reference in petrified wood as a building material in a fantasy setting.
Artificially petrified? Petrifaction is the process of decay and moisture unevenly leeching the organic material from a buried piece of plant matter, in this case wood, and depositing minerals in the resulting empty spaces, creating a network of stone held together by lignin in the shape of the original plant. There's no such thing as artificially petrified wood. There's simulated petrified wood that is created by injecting dried wood with a silicate polymer. The main difference between petrified wood and the fake is that in the fake the silicate polymer replaces the water and air pockets in the wood, rather than the cellulose and hemicellulose. Which means that unlike petrified wood, silicated wood falls apart into sand as it ages because the organic parts in between the silicated pockets still eventually rot away. I find it important to point this out, because actual petrified wood is an interesting and often beautiful material and calling silicated wood 'artificially petrified wood' creates the impression that it's a similar situation as exists with natural vs. artificial diamonds (i.e. that literally the only difference is that the artificial ones are frequently *better* quality than then natural ones), when they're in fact very different materials with very different properties.
@@RvEijndhoven Thanks, that is actually pretty useful distinction. Though the idea of "manufactured" petrified wood in a Fantasy setting can still be done via magic.
There's been wooden nails for a long time now. Modern kind are used in houses with extreme case of green fetiche along side CLT panels and other whacky cutting edge tech. Mostly in Germany. You need a specialised nail gun to work with them, though, that costs like a small house themselves.
Safe lite has FRAS armor now, Imagine a soft iiia vest that bends put stops rifle rounds. Honesty I haven't understand why this haven't happened yet,but on Demo ranch someone made Steel dragons skin riveted scale armor,if we made riveted ballistic steel scale armor and covered both sides with Fras you could create a flexible suit of armor like Doom Guy.
@@PossumKommander With the steel riveted Dragon skin scale armor, Less heavy than a whole thick steel plate, but slightly heavier than ceramic,The FRAS on its own weighs Less than both,the only problem is you have to be a blacksmith and understand how to forge ballistic steel.
@@Thephantomofthreerivers Steel scale armor would intrinsically be heavier than solid steel plates of the same ballistic protection. The scales have to overlap, but have to be the same thickness as the plates would be. The only advantage is flexibility. Safe Life's FRAS is the same thing--overlapping scales--made of more expensive material, and seems to be pretty much a cheaper copy of Stealth Armor Systems' HEXAR armor which has been around since 2014. It's also not really much lighter than steel armor, which weighs nine to eleven pounds per square foot. If you wear SafeLife's IIIa vest with their FRAS (as they recommend), that's just under 9 lbs per square foot, but would cost over $2000 compared to less than $500 for top-of-the-line steel armor and carrier. Also, NIJ has done some videos on SafeLife's armor that shows they skimp in a few places that make them borderline unqualified for their reported NIJ rating. FRAS just means Flexible Rifle Armor System, it's not a special material, though several companies _use_ proprietary materials for their FRAS armor.
@@Thephantomofthreerivers "Honesty I haven't understand why this haven't happened yet,but on Demo ranch someone made Steel dragons skin riveted scale armor" The answer is *very* simple. Due to overlap geometries and the added weight of the rivets and such needed to do the dragon skin, a simple plate is going to be much lighter. Not to mention that a plate has the potential for optimizing the shape for deflection whereas dragon skin does not. The only reason that scale based armors where where historically viable is a simple quirk in manufacturing - It was *MUCH* easier to make a quality armor plate of a few square inches than it was to make a quality armor plate of a few square feet. With modern metallurgy and industrial technologies, this is simply not the case. In fact, it's the opposite. With a form and a hydraulic press a manufacturer today can crank out a plate in the desired shape and thickness by the boatload if they want to. Edit - oh, and it's important to recongize modern economy of scale factors too. The same factors that often make it cheaper to replace a machine than repair it apply to armor as well. It's cheaper to just manufacture a whole steel plat insert and carrier than it is to provide a replacement part and have a network of dedicated specialists that can actually properly replace a shattered/deformed scale.
I see a big problem with using this as a building material: One of the reason we use wood and steal as building materials is that they offer strength and yet they are flexible at the same time. Flexibility is essential because it prevents the material from breaking under stress. A good example of this is why we don't make swords out of stainless steal. Yes, they would be easy to maintain and stainless is very strong. But stainless is going to shatter under the stress of a duel. If you increase the hardness of wood, it will break and your building will collapse.
The best alternative would probably be to breed trees so that they would be able to soak up metals, allowing GMO trees to be planted in mining areas or other polluted places. Imagine being able to grow organic beams, and all you had to do was feed them waste materials. Fungi already does this with trees to some extent, so it would theoretically be a fairly straightforward path into the technology.
@@fredriks5090 Yeah, and imagine modifying people so that rocket boosters come out of their asses so that they can use the methane from their farts to fly to work... I'm a biochemist. I work with GMOs everyday. It doesn't work like that. Too much minerals within a cell will kill the cell.
As actual lumber you're better off with regular wood. As far as nails are concerned... maybe, I don't know how tough and flexible hardened wood nails are. I think the main advantage is upgrading softwood to something even better than hardwood, for applications where you'd otherwise use either exotic hardwoods or softer metals (brass, bronze, maybe cast iron), etc.
Don't confuse flexibility with strength. You're imagining a relationship between flexibility and strength because strength is stiffness times deformation. With stronger materials being able to take more deformation because deformation being one of 2 parts of the strength equation. It doesn't have to be that way. You can have a strong material with high stiffness but not able to take a lot of deformation. The reason to desire flexibility (the exact opposite of stiffness) is because we don't want things to be brittle. Brittle materials fail suddenly and can appear weaker when motion is involved but they're not actually weaker just because they're brittle. In fact, the strongest steels are the least flexible steels. As a civil engineer, we actually try to use weaker, less brittle steels for the amount of warning time they give before they fail.
Basically tempered Masonite is just heated compressed wood fibers and saturated with linseed oil. By the way, hardness is not the same as strength. Wood is stronger for its weight than steel.
So, without even watching I'm guessing that today's video will be about bog-wood. Edit: I was wrong. Huh, for a channel that often touches historical topics it sometimes surprises me how often Skall speaks about new technologies.
the journalism was obviously crap but the technology is cool. I like that they aren't adding polymer to the wood like other treatments, like the clear wood that's probably only 20% wood. you might as well just use epoxy at that point. maybe not for weapons but as an engineering material it has a lot of uses. I'd imagine the abrasion resistance is a lot better with treated compressed wood.
I’d rather say “you might as well use fibreglass”, since the wood fibres probably do contribute somewhat to the tensile strength. There’s no real benefit from using wood as the reinforcing fibres, however.
Man always come across your videos on RUclips. Been watching them since I was a child. It amazes me that there is this amount of sword related info to share you deserve a medal
This sounds very similar to the process used to make tempered hardboard.... boiled wood compressed and heated, then soaked in oil. tempered hardboard is very common, used in a lot of flat pack furniture, pegboard, packaging material, and available in just about any hardware store.
Well, I mean nature already did, at least in compression, good timber is equivalent to steel in compression for structural purposes, that’s why you can hammer in pilings with equipment…the problem with wood as large structural members, is no good way to attach them securely, for tall structures, and not uniform, each one is different from the last, etc. and you know, things like bugs eating it, dry rot of if gets wet and dries multiple times, and well fire, haha.
The idea of wooden armor reminds me of the time someone, mythbusters I think, tested the idea of scalemail made from paper, and got surprisingly good results
I remember that episode of Myth Busters and it was a pretty fun watch. I felt like there were a few other things they could have done with it but didn't but still interesting.
Well yeah aside from material damage is caused by force, minimizing it even with seemingly the weakest methods will have the strongest base effects the technique provides, better materials give a better outcome with diminishing returns. Does anyone knwo the exact episode though, kinda want to see it now.
I think what’s interesting too with the journalism and how these sorts of things is how hardness and strength are conflated - hardness only refers to how resistant to scratching a material is, while strength has to do with how much force a material can take in a unit of area, and toughness is the amount of deflection the material can handle without plastic deformation
Wonder how well different pieces of wood would stick to each other if pressed together after the chemical treatment... Presumably grinding them like paper would reduce strength by shortening the fibers, but maybe you could twist them into something like pattern-welded wood.
FWIW, when I was in Belize, CA early 80's, staying with some jungle natives (Garifuna's) they used a wood they called 'Iron wood' for axe handles, wedges, etc and it was VERY hard yet tough enough for tool handles like Hickory is in the states. It was almost too hard to shape with steel tools and they mostly seemed to use broken glass shards to shape it.
To highlight Skall's "sharpness" discussion. Every should intuitively know that even the least hard materials can be sharp. We get paper cuts for a reason
This just came across my feed and it was very exceptional. It got my imagination going on the applications of hardened wood and transparent wood. Liked and subbed. Well done
12:48 - well, that would be a little complicated... That so-called "transparent wood" is in reality only something which could be called "cellulose-reinforced resin block" and there are several problems with the sensitivity of said resins to UV light (getting a yellow tint). However, you still would have to choose, whether you want "transparent wood" (fill gaps with plastic) or "hardened wood" (compress the gaps).
