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

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.

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

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.

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.

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)

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.

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...