Wood that is stronger than carbon fiber and steel? Yes.

[fscotte]

I wonder what this does to the stiffness/weight ratio.

://www.sciencealert.com/new-super-wood-stronger-than-steel

[Paul Busman]

After I saw the process, my first thought was of those flat dry sponges you can buy which swell up to full size when you wet them. I imagined a mandolin swelling up to the size of an upright string bass
I'd like to know what the working characteristics of that treated wood are:how easy is it to saw,rout,drill,gouge,etc. In my whistle making I'd love to know how it turns on a lathe.

[fscotte]

It would likely be extremely dense and hard, resistant to water, and compressing forces, can stop a bullet. But you maintain weight. So stiffness would go way up for the given weight. Super light top plates that don't deform? Possible.

Yes, what about acoustic properties. I dunno. Would like to have a piece of spruce undergo this process. Even balsa for that matter.

Sounds revolutionary. Process is cheap.

[Tom C]

sounds like no carving. Just make pressed tops and backs.

[pops1]

I wonder if after compressing the wood, would the sound would be brighter? Would it sound more like a carbon fiber topped mandolin? Guess the only way to know is for someone to try.

[NursingDaBlues]

Ah, but will it stand up to a fireplace poker?

[Jim Garber]

Very interesting...

The new process used here has two steps. First, natural wood is boiled in a mix of sodium hydroxide and sodium sulphite, which is actually similar to the process made to create wood pulp for paper.

Next, the wood goes through a compression phase to collapse the walls between individual cells. Heat is added to encourage new chemical bonds while the wood continues to be compressed.

Those processes are able to strip out certain polymers to allow the new wood to reform while also keeping other polymers essential to the wood's strength.

The strengthening ultimately comes from large numbers of hydrogen atoms bonding to nanofibres of cellulose, already naturally in the structure of the wood.

I wonder if this would have the similar properties to super-plastic like Meldin (Blue Chip material). Well, if it doesn't sounds good on a stringed instrument it might work as a pick.

[mrmando]

My first thought is that you could probably hit a baseball further with a bat made using this process. Could make aluminum bats obsolete.

[HonketyHank]

Hoot, mon! Nae baseball, GOLF. We might see woods made from actual wood again. Think of it. Beautiful! What goes around, comes around.

[Beanzy]

Mandolin cases! All those lovely wood shades you could stain the case to complement the mandolin.
Camping chairs for festivals in a fetching sunburst to match..... the future has arrived and it’s mandolin shaped.

[mrmando]

Hit the bluegrass festival circuit in your new wooden RV!

- - - Updated - - -

Hoot, mon! Nae baseball, GOLF. We might see woods made from actual wood again. Think of it. Beautiful! What goes around, comes around.

There you go. The golfing powers that be aren't quite as persnickety about equipment as ye baseball gods, after all.

[Ivan Kelsall]

From fscotte - " I wonder what this does to the stiffness/weight ratio.". IMHO - very stiff,& maybe a very slight weight reduction IF they're removing some of the wood's original 'polymers'. All in all,it's a compression process to consolidate the actual wood,& remove anything that's not required - Quote " Those processes are able to strip out certain polymers .."

As the info.says, '' It's impressively dense & resistant to any compression.." - any 'further compression' presumably,as they've already compressed the daylights out of it. As for any use in musical instruments,it sounds as though it ends up with all the attributes of 'plastic' rather than wood = ok for some applications,but not others - as is pretty usual with most materials,
Ivan

[Bertram Henze]

I must try that. I guess all I need is a mandolin and a wacker plate...

[HoGo]

I can imagine it would make good candidate for ebony substitute. You take maple and compress it three times and you are in the ballpark of density of ebony. Perhaps some of the Rocklite ebony or RW substitute is engineered similarly - take colored pieces of wood and press them together into one large slab ... (do they say patented process?)
Bamboo is often processed similarly albeit likely using resins instead of chemical bonds to hold the pieces together. Hundreds of bamboo split sticks are cooked and then pressed into one solid chunk which is after drying cut into flooring or such.

[Charlieshafer]

Given the density due to compression, if you keep the same dimensions, i.e., a 2" X 4" piece is still a 2" X $' piece after compression (you'd clearly start with a much larger piece) then it would be considerably heavier. So, the aforementioned baseball bat would either be really thin in order to maintain the same weight, or impossibly heavy to swing well. Would a mandolin top be too thin if the same weight and vibrating characteristics were kept?