"That so-called "transparent wood" is in reality only something which could be called "cellulose-reinforced resin block"" I think that you could more realistically call it resin with wood fiber filler. Naturally, there are easier and cheaper ways of doing that than bothering with trying to make transparent wood.
Wood can be as Strong as steel, under certain stresses. Hardness is basically surface compressive strength, so wood can't really be as Hard as steel. However, it can have as good Tensile, Torsion, and Flexure Strength as steel of the same volume, and less weight. If you think about it, they used to use wooden leaf springs in wagons even after steel leaf springs were invented, because wood is cheaper, and easier to carve. (Than refine, form, and temper into spring-steel) At identical dimensions, but being less dense, the bentwood leaf springs were also lighter than the tempered steel ones.
There are applications for every material out there. Thing is, wood already IS stronger than steel, it just depends on what metric you measure strength by. Hardness, on the other hand, is a completely different animal...and I just don't see any process being researched today that could make wood as hard as steel. And in reference to wood leaf springs, wood is still a superior spring in certain applications compared to steel, such as bow limbs.
At the end of the day, most of these cool composites are just slightly stronger than if you add wood fiber to the same type of resin you are infusing into the wood. I'll admit that it looks a lot pretty when you haven't reduced the wood to sawdust first, but it is more a novelty than anything useful at this stage, maybe if they can get the cost down to below what hardwood costs to source we'd see some interest, but I suspect they also run into issues with pieces of wood that are thick or long.
Maybe do something like old longbows/composite bows so that one layer absorbs force, another dissipates it around and if those two aren't enough a third "cracks, but deliberately"?
Lamination and composite have been around a long time. Armor in Japan made of paper, glue and lacquer. Other things added were horse hoof, ground or sliced, sinew and leather. Even simple glues like milk and vinegar get very hard.
It would be most effective as a technique for making building materials in areas that getting steel supports, or other metal products into, is cost prohibitive or simply too difficult.
Also: in Riftwar, (a really old fantasy series that I’ve read recently) the Tsurani Empire of the world Kelewan were using hardened wood as a sort of replacement to metal due to the near lack of metal in Kelewan, with metals being considered as a sign of wealth (especially gold)
Nile red made some, idk what the postage would be, but hes also in Canada so you could get him to do it and make more. Maybe he'd get more use out of the hydraulic press.
Imagine this wood armor with being thicker being able to stop a bullet, that would be cool. A wooden knight would be great! :) Imagine modern infantry using wooden armor and AKs :)
I'd be real curious about its use as a tonewood. There are already some interesting methods for converting more available woods into something resembling exotic hardwoods for instrument building, wonder if this would do anything like that
Agreed. Instruments, furniture, kitchen utensils, doors. The types of things that don't need to be strong, so much as durable and pleasing to see, touch, feel or hear. :)
@@MrBottlecapBill Having wood door framing made out of this along with your door would make break-ins significantly harder. The same might apply if your windows were transparent wood too.
@@BluntofHwicce Gosh, you remind me of Stradivarius violins! Part of the "secret" (if it exists - blind tests show most people can't tell a stradivarius from another violin just from the sounds - but I can well believe the player would feel the difference much better) is supposed to be due to the Little Ice Age in the 17th Century iirc. Due to the cold the trees grew less, so tree rings were closer together and the wood was harder. Artificially hardening wood by chemical treatment and compression ought to have the same kind of effect.
Ever since playing Minecraft all those years ago and as a kid building tree houses and later trying to enchant my wood as strong as it can get I've been thinking about this topic as a real life useage in the same style. Wood is epic and for me this is the most intriquing topic on the channel.
It depends on scale of production. A similar hardening process has become very popular with maple in the guitar world over the past couple of years, and as more manufacturers have started to offer "roasted" maple, cost has gone down pretty dramatically. It's now really only a modest upcharge compared to regular maple, depending on the manufacturer of course.
Seems to me that it would be a pretty wasteful process both in terms of water but also in wood seeing that you end up with much less of in terms of volume which would mean that far more tree would need to be cut to compensate for it.
Instead of grinding a sword out of a block of hardened wood, you could press the wood into a sword mold. This should leave the edges at the maximum hardness and the core softer for shock absorbing and reduced risk of failure. Making it from transparent wood would make an epic looking art piece.
Theres a YT of a guy trying to recreate this super wood. The most expensive part was getting a proper heated press. The press really limits what you can make
@@trequor Oak for example has a density of 0.7. Not sure what plastic you're talking about, because Nylon, 1.13, PET 1.3, ABS 1.05 PVC 1.45 etc are all denser. Oak tensile strength is typically given as 90 MPA, Nylon 78, PET 80, ABS 45, PVC 62 (rigid - flexible is less) Moreover to my point, 304 Stainless strength 505 MPA, density of 8 has a strength to wt ratio of 63. Oak, with a strength of 90 and a density of 0.7 has a strength to wt ratio of 115. AS I said, wood has an outstanding strength to wt ratio.
@@MrMakulit1959 That's not how that math works, comrade. You've got to manage your units better. Also oak is a piss poor example because of its expense and rarity in comparison. Nobody is going to build a house out of oak. Then there is the problem of ACTUAL density in regards to wood. Because wood absorbs shit-tons of water, whereas plastic and steel do not. Your 0.7 density is going to jump dramatically once the oak hits the outside air.
I agree with the geometry. With a more thick body than competing steel made to angle quite acutely by long measured length, the performance of this hardened wood will surely do impressively.
At the beginning when you did a close up and paused...right after you said "how hard can we make our wood", reminded me exactly of when my university Geography teacher began to explain "Lake Titicaca"...said it in front of the whole class..paused and waited for our reaction before moving on with the lesson.
So some things to think about, soft woods like basswood grow much quicker than hard woods, so having a process to harden soft woods is quite useful since you can use very soft woods for things you couldn't traditionally use them for. Second since you are softening the wood then compressing it, you have quite a bit of wiggle room with the shapes you can now make during compressing. Finally there are methods of building without nails, specifically look at japan, so while nails are convenient they aren't necessary.
This is very interesting for construction. Material science has a lot to contribute to affordable housing and accessible materials that can be renewed and always available.
if theyre worried about shattering or cracking when using a nail, drilled/screw fasteners are a clear simple solution, modern adhesived offer another, and then of course traditional woodworking techniques that dont use nails, bolts, screws, or adhesives at all.
For the potential historical uses, axles and wood bearings may be interesting. A hard wood for the bow drill would be quite interesting as well. A little farther out, the lack of defects may be useful for frames on gliders.
1:20 I bought a couple of rings from a seller/maker in Sweden with a similar collection to choose from with authentic dino fossil but his main set was tungsten with asteroid or planetary dirt/dust. we ended up with aquamarine opal with asteroid and black tungsten. got half price for about $60 a piece and all come with a complimentary lifetime warranty. best looking ring I've ever had and best price I've paid for a band.
check out nile reds compressed wood armor where he implements that research articles method and tests it. It barely stopped a 9mm with 3 layers but its a good reference at least for ultra strong wood as a concept. (oh and he used pine as the base wood)
One of my greatgrandfathers submerged entire treelogs in running water from rivers or creeks for several years flushing out all the nutrients and resins. After this it was dried for several after sawing it in planks and beams. It resulted in very hard wood that was resistant to pests and rot.
I see two main problems weapon-wise. 1. Weight. As someone pointed out below, an increase in density = increase in weight. It would be hard to meet or overcome the strength/weight ratio of steel. What is the advantage in a wooden supersword if it is heavy as hell for its size? 2. Wear and upkeep. This really comes down to "toughness." Steel is great in blades because it is both hard yet workable. What happens when a blade of this material dulls? Can you reshape the edge via stropping and honing as with steel? Can you easily sharpen (ie regrind) the edge once it's recieved significant wear? If not, the practical usability as a blade goes down significantly and you just have a wedge-edged club (which already exist) rather than an actual useful blade. And if it can't make a good blade, then it's basically just useful as a heavy, dense, shapable material and plenty of those already exist. I guess my question is, what material that we already have does this stuff meet or outperform? For practical market viabity, it needs to *outperform* something that already exists in order to be worth the effort. As far as environmental sustainability, it would still need to at least *meet* the performance of what it is intended to replace. Even the latter seems unlikely. Purhaps the real test is wether or not *new* applications can be found rather than competing for current applications against established materials. Expecting to see "superwood" versions of what we already have in other materials seems unlikely unless it *maybe* enters the market as an efficient and environmentally-responsible alternative to single-use polymers.
