Super wood
 

https://curiosity.com/topics/this-ne...eel-curiosity/

Too bad most of these announcements never become reality

We could have wooden cars again

:D

I see that they mention the other super wood — transparent wood — at the end.

Agreed they should be productized post haste.

I wonder, considering paper is basically dispersed wood fibers without lignin, whether it wouldn’t be wiser to press packs of paper sheets to create a super wood like material, yet more uniform than when using plain wood?

Would grain orientation be an issue with the paper? Paper is more like OSB than a 2 x 4

I have a feeling the “interlocked” grain within wood that isn’t in paper is the key to this discovery since you aren’t breaking the existing connections in the material,

I wonder if this material stays more rigid in one direction than the other?

Paper is felted, the finishing process may be directional.

How about SuperPlywood?

I have to wonder why they think wood won't stop a bullet. Maybe 3/8 plywood won't, but then neither will the sheet steel used in car bodies.

I've dug enough bullets out of trees I cut for firewood to know that they'll penetrate maybe an inch or two into pines. Something at the upper end of the strength/density scale, like mountain mahogany https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pl...difolius.shtml which is so dense that it doesn't float, and is real good at dulling chainsaw blades?

If the cellulose does not rebond across fibers crushed and pushed together it would not get stronger than the original wood in its original thickness, rather weaker as the pressure will do some damage.
So as they claim it is remarkably strong, it must be rebonding. Then it would rebond also if paper was used, and the original direction of the fibers ceases to be important. It becomes one massive block of cellulose.

I still like the idea of using paper as it would facilitate creating complex shapes with controlled thickness. Any excess paper would be sheared off and recycled.

With the mesoscale structure of the compressed wood, it might be very like Kevlar.