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Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel
- anotheryou 5y agothe careful tippy-tipping of the nail is comical XD compare that to a roofer https://youtu.be/19RGYncQzlo https://youtu.be/19RGYncQzlo
- mikro2nd 5y agoLovely idea. I would like to see a comparison of the energy requirement for hardening wood this way vs. making steel. Would give a better sense of whether this is a technology worth pursuing as one path toward decarbonising the future.
- excalibur 5y agoAlso what chemicals are used, where do those come from, how sustainable are they, are there adverse environmental impacts in their production
- rfrey 5y agoI heard an interview on the CBC and they mentioned sodium hydroxide.
- napier 5y agoTo dissolve lignin? I haven’t read the paper yet but doubt it’s anything terrible or too exotic. Probably a recipe based around sodium hydroxide (NaOH).
- pstuart 5y agoIf this is the same bit that's hit this page just recently, the chemicals used were sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfite (to remove the lignin) and then food grade oil to seal it.
- jackcviers3 5y agoSo you can do this at home with a hydraulic press and a torch then? Would be kind of fun.
- ls15 5y agoPyridine and DMSO seem to be the best solvents for lignin. https://bioresources.cnr.ncsu.edu/resources/solubility-of-lignin-and-acetylated-lignin-in-organic-solvents/ https://bioresources.cnr.ncsu.edu/resources/solubility-of-li... DMSO is a by-product of cellulose production. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyl_sulfoxide#Synthesis_and_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyl_sulfoxide#Synthesis_a...
- marcinzm 5y agoI'd like to see specific comparisons in physical properties versus steel and specifically which steel they are comparing to. Including in physical dimensions since their nail seems fairly thick. Steel is, as I understand it, hundreds of different variants each with their own physical properties. For example, they say 23 times harder in the article than regular wood. Wood has a Brinell scale of up to 7 although most is less. Times 23 that comes out to 161. Mild steel is 120. However hardened tool steel is 900.
- klyrs 5y agoIt's safe to assume that they're comparing to mild steel, which nails and table knives are made from. That said, I'm amused by the thought of a hardened tool steel nail... make sure you wear safety glasses and gloves, because when that shatters, the shards will be sharp and speedy. Here's hoping it's the nail, and not your hammer.
- mdpye 5y agoI had some questions about that too. It looks cool, to be sure, but I watched the video of the nail being hammered through some boards, and... let's just say I'm not so timid with steel nails! For what they were showing, if you were going for "equivalent to steel", I'd expect to see a tap to secure the nail and then probably only two strokes to sink it. They tap it a hundred times, which begs the question of what would happen if you actually hit it. Strength comes in many dimensions.
- ComputerGuru 5y agoEven if it were to take more energy it might still be a win since it would effectively lock up the carbon in a (basically) non-decomposing form. You’d have to look at the net emissions taking into account the amount of carbon dioxide that would have been released as that piece of wood decomposed (or you can look at it from the perspective of the CO2 removed from the atmosphere by that wood).
- mdpye 5y agoCareful. Plastics lock up carbon in "basically non-decomposable form" and that is proving problematic. And the problem isn't that we mined the carbon. Death (decomposition) is a critical part of the circle of life...
- ComputerGuru 5y agoFrom an emissions perspective, the problem with plastics is that they lock up a tiny portion of the CO2 that was previously locked up as petroleum (the remainder is released into the atmosphere as byproduct). If we had “mined” plastic directly out of the ground, it would be fine to use (again from an emissions perspective), though not a net win since it would have already been “locked up” whereas wood only temporarily locks up hydrocarbons until it is cut down, used, and then ultimately decomposed. This would break that cycle. From a non-emissions perspective, wood doesn’t have the same “microplastics” problem (although who knows what this bastardized wood might end up having).
- krick 5y agoSure, everything you are saying is correct, but you two are basically concerned about different problems, and, FWIW, I'm honestly more concerned about your "opponent"'s one. All this CO₂ emission stuff got way more political lately than it perhaps should be, so I can easily imagine selling stuff made out of bastardized wood as "eco-friendly" to the concerned customers, while in reality, production and everything else accounted for it will be more net-harmful for the ecology than the "traditional" (plastic or otherwise) alternative. And (risking to start another flamewar here) even that being put aside, I'm not even sure we should be as much concerned about CO₂ emissions as we currently are... In the meanwhile, we somehow stop focusing on the whole bunch of other problems, that definitely aren't gonna solve themselves as well. Like, the fact that the oceans are turning into a huge dumpster for plastics that aren't going to magically dissolve in the next couple of hundreds of years. Or like we are only concerned about burning oil not being "green energy", and somehow skip over the fact, that we are literally burning millions of tons of substance each day, that we cannot produce and that doesn't renew itself (practically speaking), while being the ONLY substance suitable for making thousands of materials that we use to build basically everything for the last 50 of years (and it doesn't seem like we are going to find a better alternative soon).
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y agodupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28945312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28945312
- jdnier 5y agoI'd like to see how this material behaves when formed into kitchen utensils like wooden spatulas and spoons rather than a knife. Would the density be more like metal (heavy)? Maybe it would scratch a nonstick surface like a metal utensil. But if I could have my wooden utensils in a form that wouldn't wear down or fall apart eventually from water and heat exposure, that would be great.
- kragen 5y agoNo, the density of cellulose is about the same as the density of other plastics, about 1-1.5 g/cc. For kitchen use, it does have the advantage over many other plastics that it's a thermoset; like teflon or phenolic, it won't melt, and unlike phenolic, it won't outgas toxic gases at ordinary temperatures (though who knows about the side products of the lignin-removal reaction). However, it is fairly hygroscopic, so it might not hold up as well as other plastics to water exposure, and especially to heat exposure while humid.
- dr_dshiv 5y agoThis sounds straight out of a solarpunk scifi story. Beautiful.
- rob_c 5y agoIts a shame it's not going to be any more real though. Whilst interesting work if it can be applied elsewhere and with fast growing plants, but it's a bit hyped up based on current limited results.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y agoAlso, the process to make a steel knife isn’t really bad. If we were talking about how to make carbon fiber from wood, that would be cool, composites are really dirty to make and do not recycle. So, cool, but the best use I’ve considered for a wood knife is getting through X-ray, but now you are back to composites being an option. The market for green circumvention of security measures is probably very small.
- varenc 5y agodiscussion from 3 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28945312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28945312
- greenail 5y agothis reminds me of "圧倒的不審者の極み!" or "kiwami japan" youtube channel. I also wonder if this channel was the inspiration for "howtobasic"
- Tistron 5y agoFun days for airport security :) How do they handle people bringing caramic knifes today? Would wooden knives display clearly on their scanners?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- vegardx 5y agoMost ceramic knives have some metal in them for this reason.
- ksec 5y agoDidn't know that. I wonder how if it would be the same for Wood knives as well.
- laurent92 5y agoHaven’t they moved from Xray, which shows the difference between atoms thanks to wavelength, to ultrasounds, which show sharp edges and thus is suitable for anything iron, plastic or wood as long as it’s sharp?
- salawat 5y agoI'd imagine that would drive the chemical sniffing/bomb dogs absolutely insane.
- batch12 5y agoYou can already bring scissors on a plane with 4 inch blades. That's two knives.
- nephanth 5y agoCan you? I've had to leave my scissors at security at least once. It was in France though
- Kagetora85 5y agoDope.
- lgrialn 5y agoThe nature of attention and publicity is sad. Of all the things you could do with very hard wood, we lead with knives because knives can threaten us, and therefore attention.
- asah 5y agowhat's with the videos? baby hits on the wooden "nails" ? the steak knife is pulling apart the meat and not cutting it ?
- dan353hehe 5y agoI had a good laugh from the nail video a few days ago. I imagined a house being built from these nails where all the carpenters spent 10 minutes hammering each individual nail into a couple of two by fours. I thinks is probably not as malleable as steel so it can shatter if hit too hard.
- varelse 5y agoWhen I was a kid I used to launch Estes rockets. They came with mostly balsa wood fins that would frequently break on landing. The balsa wood also absorbed paint unless you hit it with a clear coat first. This for some reason gave me the idea of rubbing Elmer's glue on to it, letting it dry, then sanding it and then painting it. Not only did it paint easily but I never lost a single fin again. The closest I came to that was when a fin ripped itself off the cardboard tube of the rocket rather than break.
- philips 5y agoThanks for this tip! My daughter recently got into model rockets and it seemed to me that untreated balsa wood was unlikely to last more than a few launches.
- exolymph 5y agoTell your daughter congrats on the launch from your pals at Hacker News! <3
- CrazyCatDog 5y agoThen you! I used to stick to the alpha 3 as a kid because of the plastic tri-fin base, now I’m looking at you Big Bertha version n!
- WalterBright 5y agoI love tips like this. It's one reason why I watch those TV shows like "Detroit Muscle". They're full of things like that that make working on cars so much easier and more effective. For example, the usual method for replacing the gasket in an automatic transmission, which is on the bottom of the car, is to remove the transmission. This is because it is impossible to hold all the balls and springs in place to put the cover on while it is upside down. The trick shown is to use a bit of vaseline to "glue" the parts in place. The vaseline will dissolve in the trans fluid and won't affect it. Voila! You save a lot of time.