Saw NileRed try to make this hardened wood. His best attempt wasn't amazing, certainly not something to rival good steel. Though maybe his production technique wasn't entirely proper - he has chemistry knowhow and amazing lab equipment, but it appears the instructions he followed were incomplete in some way, he encountered many problems
The thing about compressing basswood versus compressing oak... is that you wouldn't be able to compress oak down 23 times, like you can basswood. If you had a 2x2×12 of both woods compressed to their maximum, I imagine they would be quite comparable, as you're just compressing the lignin... and their densities and grain structure would be quite similar. From what I understand, if you use alcohol to strip them of their sap and kiln dry them... it's either basswood or balsa which has a pound-for-pound strength markedly higher than oak. For this reason, in some circles, both are considered hardwoods, even though their natural soft nature would lead you to believe they are softwood. If I'm not mistaken, the same goes for Paulownia.
Alternative title: "Skall Discusses the Feasibility of Putting Hard Wood in a Cuirass." Seriously, though: fascinating stuff! Thanks for the signal boost!
You got me at “wood harder than steel”, but I doubled down at “forget wood so hard you can drive nails with it, you can have wood so hard it becomes the nail”. 😉
Sounds like Viagra;)
Already have them, they are called treenails. Basically a tapered wooden pin, used a fair bit in timber frame construction.
@@morrigankasa570 “sounds like viagra” omg 😭😭😭😂😂😂😂
In Soviet Russia, Wood nails you.
@@kleinjahr same question i ask aboot any person. Can they take a pounding?
So, what I'm hearing from all of this is that medium and heavy wood armours for druids are not unrealistic.
Yup that's what i am here for in fact i have created in game hardwood brigandine that with mending and occasional piece replacement functions similar to plate armors
People talk about heavy wooden armor for druids as if rocks don't exist
@@retrodarktrooper6372 good luck trying that shit, is like trying to do a diamond armor
When it comes to fantasy games theres really no reason to keep it strictly to realistic degree. Ive been working on a setting for my DnD campaign where the elves would grow trees in forms of armor pieces that are put together when its ready.
Remember, elves live a really long time so taking environmentalism to the extreme in this way sounds cool to me. Treating the armor with druidic magics while its slowly growing to fit the intended wearer and making it stronger over time.
The Chinese built armor that was better than metal
You got me at super wood.
I love hard wood
Pootis
You got me at Hard.
Perfect pfp
That's what they called me in high school
I'm a baseball bat maker and engineer, and have been looking at wood densification for baseball bats. One thing to note, the hardness goes up but also the density goes up. The strength to weight ratio is actually very close to that of real wood, so densified basswood made at ipe level density will have roughly ipe level strength. It isn't a magical performance increase and its main benefit is cost efficiency over performance increases. It's good for going beyond natural wood capabilities, but strength to weight ratio does not go beyond natural range.
It has major issues with moisture and movement in service. Epoxy impregnated wood is brittle and has reduced specific strength. So super hard wood is still a niche product, not for the industry yet. Otherwise, it'd be everywhere by now.
Now, the process that seems most promising to wood industries and is currently implemented is the process currently used with wood veneer, which is surface densification. Think of it as case-hardening, but for wood. You harden and compress the surface of the wood while the core remains natural and light. This has the effect of reducing wear and tear while not making it super heavy. It's like how you hammer bronze to work-harden it. They're all the same effect. Case hardening carburizes steel to make the surface harder. Hammer bronze to work harden the edge. Compress the wood surface to make it harder while density doesn't go up as much.
Ironically, this has been done unknowingly by baseball and cricket players for centuries, called boning the bat or knocking the bat for cricket, where you rub a bone, hammer with a mallet, or rub a hard metal bar to compress the wood and close the pores. It is effective and very well known and i believe this process might have been used for ancient weapon makers, although sources are hard to come by. I can imagine it so, since it's so easy. The effect of compressing the surface also makes fitting attachments easier since the wood will expand with moisture, filling the gaps. This is prevented with a good sealer and finish, but it isn't perfect. Shellac and tung oil is the historical finish of choice, but it can sometimes pop the grain, which ruins the densification
I rub a steel bar on all my bats and players can tell the difference
have you tried any boiling, drying, and vacume impregnation with epoxy?
@@RubSomefastOnIt not me personally but my buddy tells me it's too brittle. He tried vacuum and oven dried cherry and walnut and impregnated with epoxy, densified it to the high density bat level on a 271 turn model. Getting an evenly round surface is hard and the results were underwhelming. It hit just like a regular hard ball bat and then flaked off. The effect of the epoxy had the slight benefit of making large barrel turn models hit like higher density turn models, but at that point, might as well get a High Density bat.
Surprisingly enough, hardness in baseball is not as important as rebound. It's just that wood has poor rebound, so hardness is used as a substitute to prevent energy lost to deformation. A brittle process that is good against scratches will be bad for baseball
@@Tevatron044 I have to tell you I rather enjoyed your read here. I actually find this practical as someone who's constantly bushcrafting and looking for small ways to use time to better improve my tools around a camp site. The knowledge you just dropped wasn't things I'd normally consider and I'm grateful you took the time to post it.
I believe the extreme case hardness of Bamboo it what gives it extraordinary properties, The technology is nothing new, It was adopted in the industrial revolution to manufacture bobbin spools for the weaving industry . I think lime wood. I recall a wood turner talking about it in a demo.
@@HavanaWoody lignostone is probably the oldest variant I've seen in the industry. It's laminated beech (a good strong wood in of itself) compressed into thin veneers and then bonded with epoxy resin. It's actually very famous and used everywhere for insulating transformers. Resin impregnated wood was used in WW2 for airplane components when they ran out of metal. So yeah you're right, this is nothing new. The new component is compressing the wood to remove the space between cell walls and removing the lignin. That is new, but like i said, it ain't special
One thing a lot of people seem to forget is that people nailed things together with wood all the time back in the day. They just started with a drill. The whole process is called "pegging," and it was the preferred method of attaching things on ships, even when nails were available.
The main benefit I can see to this research into hardened wood is the ability to keep making modern materials after we exhaust readily available supplies of limited resources, like oil, which is necessary for plastics. I don't see it replacing steel anytime soon, but sooner or later we will have to replace our reliance on various plastics with something else, and this could be part of the answer.
On a wood chemistry course I took recently, we ended up discussing this article, focusing on the innovative aspect of the research and validity of its results (not to diss on the authors).
I was a little bugged out by the applications they chose for the material. The knife test seemed devised to grant their hardened wood the best results. There is also the video of someone trying to cut a steak with the wooden knife that doesn't look very practical. And then there's the nail that does not seem that useful.
Besides that, as my professor pointed out, the chemical bath they used to extract lignin and hemicellulose is nothing new. It is the same one used in Kraft pulping (sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfite). Even compressing the wood isn’t exactly new, they just used a powerful hot press. Putting that aside, the research is very solid, and we just wished they applied the hardened wood in more useful and less "clickbaity" stuff.
Anyways, great video and very good insights!
Did you end up discussing what these more practical applications would actually be?
I'm not as educated as you but I also suspect issues with chosen materials and applications. This being applied to something like bamboo/rattan to get the grain all in line seems like a good idea when you don't need a lot of thickness.
Likewise, the shapes for their chosen objects leave a fair bit to be desired. For example the common round nail shape is more about ease and cosr of production via wire extrusion than the most ideal shape. The material here lends itself to being pressed into molds of the older flat-style which are still bought by woodworkers due to superior mechanical properties.
Likewise, a straight edge blade may be fine for steel, but there are plenty of serrated designs this would take to better than plastic and which would work with the material properties to make a knife that's plenty effective. Further, they could also allow for more difficult to produce edge geometries like convex and concave (with or without serrations) to be easily be produced by molding.
Trying to stick to shapes and manufacturing methods designed for other materials isn't going to yield the best results.
... structural members for composite aircraft and boats, from softwoods that are much more common than the hardwoods that are currently considered the minimum acceptable materials? Also, if you can mold while pressing, you can cut down massively on processing and waste.
paper straws are also far less useful yet very popular
@@miketheskepticalone6285 The problem with that is that this wood is in a bad middle ground. It's much more work to make than just farming hardwood, but not much less difficult (in theory) to make than fiberglass, aluminum, or steel. (Practically, we of course have all the industry for metals and synthetics already, making them easier.)
And that's assuming the chemical waste isn't a problem, which it would be. It uses similiar chemicals to paper making, which is pretty nasty stuff.
Basically, to be practical, it would require a world in which demand for wood outstrips the ability to grow it, but metals and synthetics are for some reason a problem. Oh, and also a situation where bamboo won't work, for whatever reason. That stuff grows FAST.
A good thing to remember is hardness isn't everything. When it comes to "strength" of a material you also have to think about directions of stress. ie shear, compression, and tension. I'm curious how this material is against stress.
If, when and how it shears would be interesting...
