Wed, 13 Oct 2004 02:44:55 -0500 Archimedes Plutonium wrote:

IntarsiaCo wrote:

. I do not believe
the data on strength of wood is accurate and am wanting to test these
woods myself. I believe oak is stronger than hickory.

The mechanical properties of native hardwood species of wood are well known,
true hickories are "stronger" than white oaks. Do include black locust in your
trials, now that would give the hickory some competition.

The thing I remember most about locust is when I apply a chainsaw it feels as if
I am bouncing on a rock and not wood.

But anyway, I am set to apply various tests on whiteAsh, whiteOak, Hickory,
locust, elm, mulberry, blackwalnut, cedar, redwood, spruce and other woods.

I suspect the old tests are not scientific enough and pandering to a sales
industry where hickory is promoted.

I believe the test for strength is multidimensional and that hickory surpasses
one test of shock absorbing and on the basis of just that one superiorty bracket
it is called the strongest when in fact it is not the strongest in various other
tests.

One test already shows that my hickory is inferior in strength to whiteAsh and
whiteOak in the tendency of hickory to peal off in huge long splinters so that if
a flooring were made of hickory would not outlast oak.

And obviously hickory grows branches that are seldom horizontal whereas Oak, and
they call it "spooky oak not for nothing" can grow branches horizontal to the
ground indicates enormous strength in wood. And Ash seems better able to grow
horizontal than hickory, so in another test of strength oak should excel both
whiteAsh and Hickory in that category.

Obviously spruce is dense in form and its wood must reflect its ability to
withstand huge winds as the saying goes "you cannot throw a cat throw a spruce
tree". So it gives good reason as to why airplane builders prized spruce wood. So
that perhaps given the weight per strength category spruce may outbest even the
hardwoods.

I am going to test locust after I get a equal test piece, but I already know one
superior strength test of locust in that it dulls my chainsaw or any saw faster
than any wood I know of.

Soon I should have some numbers data on strength such as a weight-flex test, a
penetration test, a density test, etc.

Today I have some numbers:

I took 3 boards of 4,000 mm long by 170 mm wide by 25 mm thick of WhiteOak, Hickory
and WhiteAsh and put them through various tests of strength.

A weight test where a weight is placed in the middle of the board and WhiteAsh
flexed off center by 145 mm and Hickory flexed 106 mm and Oak flexed 70 mm. So Oak
is clearly the strongest and not Hickory!

I am guessing the literature puts hickory as stronger than oak and the only reason I
can think of this bias and untruth is perhaps for sales of hickory wood by the huge
lumber industry of hickory versus whiteoak.

I ran a density test because flex strength is dependent on density and WhiteOak won
again for the Hickory was 97% as dense as WhiteOak and the WhiteAsh was 95% as dense
as WhiteOak.

Finally I ran a penetration test for strength by shooting BBs into the wood and
WhiteOak won this test also but surprizingly WhiteAsh won over Hickory, however it
appeared that WhiteAsh splinters more often than does hickory in penetration tests
and does not leave a nice smooth depression.

My tests confirm the obvious facts of Nature itself. Anyone can observe that only
WhiteOak is able to grow with branches horizontal to ground and so the wood must be
stronger in order to hold up that weight whereas Hickory and WhiteAsh tend to grow
branches more vertical because of a wood that is less strong as WhiteOak. This
*Nature's Obvious Test* is reconfirmed in the evergreen softwoods in that Colorado
BlueSpruce is the strongest per weight and that this tree is very dense exposed to
*wind force* and so the wood has to be extra strong to bear the wind forces. I have
not located a bluespruce board to test and perhaps most people just do not want to
lose their beautiful Colorado BlueSpruce and in fact I can more easily find Redwood
than ColoradoBlueSpruce.

So what my missive above hopefully generates is for some "real scientists" and not
some lumber sales people go back and really do a great job as to the strength of
woods. Because, hey, Nature itself implies that BlueSpruce and WhiteOak **are likely
to be** superior.


Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom where dots
of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies