Wooden it work?

[RogerI...@aol.com]

I just built a small shelf unit out of press-board. You know, the kind of wood that's made of wood chips or sawdust and they mix it up with some kind of adhesive and press it together to make "boards". While I was cutting it it produced a very fine sawdust that got everywhere, including in my lungs, and I was spitting up ugly phlegm all night long.

 

So it got me to thinking... How does wood grow? I know that only the thin layer of cells just under the bark is actually alive, and that there is a network of (not sure what to call them) "veins" throughout the tree that provides the water and nutrients that it gets from the ground and "pipes" it throughout the tree to the living layer. That living layer is made up of cells, right? And they grow by dividing, right?

 

So I'm wondering what would happen if you could somehow extract a huge number (hundreds of thousands) of those individual plant cells and put them in a "soup" of water and appropriate nutrients and have them grow and split and grow and split, creating more and more plant cells (like happens with the yeast in beer). And if you mixed in a bunch of sawdust and/or wood chips, might the growing plant cells "bind" to the sawdust and wood chips to create a more natural press-board, one that doesn't require artificial glues to hold it together, so that this new kind of press-board would be just as strong as naturally-grown wood.

 

Wood it work?

[Matthew Badeau]

I'm not a scientist but I think the closest you'll be able to get would be a "soup" even if you loaded the liquid with all of the nutrients the cells needed. I don't think it would grow like natural wood fibers and will reduce strength. I imagine you would just be making natural sawdust. We need a tree expert to chime in. Do we have one of  those?

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[Binary Buddha]

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I think what you are forgetting is the difference between alive and dead cells. Wood we use to build things with are made of dead tree cells. You have to manipulate the live cells to do that. Might want to look up tree splicing.

in short, you take to trees of the same species like tangerines and grapefruit. Cut the tree trunks in a V-shape near the base of tree. switch the top parts off tangerine base with grapefruit top and grape fruit base with tangerine top. Sit them in the V-cut and tie the v section tightly. Frequently water and fertilize the trees to aid in healing and regrowth. If the tree survives, the fruit will be a tangelo. You can also do this with red and white roses to make unnatural pink roses.

This is possible because in that brief period where then the tree was cut the "wound" of the tree still had live cells to reproduce. the extra water and fertilizer is to help the tree cope with the "shock" of being cut in half.

But trees are very complex plants to deal with. Things like moss are easier...

http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/featured/moss-grass-graffiti/2147

On 09/21/2012 04:01 PM, Matthew Badeau wrote:

>
> I'm not a scientist but I think the closest you'll be able to get would be a "soup" even if you loaded the liquid with all of the nutrients the cells needed. I don't think it would grow like natural wood fibers and will reduce strength. I imagine you would just be making natural sawdust. We need a tree expert to chime in. Do we have one of those?
>

> On Sep 21, 2012 1:37 PM, <RogerI...@aol.com <mailto:RogerI...@aol.com>> wrote:
>
> I just built a small shelf unit out of press-board. You know, the kind of wood that's made of wood chips or sawdust and they mix it up with some kind of adhesive and press it together to make "boards". While I was cutting it it produced a very fine sawdust that got everywhere, including in my lungs, and I was spitting up ugly phlegm all night long.
>
> So it got me to thinking... How does wood grow? I know that only the thin layer of cells just under the bark is actually alive, and that there is a network of (not sure what to call them) "veins" throughout the tree that provides the water and nutrients that it gets from the ground and "pipes" it throughout the tree to the living layer. That living layer is made up of cells, right? And they grow by dividing, right?
>
> So I'm wondering what would happen if you could somehow extract a huge number (hundreds of thousands) of those individual plant cells and put them in a "soup" of water and appropriate nutrients and have them grow and split and grow and split, creating more and more plant cells (like happens with the yeast in beer). And if you mixed in a bunch of sawdust and/or wood chips, might the growing plant cells "bind" to the sawdust and wood chips to create a more natural press-board, one that doesn't require artificial glues to hold it together, so that this new kind of press-board would be just as strong as naturally-grown wood.
>
> Wood it work?
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>
>
>

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[CrLz]

Masonite does not use adhesives to bond, just a heated extrusion process. Wood chips are initially dissolved into fibers for Masonite- so growing a slurry of ~wood fibers would be a nice replacement!  I suspect the devil is in the details, however.  The proper lignin percentage and long enough fiber strands would probably be important to control.  Wonder if there are ~woody algaes that could be tank-grown?

Sounds like an interesting PhD.