If you plabe the edges how well does it hold a blade? Etc
I vaguely remember a comment or story that was attributed to the Spanish conquistadors speaking one of the weapons the tribes was a paddle shaped implement made of Brazil wood. They claimed it could decapitate a horse with a single swing ... thats extremely impressive!
Just wanted to say this. I have a hunch it will not hold up well as a polearm or staff. Plus the only reason you can harden the really soft wood so much is because it has a low density and then you compress it more. With already hard wood, you wouldn't be able to compress it that much, and it stands to reason that you won't be able to get wood as hard as bronze, because it's still made of , well, wood. And lastly, the transparent "wood" more of a "just for the sake of it" kinda thing. A youtuber (NileRed) did this, and it involves burning away some components of the wood, and then replacing them with epoxy to the point where you slab is more than 50% epoxy. So it really has no applications (other than decorative) and it's very hard to pull off.
Yeah, super hard materials are often brittle as balls. It's not very difficult to smash a diamond or break a cast iron pan.
@@mrkiky Absolutely true on density vs. material. Lignin and cellulose have their limits as a basic material and no density will overcome them.
As to making transparent wood, it's the same issue. You're not really making the wood transparent so much as replacing lignin with other materials. From a fantasy perspective, anything is possible, but hard sci-fi and you're no longer really using wood.
Also a factor that is very important in engineering is the specific strength, so the stress a material can withstand in comparison to its mass
Some woods can have better specific strengths already than steel or aluminium (In specific directions)
Would be interesting how this stuff measures up
I love the way you respect the ressearch and its intended uses while pointing out its shortcomings. That's exactly what a scientific process is. Congrats Skall. Big fan here!
Thank you.
It also reminds me of the fact that we shouldn't overstate and exaggerate things beyond what is reasonable. Had these articles not claimed "it's stronger than steel", Skallagrim wouldn't have had to point out in this way that it is not in fact as strong as steel. Without that exaggeration, we could have, from an unbiased viewpoint, been impressed by how that wood is almost as strong as bronze, or perhaps even stronger. You can so easily ruin that sense of awe when you put things into perspective where it's not really reasonable to do so
@@Skallagrim
One small request about 4:04, though: please don't call people who write such wannabe tech-journalism drivel "journalists", but rather address them as what they actually are: bloody hacks and muckrakers who only give _actual_ journalism a bad reputation.
(Full disclosure: I admit that I might be a bit sensitive about that because my mum is a retired journalist who used to write for various reputable German and Austrian newspapers for 25 years.)
@@Skallagrim here in the USA we have a tree called a HONEY LOCUST TREE that was commonly used in the place of nails to make pegs / pins to hold together buildings and furniture & boats . These trees have thorns that grow up to 4-inches long that make very good wooden nails do to their hardness . Do these trees grow in your country or have you ever heard of them ?
I agree; his analysis of the paper sounds a lot like what I have seen or would expect during the peer review process. (actually, he is much more respectful than a lot of peer reviewers can be...)
When you mentioned *ebony* as an option I felt I had to mention that ebony is currently illegal to harvest in most of it's native countries, and illegal to import into many western countries without certain certificates. Ebony trees are currently endangered due to the wood's popularity for carvings (from souvenir trinkets to piano keys to chess pieces) contrasted to how much ebony you get per harvest and how long it takes the tree to grow.
The black wood that you know as "ebony" is actually just the _core_ (the "heartwood") of the tree, a tree that is is 6 inches in diameter only contains a core of about 4-5 inches in diameter (roughly 60-80%, depending on the species of ebony and the individual tree itself). Additionally, ebony trees grow _remarkably_ slowly and reach "maturity" at 60-200 years old (for comparison; it takes a Canadian maple tree 10-30 years).
Can persimmon heartwood work? They are the same genus
That kind of makes me wonder if you could use this method to make farmed pine have similar properties to ebony as an ebony replacement? Musical instruments tend to benefit in interesting ways from material densities, and ebony used to be used quite a bit before (and after) it became endangered.
all old diospyros make black heartwood but yeah only after ages and ages
1:12 as a blacksmith my heart warmed when u said patern welded rather than Damascus.
Imagine fighting someone with a transparent quarterstaff. It would be kinda tricky to keep the weapon in your sight. Also, a hardened wood quarterstaff would be brutal.
Transparent weapons seem practical until you consider actually using them. Once they get blood or even just dirt on them, then they're just back to being the same as visible weapons. Though, this might be an interesting concept for Bows and Arrows, if you can make the wood both transparent and flexible...
@@MyrmidonRadd they don't have to be invisible to throw off the opponent though
@@MyrmidonRadd They're transparent, not invisible. You would still see the weapon, but during the fast chaos of combat it's easier to lose track of. A tiny bit of blood or dirt won't change that, you'd have to soak the whole thing in sticky mud for it to actually matter
speaking from experience, you really don't need to see your weapon, any more than you need to see your arms or legs to know were they are. in a fight your eyes are on your opponent and their weapon, not yours.
Break up the outline. Transparent tip could give a nasty shock, or a transparent shield rim.
the reason it goes so hard is to do with density of the fiber so the harder the wood is the harder it is to get even harder since they're already extremely dense. i think the reason they went for basswood is rather simple they used it because it has the most void spaces than any other wood hence producing the best results possible
Also it's probably easier to "wash out" during the preparation stage…
Yes
@@FalkonNightsdale Yes it may be more difficult to harden hardwood to the same level
chemically washing wood till it becomes a sponge and then impregnating it with a harder substance (fibreglass resin) and allowing it to harden under pressure/vacuum has been done for a long time.
it gets incredible results...
but its almost exclusively used for furniture guitar parts fret boards and decorative purposes
as going full composite usually bears better and stronger results/uniformity etc
Perhaps using thin veneers of hardwood in the chemical treatment process would allow for a better penetration of the hardwoods. The treated veneers could then be laminated in the pressing process. Playing around with layer orientation and choice of laminate adhesives could add some strength maybe.
Having read the article, the fact that they don't give a stress-strain plot of hardened wood compared to steel (or aluminium) indicates to me that it probably can match soft metals in hardness, but it's probably more brittle with less total capacity for strain energy.
Intuitively this makes sense, hardening materials often comes at the expense of reduced elasticity.
I wonder if you could use the pressing part of the process with different species of wood. Think of having a "mild" wood and a "hard" wood being laminated as you would weld mild and hard steel in a San Mai knife construction.
@@zach4505 The issue, i think, is that you'd still have a sandwich of different flattened pieces of wood on top of each other. One of the advantages of metals compared with alternatives like composites or ceramics is that you can fuse any two (or more) metal components via welding, whereas one a composite or ceramic is cured or fired, that's what you've got. You need to use fasteners or adhesives to connect pieces.
Here, you might be able to arrange some kind of interlocking wood surfaces that prevent sliding once they're pressed together, and use an adhesive to keep it from separating. But at that point it becomes a question of that this offers that a composite (i.e. the carbon fiber/resin used to substitute for aluminum in larger parts of the Boeing 787). If it's only renewability, bioplastics might be a better option. And it's not like metals are non-recyclable.
@@zach4505 "I wonder if you could use the pressing part of the process with different species of wood."
Not really. There is a reason they used a tiny piece of bass wood. *Real* wood can take a *lot* of weight. A piece of real hardwood in a useful dimension would probably take far more force to compress than we could economically deliver. I seriously doubt the biggest presses in existence today could do it. When you start looking at a dedicated facility to do the job and you factor in economy of scale, I would say *maybe* but I would be surprised.
Like a brick you get a material that has extremely high compressive strength but without the fibers you won’t have a good tensile or shear strength. Different hardwoods also have varsity different grain structure resulting in pros and cons for different applications.
also, wood isn’t renewable, it literally takes decades for a tree to grow.
seriously go to one of those old mining camps and towns where they cleared basically the entire forest. an it’s been decades since and the new forest is no where near as big as it once was.
wood is NOT renewable.
an as for replacing plastic, we already have more eco friendly replacement for plastic...COMPOSTABLE plastic....plastic you can actually use in fertilizer and it breaks down much easier and safer. (also plastics have various qualities other than their durability and flexibility that makes them hard to actually replace)
as for replacing steel... maybe in smaller applications freeing up more metal but highly unlikely it’s gonna replace steel on the whole.
While straight up replacing nails may be out of the question, wood peg construction would become much stronger.
Look up the company lignoloc they created the wooden nail, not only it's stronger but the nail contracts and expands at the same rate as the timber so no creaking
There used to be a product called "gamma wood", which was ordinary wood soaked in resin. The resin was hardened by exposing it to radiation, presumably gamma rays. It was much stronger, harder, but also heavier than normal wood.
I've been following this tech for years. It has HUGE applications in the construction sphere, beyond just flooring and wood nails, which would be great in cabinetry applications.
Based on the paper it wouldn't surprise me at all if basically all other properties are negatively effected by this process. You are completely destroying the structure of the wood and just making it denser, not necessarily stronger in any way apart from hardness.