From a construction standpoint, there already are composite materials that take the place of steel (wood/resin mixes) and work really well and are pretty cost-effective, so I;m not sure we'll see this in much use. There was a guy in New York City years ago who had a large chamber that he stuck wood in, and then flooded with ammonia gas for a day or so. When he pulled the wood out, it was amazingly pliable, and then set hard in it's new position. Maybe that's a way to do pressed tops in bulk to keep costs down on lower-end mandolins.

[Mike Floorstand]

I can't comment on the science aspect but the journalist might benefit from a little history:
"The resulting chemical bonds make the wood strong enough to one day be used in buildings and vehicles"

[gspiess]

Several decades ago Carl Douglas developed a process for bonding wood with carbon fiber under compression to produce very stiff racing shells: https://www.facebook.com/CarlDouglasRacingShells/

[farmerjones]

When does wood stop being wood? High-tech paper mach'e?

Seems energy hungry and wasteful, compared to getting pieces of seasoned wood, sawing them up, then removing everything that isn't a mandolin.

[Ivan Kelsall]

Simply compressing the wood,moves it in one direction only - the thickness,which would reduce. The outer dimensions width / length,'should' stay the same. It would become more dense,but 'thinner',& maybe marginally lighter, if they're removing 'Polymers' from the wood,although i suspect that any weight difference would be extremely small.

Higher density doesn't necessarily mean 'harder' ie. Lead is more dense than Steel,but it's 'soft'. Simply compressing ordinary wood, say Spruce for instance,would compact the grain & ''might'' make it 'harder',but it's doubtful that it would be as hard as Ebony. To do that,IMHO,you'd need to alter the molecular structure of the wood. Both coal & diamond are both forms of carbon,but diamonds have been subjected to immense heat & pressure to change their molecular structure to make them as hard as they are.

If you did that to wood - then it would cease to be wood,& become a 'wood derived' material,
Ivan

[fscotte]

Ivan, they suggest its not only denser, but strong, well as steel. So imagine a mando top that is .120" center to .040" recurve, and weighs 40 grams. But just as strong as a normal thicknessed mando top.

Id just want to try it,

[HoGo]

Assuming all wood is mostly cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin plus some minerals and resins. After the chemical bath much of the resins ond minerals will be lost and then the compression will collapse the cells till there is no or very little air left inside the tubes (imagine elephant standing on bunch of straws) and they get somehow stuck together in that shape. My guess would be that you can compress spruce in 1:8 ratio but some very hard-dense wood like hornbeam only 1:4 with given pressure and result will be similar density of the final product.

[gspiess]

First, I'd want to know how is it stronger. Depending on the direction of the fibers, it may be strong load bearing, but easily split longitudinally. Carbon fiber can have that issue depending on how it is molded and whether it has been bonded with a nomex honeycomb.
Also, for purposes of musical instruments, how does the density effect vibration. In this case, does strength equal stiffness, and if so, will the wood even contribute to the sound of the instrument?

[Charlieshafer]

Interesting engineering question for an engineering person on the cafe: As wood gets it's structural strength along the grain (not talking, mandos, here, talking structural framing) due to the parallel orientation of those little tubes (hollow tubes being extremely stiff for their weight) do they actually lose strength in thinner cross sections when they're collapsed and it's just solid stuff?

[HoGo]

I think it will not be far from difference between steel tube and solid rod. The tube will be much stronger for it's mass that solid rod. This compressed wood will be hard as concrete but heavy as hell. Just imagine you start with something like maple with relative density of 0.6 or so and compress it to 1/5 of it's original thickness, you'll get material with 3.0 relative density (that's three times as much as ebony), Thay claim the wood is 10 times stronger but don't say in which direction, as wood is highly anisotropic and this is very important missing data for many applications.
I see it that you probably cannot compress the wood just partially - you need complete cell compression so the contact between cellulose fibers is maximized so they can create the chemical bonds and the resulting material will be always very heavy.

[Ivan Kelsall]

From Adrian - "....so they can create the chemical bonds..." = ''change the molecular structure'' !. Until the material's been tried & tested & the results published,we can only speculate on how it will behave. I can't help but feel that after compression,we'd end up with a material that's very 'brittle' in a way. Strong maybe,but maybe as in the case of Cast Iron,strong in compression,but in other ways,'brittle',
Ivan