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The graph in that composite diagram is really bothering me. Their "hardened wood" product is 23 times harder than "natural" basswood. When dried, basswood (aka

The graph in that composite diagram is really bothering me. Their "hardened wood" product is 23 times harder than "natural" basswood. When dried, basswood (aka lime) is an extremely soft hardwood. It's very popular with novice turners and hand carvers. When green (natural?) you can carve it with a stone. Species matters. Lignum vitae is 20 times harder than basswood.

beambot 5y ago
Species matters, but so does availability. Lignum vitae is an endangered species, so it's not really a renewable alternative at the scale humanity requires.
- icedistilled 5y ago
  fun fact, you can grow Lignum Vitae in SoCal in certain areas, not just in Florida. San Diego would probably grow lignum vitae well because it seems to like the random humid weeks in Los Angeles and just exists for the rest of the year
  - carapace 5y ago
    Do you know anyone who has Lignum Vitae seeds or seedlings for sale or trade?
    - icedistilled 5y ago
      About a decade ago I ordered some from a nursery in florida, in retrospect I'm not sure that's an ideal thing to do. But I think I did order directly form the nursery so hopefully they were following the regulations, whereas amazon will freely help third parties sell completely illicit plant materials that could bring pests.
meepmorp 5y ago
I think the point of using basswood as a reference is to demonstrate the effectiveness of the hardening process by using a very soft wood. Separately, basswood is fairly quick growing, making it a decent candidate for commercialization of the whole technology.
- fhood 5y ago
  Not really "separately", pretty much as a rule hardwoods grow very slowly. Pretty much any fast growing wood is going to be soft.
  - meepmorp 5y ago
    Basswood is a hardwood because it's a flowering tree (angiosperm); softwoods come from conifers (gymnosperms). Balsa is a hardwood, too.
dreamlayers 5y ago
It is possible to make a knife out of lignum vitae: https://www.solidsmack.com/fabrication/lignum-vitae-ironwood-knife-making-kiwami/ https://www.solidsmack.com/fabrication/lignum-vitae-ironwood... So I guess the achievement here is that commonly available inexpensive wood can be made as hard as rare expensive wood.
- oliwarner 5y ago
  It's not cheap though, all the bloody carvers get it. Not that any wood is cheap at the moment. I think they might have just been highlighting basswood because it's so soft —softer than many softwoods— and so the outcome shows a much bigger improvement. Show me pine/spruce, poplar and oak.
  - tgtweak 5y ago
    That was my first thought too - maybe basswood is cheating. It does look though after some research that it seems that the process can be applied to other woods as well, since the process consists essentially of removing the non-cellulose component of the wood (hemicellulose and lignin) with heated chemical solution, then heat-pressing the resulting cellulose-only matter into hard block material. Naturally, the harder of the hardwoods (IPE, Brazilian Teak, Ebony) are also relatively low-lignin wood types (that also grow relatively slowly, sensitively or in unfavorable geographical regions for logging and transport) and the result of removing the non-lignin would logically yield a lower improvement factor (and possibly take longer). In general, the difference between softest readily-available lumber (such as basswood/spruce) and hardest (IPE) is about one order of magnitude. The result of this study at 23x means basswood can be made more than twice as hard as the hardest hardwood that is reasonably available. It would likely take a lot of lumber weight input though (explained below). To your comment: Most common timber/lumber woods (softer: spruce, red pine, fir, chestnut, tamarack/larch and medium: cedar, maple, oak, birch) are rapid-growing and have established forestry industry around them. If you were to take white pine or spruce it should yield similar results to the study since you're basically condensing it to cellulose and they have similar weight densities. You would need to also factor the density of the wood since yield would be ratio of cellulose * weight of the source wood. Since this is a high-waste process (only 40% of the weight is kept in the final product which is then compressed to the target density of 10000lbf or so) it would probably make most sense when using waste-wood as input (wood chips, sawdust, offcuts, recycled wood) and not on viable timber. This is similar to LVL and OSB (although it uses glue for binder) Some composition comparisons: Nordic Spruce: 39.5% Cellulose [1], 0.43 kg/m3 [5] (the poster child for engineered lumber construction in europe) Black Walnut: 47.7% Cellulose [2], 0.63 kg/m3 [5] Brazilian Teak: 53.0% Cellulose [3], 1.05 kg/m3 [5] Basswood: 42.7% Cellulose [4], 0.41 kg/m3 [5] [1] https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4360/13/10/1619/pdf#:~:text=Sjostrom%20%5B27%5D%20mentions%20the%20lignin,Picea%20glauca%3B%20Wang%20et%20al.&text=%5B29%5D%20showed%20a%20lignin%20content,H https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4360/13/10/1619/pdf#:~:text=Sjostr.... [2] https://yadda.icm.edu.pl/yadda/element/bwmeta1.element.agro-f689efb4-a052-405a-ab3b-5cedcc23d075/c/179_Annals91.pdf https://yadda.icm.edu.pl/yadda/element/bwmeta1.element.agro-... [3] https://bioresources.cnr.ncsu.edu/resources/color-and-chemical-changes-in-teak-tectona-grandis-l-f-and-meranti-shorea-spp-wood-after-thermal-treatment/ https://bioresources.cnr.ncsu.edu/resources/color-and-chemic... [4] https://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/pdf2019/fpl_2019_jia001.pdf https://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/pdf2019/fpl_2019_jia001.p... (pretty cool that they can make the basswood transparent to a significant extent also). [5] https://cedarstripkayak.wordpress.com/lumber-selection/162-2/ https://cedarstripkayak.wordpress.com/lumber-selection/162-2...