Nails (as used in modern construction) need to be soft
@@miles11we Densified carbon composite strands. That's basically what you're left with. The only reason we like softer nails is that the steel loses sheer strength as we make it harder. For a wood nail, composed of a different material, this may not be the case.
I don't remember the specifics but it might of been Norway that has wooden sky scrapers, they used treated wood for the support and there are videos on the process with benefits and drawbacks.
@@palarious but it likely is the case. Look at something like gaboon ebony vs something like oak. The ebony is sooo much more dense and hard but its incredibly fragile in comparison. So take that and remove all the stuff that keeps the fibers connected to eachother, thats basically what you get.
Not saying it won't have applications but let's be honest, they totally tested other properties but chose to not include that data.
@@miles11we my guess is that you're not going to see any improvements on compressive strength or tensile. But I don't think you're going to see losses, either. Eliminating the hollow spaces in the wood isn't the same as taking a metal and changing the chemistry. You're collapsing and compressing a complex structure along one dimension.
Add to that a plywood layering approach and you probably WILL see significant improvements in material performance. After all, wood is already stronger than steel on a weight for weight basis. Compressing it, even with losses, still creates a competitive product with far less space usage and the ability to mold into complex shapes for far less cost than equivalent steel custom solutions.
Every transparent wood I've looked into is impregnated with resin to gain both it's transparency and strength, so it's really more wood-fiber-reinforced transparent plastic.
Like virtually all other "sustainable" technologies, this one still depends on good old oil.
@@trequor That's kinda because human civilization depends on oil. Still doesn't mean people shouldn't try and innovate.
@@joshuakarmann7488 Of course. But it helps to be realistic and to not oversell these "alternative" products. The way that the media portrays oil as being obsolete is very irresponsible. The whole world runs on it and it's a vital asset that should be protected.
@@trequor agreed. Renewable and sustainable tech should be developed sure. But thinking that means dropping oil 100% is just stupid. The vast majority of things we manufacture have at least some ties to oil.
@@trequor Oh I agree it is a trend to over exaggerate how good some 'alternative' products are. And don't worry I don't think oil is going away anytime soon. We humans are shackled to it.
Great video! As a Bladesmith and a Bowyer, I can say definitively that hardness has nothing to do with how strong a piece of wood or steel is. The exact type of wood and steel, the exact way you are using it and the way it's treated is far more important than the surface hardness. There are just too many trade offs in the real world to make absolute statements or cherry picked comparisons. Like silica glass is generally harder than carbon steel and purple heart is generally harder than mild steel but all of these things break a lot easier that a car tire. It's a valid and fascinating field of study but I feel like they were asking all the wrong questions and presenting all the wrong points.
As a fellow bowyer/bladesmith I completely agree.
This is true. See my post above explaining that since hardness, unlike tensile strength or Young's modulus, hardness is not a fundamental property of materials; making it impossible to compare/convert hardness between dissimilar materials.
The first question I have when we start talking about utility with hardness is what's the shear strength. There's a huge difference between armor that would deform, armor that would shatter, and armor that would budge at all. All of which also apply to modern day practical uses too
I would rather have armor that deforms but holds it strength
The transparent wood for windows is really interesting. I'd like to know how they stack up to the various types of glass pane windows.
From watching other videos about it, I think it's just a gimmick, sadly. Basically the end result is just a plexiglass window with some bleached/leeched wood fibers in it. You get a clearer window by just using plexiglass by itself, so the only real use ends up being an aesthetic one. Admittedly, it does look neat.
Or various strong plastic or polymer windows.
One big problem I have seen with it is the wood needs to be incredibly thin for much light to go through it.
@@CatacombD good enough for a skylight. You only need brightness not to see the sky.
@@pedromoura1446The problem remains that the only real use is aesthetic. Sure, if you want to use it, you, of course, could. That doesnt change the fact that it's essentially just an overpriced plexiglass window.
You could use them for a skylight, but what practical purpose do they serve that a tinted plexiglass window couldn't do better and cheaper? None, because the only value these transparent wood windows bring is aesthetic.
I wonder what the resonance qualities of these hardened softwoods are, and if they might be able to replace exotic hardwoods in musical instrument construction that are endangered. The fact they added oil for water resistance does make me think the hardened wood might be particularly susceptible to water though
I wonder what sound youd get with a hardened softwood guitar.
Cellulose is kind of hygroscopic. I bet if you left this hardened compressed wood out in ambient air, over time (weeks/months) it'll draw in water and swell. This would reverse the compression effects.
Interesting concept, something there that needs researching. Maybe that way we can leave the harder wood trees and build beautiful instruments from a softer fast growing wood.
@@defenestrated23 that's where oils and finishes would come into play. But outside of that maintenance, I completely agree.
@@defenestrated23 Not sure how much water it would really be able to draw in with the natural ductways collapsed. I remember reading a study done with linseed oil and tung oil, showing how the polymerization basically just massively shrunk (but did not completely seal off) those ductways, and that seems to be good enough to make wood highly water resistant. I imagine the compression would have a similar effect of blocking moisture from penetrating past the outer portions, and their polymerizing oil treatments would obviously reduce that even more. Unless it just gets soggy and disintegrates or something, then you really need to seal it up well
Yo imagine fantasy elf armor made of refined hardwood. Fantasy dwarven armor thickness, but on tall elegant figures with a more fitting elvan theme.
For example ironbark from the Dragon Age universe... minus the "tall" part because Dragon Age elves are pretty short.
Could be done quite efficient, laminate silk/linen/thin layers of hard wood with a good glue and you'll get something comparable to plywood and trespa, put a good laquer or paint coat and you're there. Even shaping it over a mould would give you a good start on shapes.
In NetHack, elven weapons are made of wood. **NOW** I understand how they do it.
This was a great science video.
When I was a kid my dad had an iron wood letter opener that was sharp enough to cut skin and draw blood. A wooden sword made from the right material and indexed correctly would still be lethal, imo.
Why would you need a sword when you could have spear
iron wood is crazy good stuff. shame its so endangered now. borneans are recycling old houses for the stuff 😂
I've made a wood core resin sword before. It worked pretty well. I recommend looking into it. Kept it's edge more than I thought it wood.
That typo at the end is intentional, innit?
haha, You wood think that
Skallagrim there are actually some chemistry youtubers I know of that might be interested in collabing with you in order to make such a weapon! I would speak with NileRed (Canadian!) or CodysLab both of whom have done all sorts of weird chemistry experiments. NileRed actually already attempted to make some of that transparent wood, so the hardened wood sounds like it'd be right up his alley!
Once you HAVE the hardened wood though, there are all sorts of blade smiths, metalworkers, and other kinds of arms and armour makers in the community who would love to work with this kind of material! So I think this is definitely something we can make happen!
oh wow, I heard about reinforced wood, but never thought Skall would actually test it.
Fun fact, I also heard about it from that same article.
Забавно видеть подобный ник у человека, который читает научные статьи на иностранном языке
Hempwood is an interesting composite. looks similar to oak, but is stronger- they're using it currently as a sustainable alternative for oak furniture and flooring.
Man you hemp guys say everything is better with hemp . Also what's more sustainable than wood it grows back?
@@willofdodge1 hemp grows faster... (Not a hemp guy, just know it's faster to grow)
@@willofdodge1 and people like you who have no idea are exactly why we bring it up so you can learn something and stop doing things the dumb way👍🤘
@@willofdodge1 basically every plant is more sustainable than wood, trees take like 30 years to grow enough to harvest so it really isnt actually sustainable since you will always need to be cutting down old growth trees, hemp on the other hand as well as all other domesticated crops grow very fast by comparison
It is more expensive, it does not withstand humid environment...
I'm remembering a quote from Discworld. I think it was in Last Continent (which is set in a pastichè of Australia). To paraphrase: "You might laugh at the idea of wooden weapons, until you see the wood that grows here".
Take any porous wood like pine for example, and paint or soak in liquid super glue.Wait until dry, finish unpainted holding area, let dry. Paint multiple layers make stronger, will be harder than some metals. Great for making wooden swords, or even wooden gears, or spockets, and etc.
its amazing how advanced all these medieval history channels like metatron and shad and skall have become going from nerds messing about to actual intellectual conversations using studies and explaining the science behind it all
Even if this makes for a more economical and timely replacement for slower growing and rarer hard wood, that would be amazing! Like, if you could grow a field of pine or basswood in a year and convert it into a harder wood for furniture or whatever else you would usually use hardwood for, instead of using pine or maple that take years and years to grow, that's amazing.
For pine try 30 years with thinning cuts for pulp wood every 7 to 10 years.
Bamboo
Replace hardwood with bamboo
Some of those hardwoods tend to fracture easily, I wonder how this stuff holds up that way. Note: if you want to make staves or practice swords for sparring/impact practice, make sure to research which hardwoods are good for that, and watch out for grain structure (you want that as parallel to the length of your staff/wooden sword as reasonable possible).