- pivo 5y ago
- generalizations 5y ago> "Surprisingly, our wooden knife is actually three times sharper than the typical stainless steel dinner table knife," he said. "It can achieve its purpose of cutting medium well-done steak very nicely without breaking." Cool stuff, but that's not very sharp. Still a long way to go?
- Redoubts 5y agoDunno, sounds great for everything but a kitchen knife.
- skeeter2020 5y agoplus we should be eliminating well-done steak from the world, not providing more ways to cut it!
- rhplus 5y ago> three times sharper than the typical stainless steel dinner table knife The video shows pretty mediocre cutting, but perhaps that's on par with a "typical table knife". There's a good reason restaurants will give you a steak knife, alongside a table knife, for red meat.
- mberning 5y agoThe video of them cutting the steak with the wooden knife shows extremely poor performance. The steak was torn apart more so than sliced. There is no way the knife in the video is “three times sharper” than a typical stainless steel kitchen knife as claimed.
- nephanth 5y agoUnless the median knife happens to be a butter knife
- rhplus 5y agoIf I've learned anything from infomercials, the demo video shouldn't be steak, but a mushy tomato.
- neom 5y agoI'd like to see that steak video with a serrated version of the knife. Edit: I decided to do some research on if a serrated edge blade would in fact be better, leading me to a strange but interesting video of some Dutchmen unscientifically testing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAzrz0nC9-M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAzrz0nC9-M (tl;dw, serrated seems it would be better for steak)
- themodelplumber 5y agoI've noticed that steel in knives can easily be described as a waste. Cutting into food and opening packages doesn't generally need to require steel, for one. There is always going to be the emergency/contingency psychology calling for quality steel in every knife to "save your life someday" but TBH it's a relief that customers themselves get to decide exactly what that could mean to them...otherwise the raging debate would probably mean even more prepper content invading innocent hobbyist videos. I look forward to the coming cutting-materials range expansion. I would even look at a non-metal SAK for working people, if just as a recognition of human creativity...
- Enginerrrd 5y agoI'm no fan of prepper content, but as an engineer, this criticism seems really weird and misguided to me. There's a reason we use steel in tools and knives. It's very difficult to find a material that can match the properties of steel. Having good edge-keeping while still maintaining toughness and avoiding brittle failure is REALLY hard.
- themodelplumber 5y agoThis is conflating people who want or need to use steel with those who don't. Look at the JunkFoodTasterDotCom YouTube channel for example. He always cuts stuff. He uses a plastic knife. He's not an engineer. That is more to my point: Steel isn't needed in a surprising number of knife use cases. I'm not surprised that an engineer wants to speak on behalf of steel and its properties. But that probably won't stop product designers from noticing a huge and tantalizing materials gap, around redefining what makes a knife useful to a consumer.
- convolvatron 5y agowhat? steel works well. its really cheap - both in economic and physical terms. it recycles perfectly, and if you do leave it in the ground on the water, its not going to harm anything. lasts a really long time, more with care. seems like a really great design fit. Maybe there are better opportunities elsewhere?
- RhysU 5y ago> WATCH A wooden nail is hammered through three boards. Having just spent the morning driving nails with a 10-year-old, it pained me to watch this adult use a hammer.
- TomK32 5y ago"We use chemicals to partially remove lignin. And after the first step the wood becomes soft, flexible and somewhat squishy" "The compressed material showed very little tendency to bounce back to its original thickness." I love the soft and squishy part, wondering whether it could be pressed into a form to make a bicycle frame to get away from the complicated process of laying carbon layers or the heavy weight of steel. But yeah, replacing plastic throw away utensils should be a priority for a material like that.
- binarymax 5y agoThis is awesome especially since I make wooden knives! Specifically out of sugar maple, since they’re nice and hard. I make them to look like steak knives as a joke, but they work great on cheese, butter, and steamed vegetables. If you ever want to get into woodworking you can pick up a bandsaw for a couple hundred bucks and they’re a great first project.
- themdonuts 5y agoDo you have a picture of that? Curious to see how it looks like.
- binarymax 5y agoFunny enough I don’t have a recent photo, but here’s some early experimentation on style from 2.5 years ago. https://mobile.twitter.com/binarymax/status/1452324029843529733 https://mobile.twitter.com/binarymax/status/1452324029843529... Nowadays they look most like the ones on the right but are better refined and are serrated. The two left are pine (smells great but are soft), and the two right are maple.
- h2odragon 5y agoMay i suggest you find a bit of Cocobolo to play with? Awesome stuff. Also recovered barnwood white oak, if you can work it. It's like ceramic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocobolo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocobolo
- tgorgolione 5y agoI've seen this pop up on HN before. And I just read another article on HN about how Bamboo lumber is made and found an interesting intersection. In that article, during the first few months of their growth, Bamboo gets to their final height, then they start to, as the article says, "lignify" for several years. Would that mean that Bamboo has much less lignin in the beginning, and would that also make young Bamboo shoots a possible way to get cellulose without as much chemicals?
