Old Growth Wood

5/20/2025 at 2:43:42 AM

A company called Invent Wood (based on research out of UMD) is creating “densified” wood that solves a lot of these problems. They have a process that collapses the cell walls in wood and compresses it to a quarter of its thickness, which gives something like a 10x increase in tensile strength, making it stronger than (a certain type of commonly used) steel by volume and weight. It’s also significantly harder than wood (nearly as hard as the carbon steel people use for knives), doesn’t warp, and is resilient to impacts.

My intuition is that trees need wood to serve purposes greater than just structural integrity. It needs to transport water and nutrients. But for building, we don’t care about these channels and it’s better if we collapse them to encourage stronger hydrogen bonding between cellulose chains.

It sounds like a lot of the benefits of “old growth” wood can be manufactured now. This is probably a good thing for preserving nature; there’s a greater demand for wood with these properties than a supply of old trees. Better to leave the great old trees intact and do cool engineering on cheap trees that grow quickly.

Recent Hacker News discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44020832

by vlmutolo

5/20/2025 at 12:26:21 PM

> It sounds like a lot of the benefits of “old growth” wood can be manufactured now.

Yes, at greatly increased costs, both economic and ecological.

Fast-growth timber farms may produce an inferior product, but we've already compensated for that in design. 112% of a material that provides 90% of the "goodness" is a viable path; so is buying a Ford* every 5 years instead of a Mercedes every 10*. (Ford haters: :%s/Ford/Chevy) (* MB haters: shaddup, it's just an analogy.)

Until the overhead is lower than growing yellow pine, this is a niche product.

by IAmBroom

5/20/2025 at 1:24:13 AM

It's true that old-growth wood is stronger and denser than modern wood, but it's absolutely not true that obsolete windows made of old-growth wood are better than modern windows or should be retained in a restoration if not required by code. Wood is a terrible material to make window frames out of, and there's simply nothing you can do to a single-glazed window that makes it comfortable to live with.

We have this thing called "building science" now, you can do better than just copying your grandpa.

by LarsAlereon

5/20/2025 at 7:16:51 AM

> Wood is a terrible material to make window frames out of

I respectfully disagree. There are certainly downsides, and upsides to modern materials (e.g. UPVC), but there are reasons to still use wood in many situations.

From a practical perspective, wood is easy to work, and easy to repair. You can pretty much indefinitely go setting in new pieces of wood where needed (speaking as the owner of a 105 year old wooden boat, which still has ~60pct original material).

Wood is also clean and easy to dispose of, whereas modern materials provide a real headache and hazard.

And IMO nothing compares to wood from an aesthetic perspective, which is important for living spaces.

by JR1427

5/20/2025 at 8:10:35 PM

> Wood is also clean and easy to dispose of, whereas modern materials provide a real headache and hazard.

Well there is a difference between painted & non-painted wood, as far as eco-impact of their disposal goes. Not to mention various anti-rot treatments like used for fencing poles & the like.

But in general you're correct.

> And IMO nothing compares to wood from an aesthetic perspective, which is important for living spaces.

No argument there. Eg. my sister has a kitchen table that's like a 5..6cm thick massive wooden slab. It has a very different quality, look & feel compared to most of today's "fast-fashion" furniture done in cheap, veneered particle board. One way or the other that table will easily outlast her.

Also: unless you live in a damp environment, wood indoors basically lasts forever. True, for window frames etc there exist more durable options today. But it's mostly a matter of cost, maintenance & aesthetics.

by RetroTechie

5/22/2025 at 12:11:08 AM

You can pry my wood window frames from my cold dead hands. They're gorgeous. If you want them to be energy efficient as well they're also expensive but easily worth it over the ugly plastic that plagues every new construction.

by Spivak

5/20/2025 at 4:09:24 AM

You also have to remember that new 2x4s are actually 1.5x3.5 while older ones were actually 2x4! Its fun to do work on an old house and actually get the correct measurement of 2x4 xD

by beckthompson

5/20/2025 at 12:35:21 PM

Original 2x4s were rough cut on all sides, after planing 1/4” smooth on each edge…you lose 1/2” from each dimension, resulting in a 3.5” x 1.5” board.

by dnemmers

5/20/2025 at 2:49:06 AM

I've lost many a titanium drill bit to old growth wood in my 1921 home. Insanely difficult and hard stuff. It's crazy that we consider it the same material.

by anon291

5/20/2025 at 12:38:12 PM

You really shouldn’t be breaking any bits in wood without really trying.

Bits need to be sharp, spun at the correct speed, and plunged into the material without putting side to side stress on the bit (Which is why a drill press is so useful)

by dnemmers

5/23/2025 at 3:51:25 AM

Around here people use hedge wood (Osage orange) for fence posts. It's hard/dense to begin with, and after weathering for 20 years outside, it'll make your chainsaw chain spark if you try to cut it.

It even gives carbide chain a run for its money.

by BenjiWiebe

5/20/2025 at 8:59:11 PM

I have very good drill bits. Old growth wood is like nothing you've ever seen before. I'd rather have a house made of it than anything else. Stuff is as hard as a rock. Harder I'd bet. My drill has no issue driving through metal. The thing about old growth wood is that as you drill in, the hole gets 'smaller' behind you. The wood fibers are highly packed together. When you make a hole, they sort of expand behind the bit. If you're using a spade bit, it can even be hard to pull it back through.

I'm also an amateur woodworker, and if you've ever dealt with ipe wood from Brazil, old growth pine is harder than that. I made a nice mantelpiece out of ipe and my bits had no problem with that. Old growth pine is very dense.

by anon291

5/20/2025 at 2:47:07 PM

As an old-home owner and a hobbyist woodworker, I can confirm that it’s not user error — old-growth timber really is that dense. Even my impact driver struggles to drill simple holes sometimes.

by hoytschermerhrn

5/20/2025 at 6:40:44 PM

Decades ago, I thought by now for sure we'd be growing cellulose to custom configurations by genetic growth manipulation. This could surely replace not only straight construction lumber, but complex components currently milled or molded.

Apparently, the less imaginative think just crushing the wood to be almost like the way it used to grow is the height of tech achievement 8-(

The fact that we still cut down complete trees for wood, and grow trees for that cutting, that are significantly inferior to the ones we've clear cut from the entire planet, is a shining example of tech failure. Industry refusing to acknowledge the damage they're doing, and very very complicated "economic theories" being used to justify continuing to trash the place so a few already massively rich asshats can have much more.

The silt and pesticide laden rivers of the US are a shining example of our superiority, not a symptom of ongoing self destruction.

Of course, even expressing the concept of tech failure is taboo on HN.

So, let the wing-nut brand identity canceling begin... Because, that's totally different from that libtard woke-nut canceling...

by johnea