I gotta say Skall, sometimes i dont watch your videos for a while but then i get the urge to binge all of the ones I've missed and it's like catching up with a friend you're always pleased to see. Gotta love those parasocial relationships.
It makes me happy to see Skala nerding out about materials science. I love composite materials and natural materials and this is a great combination of both
I wonder how hardened wood, compares to naturally hard wood.
Take Accadia as an example, its flame resistant, shock resistant, and is in fact so dense you can't make paper or rubber from it. But it makes very good furniture, housing, and clubs, the Zulu Knobkierre is no joke thanks to this.
Pretty rings. Cool stuffs.
Now, back to playing with our wood... The problem with replacing plastic and softer steels with wood is that it is much less simple to create, requiring more cost to obtain similar utility, and doesn't adapt well to industrial scale. That mitigates against widespread utility.
There is the problem of plastic being dependent of oil, which will eventually end. Having research on how to make effective substitutes is a good way to prepare for the future
It has drawbacks for sure, but on the upside it's renewable. And I would guess that it's probably significantly cheaper to produce than steel too. Boiling it in chemicals for a couple of hours, pressure treating it, drying and soaking in oil seems much less involved than running a steel mill with blast furnace and all that.
@@gustavocamargo3817 oh, absolutely.
Also, getting people used to the concept of paying more for their conveniences. But realistically, this isn't really a bulk solution, merely an adjunct - albeit an interesting one.
@@Skallagrim you have consider the costs involved in creating, shipping, storing, and disposing of the chemicals safely too. Likewise, the costs of the amount of hand-work, as I can't see this product readily adapted to large-scale automation. Lastly, there's the necessary lead times and resource consumption in the substrate - lumber. Hardwoods, especially, take time - a couple decades - to grow to useful sizes.
All of which moves it away from mass production and increases costs.
Which is not to day that I don't find this a fascinating concept, with real uses. Transparent wooden window panes? Yes, please! Lighter, more resilient, and more shape-adaptable than glass, and with a higher R-value, too. Architects and builders both would LOVE some of that.
Wooden storage-wear that doesn't rely upon fasters, but is air-tight? Might be a bit boutique, but it would (wood) certainly appeal to a lot of people.
Other uses, as noted, abound. So - interesting, and worthy.
An unbelievable amount of info in such a short video & an awesome setting. Thank you. I was curious what the weight to strength ratio of the hardened wood to steel would be.
Not a lot to add, but there is a certain fictional fantasy book.
In The Malazan Book of the Dead, the warrior karsa orlong uses a wooden sword that is treated with some special oil, and then later even a magically hardened flint greatsword.
But he is not a human, more like a 3m tall barbarian from the steppes...
It really would be feasible, but in the end some metal is better suited for the task of whacking things :)
Nilered has a very detailed video of making this hardened wood and seeing if it can be bullet proof! I haven't seen anyone else mention it in the comments yet, but I definitely recommend it.
I think this has a potential being great for construction. Before steel was cheap, this would have been great for building ships, especially warships, and forts.
Depends on how strong it is vs the density. And how easy it is to shape.
@@ActionCow69 the ease of working the material matters too
Metal is very convenient to work with, but can you say as much for hardened wood? I'm not sure
"Before steel was cheap, this would have been great for building ships, especially warships, and forts"
Not really...
There's a reason they compressed a tiny piece of bass wood. *Real* wood can take a *lot* of weight. Far more than a pre industial society can economically temporarily apply in order to compress a substantial piece of it.
So you may be thinking "bull, I need proof". Well, you can find video here on youtube of some guys restoring a german ww2 Elefant. It weighs about 65 metric tons. To take its tracks and wheels and stuff off to work on it, they support it on wood blocks. The total square footage of the blocks used to support the thing, in contact with the hull, is less than 20 square feet.
So what's a useful lumber dimension for building a ship and just how much force to you expect this pre-industrial society to be able to quickly apply and remove from a pieve of timber?
Hell, honestly, I have doubts that we can make real use of this idea *today*.
*Maybe* something like a 300 tonne steam roller or something operating in their sterile conditions could do the job but I doubt it. Their idea seems to rely of an even pressure and a steam roller just doesn't deliver that.
As a follow-up, you could look into artificially petrified wood. I did a bit of research into it for reference in petrified wood as a building material in a fantasy setting.
Are there any trustworthy sources you could recommend on that? Asking for a friend
This sounds pretty cool.
That is actually a really cool idea. Nowhere near steel, but potentially useful if you could do it in a timely manner...
Artificially petrified? Petrifaction is the process of decay and moisture unevenly leeching the organic material from a buried piece of plant matter, in this case wood, and depositing minerals in the resulting empty spaces, creating a network of stone held together by lignin in the shape of the original plant.
There's no such thing as artificially petrified wood. There's simulated petrified wood that is created by injecting dried wood with a silicate polymer. The main difference between petrified wood and the fake is that in the fake the silicate polymer replaces the water and air pockets in the wood, rather than the cellulose and hemicellulose. Which means that unlike petrified wood, silicated wood falls apart into sand as it ages because the organic parts in between the silicated pockets still eventually rot away.
I find it important to point this out, because actual petrified wood is an interesting and often beautiful material and calling silicated wood 'artificially petrified wood' creates the impression that it's a similar situation as exists with natural vs. artificial diamonds (i.e. that literally the only difference is that the artificial ones are frequently *better* quality than then natural ones), when they're in fact very different materials with very different properties.
@@RvEijndhoven Thanks, that is actually pretty useful distinction. Though the idea of "manufactured" petrified wood in a Fantasy setting can still be done via magic.
5:39 And wooden armor doesn't interfere with spellcasting.
Not susceptible to lightning magic either. :)
Weak to fire though.
@@Skallagrim a fair trade, considering lightning can be quite unpleasant and devastating.
I think that you have a mosquito but a super version of the mosquito I have a turbine gas turbine engines
May the force be with you, old friend.
There's been wooden nails for a long time now. Modern kind are used in houses with extreme case of green fetiche along side CLT panels and other whacky cutting edge tech. Mostly in Germany. You need a specialised nail gun to work with them, though, that costs like a small house themselves.
You're making Matt Easton jealous with those "hard wood" puns
I was thinking about modern bullet armor. Steel plates are heavy, ceramic is fragile, and polymer armor is not really useful against rifle rounds.
Safe lite has FRAS armor now, Imagine a soft iiia vest that bends put stops rifle rounds. Honesty I haven't understand why this haven't happened yet,but on Demo ranch someone made Steel dragons skin riveted scale armor,if we made riveted ballistic steel scale armor and covered both sides with Fras you could create a flexible suit of armor like Doom Guy.
@@Thephantomofthreerivers Cool but how heavy is it? My plate carrier weighs close to 40 pounds once the plates and magazines are in place
@@PossumKommander With the steel riveted Dragon skin scale armor, Less heavy than a whole thick steel plate, but slightly heavier than ceramic,The FRAS on its own weighs Less than both,the only problem is you have to be a blacksmith and understand how to forge ballistic steel.
@@Thephantomofthreerivers Steel scale armor would intrinsically be heavier than solid steel plates of the same ballistic protection. The scales have to overlap, but have to be the same thickness as the plates would be. The only advantage is flexibility.
Safe Life's FRAS is the same thing--overlapping scales--made of more expensive material, and seems to be pretty much a cheaper copy of Stealth Armor Systems' HEXAR armor which has been around since 2014.
It's also not really much lighter than steel armor, which weighs nine to eleven pounds per square foot. If you wear SafeLife's IIIa vest with their FRAS (as they recommend), that's just under 9 lbs per square foot, but would cost over $2000 compared to less than $500 for top-of-the-line steel armor and carrier. Also, NIJ has done some videos on SafeLife's armor that shows they skimp in a few places that make them borderline unqualified for their reported NIJ rating.
FRAS just means Flexible Rifle Armor System, it's not a special material, though several companies _use_ proprietary materials for their FRAS armor.
@@Thephantomofthreerivers "Honesty I haven't understand why this haven't happened yet,but on Demo ranch someone made Steel dragons skin riveted scale armor"
The answer is *very* simple.
Due to overlap geometries and the added weight of the rivets and such needed to do the dragon skin, a simple plate is going to be much lighter. Not to mention that a plate has the potential for optimizing the shape for deflection whereas dragon skin does not.
The only reason that scale based armors where where historically viable is a simple quirk in manufacturing - It was *MUCH* easier to make a quality armor plate of a few square inches than it was to make a quality armor plate of a few square feet. With modern metallurgy and industrial technologies, this is simply not the case. In fact, it's the opposite. With a form and a hydraulic press a manufacturer today can crank out a plate in the desired shape and thickness by the boatload if they want to.
