As the article mentions, densified wood already exists as a product [1]. But it's basically never used for building materials. As far as I can tell it's main us

As the article mentions, densified wood already exists as a product [1]. But it's basically never used for building materials. As far as I can tell it's main use-case is for electrical transformer support pads and anchorage, as you need a strong, non-conductive material for that. So right now it's a fairly niche product. I'm not an expert, but as far as I know existing densified wood is basically stronger by virtue of cramming more material closer together - the wood fibers themselves don't change mechanical properties at all, there's just more of them in a given area. So your strength increases are paired with an increase mass as well. If this actually increased the strength of the wood fibers, that would be interesting. It's an interesting technique, but we already have processed wood products that offer significant strength gains over natural lumber [2], and they haven't displaced regular wood all that much. Normal sawn lumber is often strong enough, and it's just incredibly inexpensive. So it's unclear how much difference another stronger, processed wood product would make to the building market (I can't speak to other uses like body armor or vehicles). I think long term, the most potential for wood improvement lies with improved trees that grow stronger, faster, and with fewer natural defects. Most agricultural products have been deliberately bred for desirable traits for thousands of years, but we've only just begun to do this with trees. (I wrote more about this here: https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/stronger-faster-cheaper-the-future https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/stronger-faster-c... ) (Source: structural engineer, formerly worked at a mass-timber focused construction startup). [1] - https://www.roechling-industrial.com/us/products/composites/laminated-densified-wood https://www.roechling-industrial.com/us/products/composites/... [2] - https://www.mjbwood.com/lsl-lumber/#:~:text=LSL%20Lumber%20(Laminated%20Strand%20Lumber,from%20furniture%20to%20residential%20homes https://www.mjbwood.com/lsl-lumber/#:~:text=LSL%20Lumber%20(....