beambot 5y ago

Species matters, but so does availability. Lignum vitae is an endangered species, so it's not really a renewable alternative at the scale humanity requires.

icedistilled 5y ago
fun fact, you can grow Lignum Vitae in SoCal in certain areas, not just in Florida. San Diego would probably grow lignum vitae well because it seems to like the random humid weeks in Los Angeles and just exists for the rest of the year
- carapace 5y ago
  Do you know anyone who has Lignum Vitae seeds or seedlings for sale or trade?
  - icedistilled 5y ago
    About a decade ago I ordered some from a nursery in florida, in retrospect I'm not sure that's an ideal thing to do. But I think I did order directly form the nursery so hopefully they were following the regulations, whereas amazon will freely help third parties sell completely illicit plant materials that could bring pests.

meepmorp 5y ago

I think the point of using basswood as a reference is to demonstrate the effectiveness of the hardening process by using a very soft wood. Separately, basswood is fairly quick growing, making it a decent candidate for commercialization of the whole technology.

fhood 5y ago
Not really "separately", pretty much as a rule hardwoods grow very slowly. Pretty much any fast growing wood is going to be soft.
- meepmorp 5y ago
  Basswood is a hardwood because it's a flowering tree (angiosperm); softwoods come from conifers (gymnosperms). Balsa is a hardwood, too.

dreamlayers 5y ago

It is possible to make a knife out of lignum vitae: https://www.solidsmack.com/fabrication/lignum-vitae-ironwood-knife-making-kiwami/ https://www.solidsmack.com/fabrication/lignum-vitae-ironwood... So I guess the achievement here is that commonly available inexpensive wood can be made as hard as rare expensive wood.

oliwarner 5y ago
It's not cheap though, all the bloody carvers get it. Not that any wood is cheap at the moment. I think they might have just been highlighting basswood because it's so soft —softer than many softwoods— and so the outcome shows a much bigger improvement. Show me pine/spruce, poplar and oak.
- tgtweak 5y ago
  That was my first thought too - maybe basswood is cheating. It does look though after some research that it seems that the process can be applied to other woods as well, since the process consists essentially of removing the non-cellulose component of the wood (hemicellulose and lignin) with heated chemical solution, then heat-pressing the resulting cellulose-only matter into hard block material. Naturally, the harder of the hardwoods (IPE, Brazilian Teak, Ebony) are also relatively low-lignin wood types (that also grow relatively slowly, sensitively or in unfavorable geographical regions for logging and transport) and the result of removing the non-lignin would logically yield a lower improvement factor (and possibly take longer). In general, the difference between softest readily-available lumber (such as basswood/spruce) and hardest (IPE) is about one order of magnitude. The result of this study at 23x means basswood can be made more than twice as hard as the hardest hardwood that is reasonably available. It would likely take a lot of lumber weight input though (explained below). To your comment: Most common timber/lumber woods (softer: spruce, red pine, fir, chestnut, tamarack/larch and medium: cedar, maple, oak, birch) are rapid-growing and have established forestry industry around them. If you were to take white pine or spruce it should yield similar results to the study since you're basically condensing it to cellulose and they have similar weight densities. You would need to also factor the density of the wood since yield would be ratio of cellulose * weight of the source wood. Since this is a high-waste process (only 40% of the weight is kept in the final product which is then compressed to the target density of 10000lbf or so) it would probably make most sense when using waste-wood as input (wood chips, sawdust, offcuts, recycled wood) and not on viable timber. This is similar to LVL and OSB (although it uses glue for binder) Some composition comparisons: Nordic Spruce: 39.5% Cellulose [1], 0.43 kg/m3 [5] (the poster child for engineered lumber construction in europe) Black Walnut: 47.7% Cellulose [2], 0.63 kg/m3 [5] Brazilian Teak: 53.0% Cellulose [3], 1.05 kg/m3 [5] Basswood: 42.7% Cellulose [4], 0.41 kg/m3 [5] [1] https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4360/13/10/1619/pdf#:~:text=Sjostrom%20%5B27%5D%20mentions%20the%20lignin,Picea%20glauca%3B%20Wang%20et%20al.&text=%5B29%5D%20showed%20a%20lignin%20content,H https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4360/13/10/1619/pdf#:~:text=Sjostr.... [2] https://yadda.icm.edu.pl/yadda/element/bwmeta1.element.agro-f689efb4-a052-405a-ab3b-5cedcc23d075/c/179_Annals91.pdf https://yadda.icm.edu.pl/yadda/element/bwmeta1.element.agro-... [3] https://bioresources.cnr.ncsu.edu/resources/color-and-chemical-changes-in-teak-tectona-grandis-l-f-and-meranti-shorea-spp-wood-after-thermal-treatment/ https://bioresources.cnr.ncsu.edu/resources/color-and-chemic... [4] https://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/pdf2019/fpl_2019_jia001.pdf https://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/pdf2019/fpl_2019_jia001.p... (pretty cool that they can make the basswood transparent to a significant extent also). [5] https://cedarstripkayak.wordpress.com/lumber-selection/162-2/ https://cedarstripkayak.wordpress.com/lumber-selection/162-2...