Edit - oh, and it's important to recongize modern economy of scale factors too. The same factors that often make it cheaper to replace a machine than repair it apply to armor as well. It's cheaper to just manufacture a whole steel plat insert and carrier than it is to provide a replacement part and have a network of dedicated specialists that can actually properly replace a shattered/deformed scale.
I see a big problem with using this as a building material:
One of the reason we use wood and steal as building materials is that they offer strength and yet they are flexible at the same time. Flexibility is essential because it prevents the material from breaking under stress.
A good example of this is why we don't make swords out of stainless steal. Yes, they would be easy to maintain and stainless is very strong. But stainless is going to shatter under the stress of a duel.
If you increase the hardness of wood, it will break and your building will collapse.
The best alternative would probably be to breed trees so that they would be able to soak up metals, allowing GMO trees to be planted in mining areas or other polluted places.
Imagine being able to grow organic beams, and all you had to do was feed them waste materials.
Fungi already does this with trees to some extent, so it would theoretically be a fairly straightforward path into the technology.
@@fredriks5090 Yeah, and imagine modifying people so that rocket boosters come out of their asses so that they can use the methane from their farts to fly to work...
I'm a biochemist. I work with GMOs everyday. It doesn't work like that. Too much minerals within a cell will kill the cell.
As actual lumber you're better off with regular wood. As far as nails are concerned... maybe, I don't know how tough and flexible hardened wood nails are.
I think the main advantage is upgrading softwood to something even better than hardwood, for applications where you'd otherwise use either exotic hardwoods or softer metals (brass, bronze, maybe cast iron), etc.
Don't confuse flexibility with strength. You're imagining a relationship between flexibility and strength because strength is stiffness times deformation. With stronger materials being able to take more deformation because deformation being one of 2 parts of the strength equation. It doesn't have to be that way. You can have a strong material with high stiffness but not able to take a lot of deformation. The reason to desire flexibility (the exact opposite of stiffness) is because we don't want things to be brittle. Brittle materials fail suddenly and can appear weaker when motion is involved but they're not actually weaker just because they're brittle. In fact, the strongest steels are the least flexible steels. As a civil engineer, we actually try to use weaker, less brittle steels for the amount of warning time they give before they fail.
@@francisluglio6611 ruclips.net/video/tHMPR7flpf4/видео.html
Basically tempered Masonite is just heated compressed wood fibers and saturated with linseed oil.
By the way, hardness is not the same as strength. Wood is stronger for its weight than steel.
NileRed stole your whole flow bro😮
As a filthy treehugger, I'm sorta interested in videos like this! Great material for fantasy worldbuilding.
So very helpful, thank you, keep it up.
So, without even watching I'm guessing that today's video will be about bog-wood.
Edit: I was wrong. Huh, for a channel that often touches historical topics it sometimes surprises me how often Skall speaks about new technologies.
I'm full of surprises, eh? :)
@@Skallagrim Yup, and keep them coming!
the journalism was obviously crap but the technology is cool. I like that they aren't adding polymer to the wood like other treatments, like the clear wood that's probably only 20% wood. you might as well just use epoxy at that point. maybe not for weapons but as an engineering material it has a lot of uses. I'd imagine the abrasion resistance is a lot better with treated compressed wood.
I’d rather say “you might as well use fibreglass”, since the wood fibres probably do contribute somewhat to the tensile strength. There’s no real benefit from using wood as the reinforcing fibres, however.
I remember Nilered did an attempt at creating one of these. It's quite interesting.
Man always come across your videos on RUclips. Been watching them since I was a child. It amazes me that there is this amount of sword related info to share you deserve a medal
This sounds very similar to the process used to make tempered hardboard.... boiled wood compressed and heated, then soaked in oil.
tempered hardboard is very common, used in a lot of flat pack furniture, pegboard, packaging material, and available in just about any hardware store.
True, but in hardboard the fibers are all chopped up, and it's weak.
Plus, that's nothing new tempered Hardboard has been around for at least a century.
Well, I mean nature already did, at least in compression, good timber is equivalent to steel in compression for structural purposes, that’s why you can hammer in pilings with equipment…the problem with wood as large structural members, is no good way to attach them securely, for tall structures, and not uniform, each one is different from the last, etc. and you know, things like bugs eating it, dry rot of if gets wet and dries multiple times, and well fire, haha.
The idea of wooden armor reminds me of the time someone, mythbusters I think, tested the idea of scalemail made from paper, and got surprisingly good results
I remember that episode of Myth Busters and it was a pretty fun watch. I felt like there were a few other things they could have done with it but didn't but still interesting.
Well yeah aside from material damage is caused by force, minimizing it even with seemingly the weakest methods will have the strongest base effects the technique provides, better materials give a better outcome with diminishing returns.
Does anyone knwo the exact episode though, kinda want to see it now.
I think what’s interesting too with the journalism and how these sorts of things is how hardness and strength are conflated - hardness only refers to how resistant to scratching a material is, while strength has to do with how much force a material can take in a unit of area, and toughness is the amount of deflection the material can handle without plastic deformation
Wonder how well different pieces of wood would stick to each other if pressed together after the chemical treatment... Presumably grinding them like paper would reduce strength by shortening the fibers, but maybe you could twist them into something like pattern-welded wood.
FWIW, when I was in Belize, CA early 80's, staying with some jungle natives (Garifuna's) they used a wood they called 'Iron wood' for axe handles, wedges, etc and it was VERY hard yet tough enough for tool handles like Hickory is in the states. It was almost too hard to shape with steel tools and they mostly seemed to use broken glass shards to shape it.
To highlight Skall's "sharpness" discussion. Every should intuitively know that even the least hard materials can be sharp. We get paper cuts for a reason
This just came across my feed and it was very exceptional. It got my imagination going on the applications of hardened wood and transparent wood. Liked and subbed. Well done
I'm a writer and you just gave me a wonderful idea about the high tech elves and technology infused wood. Thank you!!
You mentioned spears, what about arrows? What would this tech do to the effectiveness of archery and bow hunting?
This was a REALLY good video, Skall. Very interesting and informative. Didn't know this process existed, so thanks!
12:48 - well, that would be a little complicated... That so-called "transparent wood" is in reality only something which could be called "cellulose-reinforced resin block" and there are several problems with the sensitivity of said resins to UV light (getting a yellow tint). However, you still would have to choose, whether you want "transparent wood" (fill gaps with plastic) or "hardened wood" (compress the gaps).
Not to mention it's rather translucent.
Transparent wood, after all NileRed's content on the matter, doesn't strike me as the good kind of hardness. Brittle seems more fitting.
"That so-called "transparent wood" is in reality only something which could be called "cellulose-reinforced resin block""
I think that you could more realistically call it resin with wood fiber filler.
Naturally, there are easier and cheaper ways of doing that than bothering with trying to make transparent wood.
Wood can be as Strong as steel, under certain stresses. Hardness is basically surface compressive strength, so wood can't really be as Hard as steel. However, it can have as good Tensile, Torsion, and Flexure Strength as steel of the same volume, and less weight. If you think about it, they used to use wooden leaf springs in wagons even after steel leaf springs were invented, because wood is cheaper, and easier to carve. (Than refine, form, and temper into spring-steel) At identical dimensions, but being less dense, the bentwood leaf springs were also lighter than the tempered steel ones.
There are applications for every material out there. Thing is, wood already IS stronger than steel, it just depends on what metric you measure strength by. Hardness, on the other hand, is a completely different animal...and I just don't see any process being researched today that could make wood as hard as steel. And in reference to wood leaf springs, wood is still a superior spring in certain applications compared to steel, such as bow limbs.
The chemicals used are sodium hydroxide 80g sodium sulfide 40.3g then top up to 1 Litre.
I think these are historically available in less pure forms.
At the end of the day, most of these cool composites are just slightly stronger than if you add wood fiber to the same type of resin you are infusing into the wood. I'll admit that it looks a lot pretty when you haven't reduced the wood to sawdust first, but it is more a novelty than anything useful at this stage, maybe if they can get the cost down to below what hardwood costs to source we'd see some interest, but I suspect they also run into issues with pieces of wood that are thick or long.
they need to make a plywood version of that hardened wood if you want any shock absorbing armor and the like
Maybe do something like old longbows/composite bows so that one layer absorbs force, another dissipates it around and if those two aren't enough a third "cracks, but deliberately"?
Lamination and composite have been around a long time. Armor in Japan made of paper, glue and lacquer. Other things added were horse hoof, ground or sliced, sinew and leather. Even simple glues like milk and vinegar get very hard.
It would be most effective as a technique for making building materials in areas that getting steel supports, or other metal products into, is cost prohibitive or simply too difficult.
The highest cross laminated timber wood building is 84m high and stands in Vienna
I could imagine a race of wood elves that wear super hardened wood armor.