- BugsJustFindMe 5y agoCutting cooked meat seems like about the worst possible demonstration they could have come up with because we already have disposable wood cutlery able to easily cut meat that you can readily buy by the hundreds at Target/Walmart/Amazon. The standard food demonstration for sharpness is slicing ripe tomatoes, and demonstrating toughness needs an uncooked winter squash. > "Surprisingly, our wooden knife is actually three times sharper than the typical stainless steel dinner table knife," The typical stainless steel dinner table knife is slightly serrated, which means it doesn't need to be sharp to work well. Being sharper than something that doesn't need to be sharp to function properly is a very dumb comparison. Sharpness also has no relation to durability except possibly in the inverse. A typical steel dinner table knife will keep doing its job for decades and thousands of wash cycles without any maintenance. Meanwhile there's a great youtube channel where a guy makes razor sharp chef's knives out of random fragile materials like jello.
- agumonkey 5y agoJust reminds me that paper moved fast enough can probably already cut meat
- danarmak 5y agoI got a papercut and I'm made out of meat!
- agumonkey 5y agodon't try this at home https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYfkhdKcEiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYfkhdKcEiE
- dehrmann 5y agoThat'd make for a hell of a paper cut.
- BugsJustFindMe 5y agoThat's amazing. I'm impressed by the ingenuity of people making videos like this.
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y agoI would love to know what percentage of this material by mass is petrochemical-based resins.
- m3kw9 5y agoDisrupting the metal detector industry?
- User23 5y agoFlint knapped knives are illegal in California for this very reason.
- inside65 5y agoDidn't the kiwamijapan youtube guy figure out how to do this years ago? Really even then, it's not a new concept. Inmates in prisons turn toilet paper into daggers and I'm sure there are antiquities of sharp objects made from wood and other materials. I don't really understand the significance or newsworthiness of this.
- davesque 5y agoIt may just be incidental or irrelevant, but I find the video of the steak cutting to be incredibly unconvincing. It looked like they just pushed apart a piece of well cooked meat like you could do with a spoon and slow cooked pork.
- ChuckMcM 5y agoThat is a pretty cool result. The idea of a material with the hardness of steel but without the oxidizing issues is pretty appealing too. The mentioned that it became "squishy" and then they pressed it to become its final shape. Building boats this way would be an interesting application. And it would be interesting to understand its combustion properties. "Engineered wood" is all the rage in home building in North America because getting long structural timbers has become so expensive. If you add this to the set of techniques on engineered lumber, could you build better structural members with less material? Could you build those materials out of layered materials? (think oriented strand board (OSB) as 4 x 6 equivalent).
- cronix 5y ago> "So the second step is that we apply pressure. We also increase the temperature. The purpose of that is to really densify the natural wood and also remove the water, reducing its thickness to around 20 per cent of the original natural wood." Very interesting. One question I'd have is what happens when the hardened wood is exposed to moisture over a long period of time? Humid climates? Does it reabsorb water which would take away from the hardness? The article did mention it could "survive a dishwasher" but doesn't clarify what that actually means. What happens over time when you use it as a nail if the wood you're nailing it into is moist?
- twobitshifter 5y agoPreviously description of “super-wood”. (Also university of Maryland) https://umdrightnow.umd.edu/umd-researchers-create-super-wood-stronger-most-metals https://umdrightnow.umd.edu/umd-researchers-create-super-woo...
- User23 5y agoThis reminds me of the bloodwood from the Malazan Book of the Fallen[1], which is arguably the greatest Canadian fantasy epic. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malazan_Book_of_the_Fallen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malazan_Book_of_the_Fallen
- robbedpeter 5y agoThis looks like it can be accomplished with minimal basic chemistry and a hydraulic press. I'd love to see what type of acoustic guitars could be created using this material. Super thin tops and super rigid bodies are exciting. The NileRed YouTube channel goes into the lignin removal chemistry here https://youtu.be/x1H-323d838 https://youtu.be/x1H-323d838 There's also great progress in using nanocrystalline cellulose to produce super strong composite materials. Embedding graphene or carbon nanotubes gives you super light, super tough material that is suitable for replacing aluminum and steel structures.
- WalterBright 5y agoI'm curious about its application to light airplanes. The article also says it won't rust like iron, but didn't say it wouldn't rot!
- robbedpeter 5y agoIt's likely to be very resistant to fungi, without all the convenient gaps and holes. Treating with borax or other antifungal chemicals would be easy, but that's a problem that would kill the structural part of a house whether or not the nails are wood.
- yona 5y agoThe bit about metal nails rusting… wood can also rot? Unless this process “pressure treats” the hardened wood nail and solves for this.