Also: in Riftwar, (a really old fantasy series that I’ve read recently) the Tsurani Empire of the world Kelewan were using hardened wood as a sort of replacement to metal due to the near lack of metal in Kelewan, with metals being considered as a sign of wealth (especially gold)
I've always thought it odd that elves who are so into natural methods would go with metal weapons and armor. Wood makes way more sense
And in fantasy thre has to be pretty hard an magical wood, which makes even lesser sense
Nile red made some, idk what the postage would be, but hes also in Canada so you could get him to do it and make more. Maybe he'd get more use out of the hydraulic press.
Imagine this wood armor with being thicker being able to stop a bullet, that would be cool. A wooden knight would be great! :)
Imagine modern infantry using wooden armor and AKs :)
Curious about the strength of the hardened wood. Could it be used in aerospace applications? Neat video!
I’m thinking heat resistance would be the issue…
@@sorryociffer Should be fine to use for body paneling, I think. It might be able to be more form fitted than aluminum panels? Not sure
@@sorryociffer actually wood ablates, so for something that isn't going to be re-used, I could see some uses.
I'd be real curious about its use as a tonewood. There are already some interesting methods for converting more available woods into something resembling exotic hardwoods for instrument building, wonder if this would do anything like that
Agreed. Instruments, furniture, kitchen utensils, doors. The types of things that don't need to be strong, so much as durable and pleasing to see, touch, feel or hear. :)
@@MrBottlecapBill Having wood door framing made out of this along with your door would make break-ins significantly harder. The same might apply if your windows were transparent wood too.
@@BluntofHwicce Gosh, you remind me of Stradivarius violins! Part of the "secret" (if it exists - blind tests show most people can't tell a stradivarius from another violin just from the sounds - but I can well believe the player would feel the difference much better) is supposed to be due to the Little Ice Age in the 17th Century iirc. Due to the cold the trees grew less, so tree rings were closer together and the wood was harder. Artificially hardening wood by chemical treatment and compression ought to have the same kind of effect.
@@BluntofHwicce wouldn't the change in density also change the acoustics?
@@BluntofHwicce oooh
Wood you believe it?
Hahahaha
Ever since playing Minecraft all those years ago and as a kid building tree houses and later trying to enchant my wood as strong as it can get I've been thinking about this topic as a real life useage in the same style.
Wood is epic and for me this is the most intriquing topic on the channel.
Merry Christmas.
what works in a lab is one thing, but in the real world economics rules - how much does this process cost in a real application?
It depends on scale of production. A similar hardening process has become very popular with maple in the guitar world over the past couple of years, and as more manufacturers have started to offer "roasted" maple, cost has gone down pretty dramatically. It's now really only a modest upcharge compared to regular maple, depending on the manufacturer of course.
Seems to me that it would be a pretty wasteful process both in terms of water but also in wood seeing that you end up with much less of in terms of volume which would mean that far more tree would need to be cut to compensate for it.
If it has 1/5 the volume, but 23 times the original strength, no, you don't need more wood, you just make thinner structures with it.
A wooden gun! ;P
Instead of grinding a sword out of a block of hardened wood, you could press the wood into a sword mold. This should leave the edges at the maximum hardness and the core softer for shock absorbing and reduced risk of failure. Making it from transparent wood would make an epic looking art piece.
Theres a YT of a guy trying to recreate this super wood. The most expensive part was getting a proper heated press. The press really limits what you can make
It was nile red
Wood has an outstanding strength to weight ratio. Hard would be pretty awesome,
Not really. Vinyl and many plastics are lighter AND stronger. Wood is pretty heavy.
@@trequor Oak for example has a density of 0.7. Not sure what plastic you're talking about, because Nylon, 1.13, PET 1.3, ABS 1.05 PVC 1.45 etc are all denser. Oak tensile strength is typically given as 90 MPA, Nylon 78, PET 80, ABS 45, PVC 62 (rigid - flexible is less) Moreover to my point, 304 Stainless strength 505 MPA, density of 8 has a strength to wt ratio of 63. Oak, with a strength of 90 and a density of 0.7 has a strength to wt ratio of 115. AS I said, wood has an outstanding strength to wt ratio.
@@MrMakulit1959 That's not how that math works, comrade. You've got to manage your units better. Also oak is a piss poor example because of its expense and rarity in comparison. Nobody is going to build a house out of oak.
Then there is the problem of ACTUAL density in regards to wood. Because wood absorbs shit-tons of water, whereas plastic and steel do not. Your 0.7 density is going to jump dramatically once the oak hits the outside air.
@@trequor You don't know what your talking about. That's exactly how the math works
@@MrMakulit1959 density =/= weight, for starters, but there is a lot more wrong with what you said.
I agree with the geometry. With a more thick body than competing steel made to angle quite acutely by long measured length, the performance of this hardened wood will surely do impressively.
At the beginning when you did a close up and paused...right after you said "how hard can we make our wood", reminded me exactly of when my university Geography teacher began to explain "Lake Titicaca"...said it in front of the whole class..paused and waited for our reaction before moving on with the lesson.
So some things to think about, soft woods like basswood grow much quicker than hard woods, so having a process to harden soft woods is quite useful since you can use very soft woods for things you couldn't traditionally use them for. Second since you are softening the wood then compressing it, you have quite a bit of wiggle room with the shapes you can now make during compressing. Finally there are methods of building without nails, specifically look at japan, so while nails are convenient they aren't necessary.
This is very interesting for construction. Material science has a lot to contribute to affordable housing and accessible materials that can be renewed and always available.
if theyre worried about shattering or cracking when using a nail, drilled/screw fasteners are a clear simple solution, modern adhesived offer another, and then of course traditional woodworking techniques that dont use nails, bolts, screws, or adhesives at all.
Ah yes, well cultured content.
Keep creating Skall, you’re awesome
For the potential historical uses, axles and wood bearings may be interesting. A hard wood for the bow drill would be quite interesting as well. A little farther out, the lack of defects may be useful for frames on gliders.
1:20 I bought a couple of rings from a seller/maker in Sweden with a similar collection to choose from with authentic dino fossil but his main set was tungsten with asteroid or planetary dirt/dust. we ended up with aquamarine opal with asteroid and black tungsten. got half price for about $60 a piece and all come with a complimentary lifetime warranty. best looking ring I've ever had and best price I've paid for a band.
check out nile reds compressed wood armor where he implements that research articles method and tests it. It barely stopped a 9mm with 3 layers but its a good reference at least for ultra strong wood as a concept. (oh and he used pine as the base wood)
There's also a company create it as building materials
ruclips.net/video/96Dz-rQtGxI/видео.htmlsi=lGjxM5igl-Jgqnw_
One of my greatgrandfathers submerged entire treelogs in running water from rivers or creeks for several years flushing out all the nutrients and resins. After this it was dried for several after sawing it in planks and beams. It resulted in very hard wood that was resistant to pests and rot.
I see two main problems weapon-wise.
1. Weight. As someone pointed out below, an increase in density = increase in weight. It would be hard to meet or overcome the strength/weight ratio of steel. What is the advantage in a wooden supersword if it is heavy as hell for its size?
2. Wear and upkeep. This really comes down to "toughness." Steel is great in blades because it is both hard yet workable. What happens when a blade of this material dulls? Can you reshape the edge via stropping and honing as with steel? Can you easily sharpen (ie regrind) the edge once it's recieved significant wear? If not, the practical usability as a blade goes down significantly and you just have a wedge-edged club (which already exist) rather than an actual useful blade. And if it can't make a good blade, then it's basically just useful as a heavy, dense, shapable material and plenty of those already exist.
I guess my question is, what material that we already have does this stuff meet or outperform? For practical market viabity, it needs to *outperform* something that already exists in order to be worth the effort. As far as environmental sustainability, it would still need to at least *meet* the performance of what it is intended to replace. Even the latter seems unlikely. Purhaps the real test is wether or not *new* applications can be found rather than competing for current applications against established materials. Expecting to see "superwood" versions of what we already have in other materials seems unlikely unless it *maybe* enters the market as an efficient and environmentally-responsible alternative to single-use polymers.
Saw NileRed try to make this hardened wood. His best attempt wasn't amazing, certainly not something to rival good steel. Though maybe his production technique wasn't entirely proper - he has chemistry knowhow and amazing lab equipment, but it appears the instructions he followed were incomplete in some way, he encountered many problems
The thing about compressing basswood versus compressing oak... is that you wouldn't be able to compress oak down 23 times, like you can basswood. If you had a 2x2×12 of both woods compressed to their maximum, I imagine they would be quite comparable, as you're just compressing the lignin... and their densities and grain structure would be quite similar.
From what I understand, if you use alcohol to strip them of their sap and kiln dry them... it's either basswood or balsa which has a pound-for-pound strength markedly higher than oak. For this reason, in some circles, both are considered hardwoods, even though their natural soft nature would lead you to believe they are softwood. If I'm not mistaken, the same goes for Paulownia.
Alternative title: "Skall Discusses the Feasibility of Putting Hard Wood in a Cuirass."
Seriously, though: fascinating stuff! Thanks for the signal boost!