What wood species is strongest, hardest, stiffest, best for chairs, tables, or bow making?
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- Опубліковано 18 чер 2024
- Using my wood strength testing machine to break many different species of wood to figure out which ones are the strongest, stiffest, hardest. There is so much more that could be explored this way!
woodgears.ca/wood_strength - Навчання та стиль
Just an FYI ... osage is pronounced with a long a as in 'sage advice' ... at least where I I live here in Missouri ... Missouri farmers used these so separate sections of land and fields because they grow very dense, very thorny, and grow intertwined keeping cows in without the need to put of fencing and were very easy to plant. Also, the Osage Orange originated from southern Missouri where Osage Indians used them exclusively for making bows. This is probably TMI but thought what I'd read was interesting and I think it's pretty wood .. so I'd share the information.
BTW I liked the real time footage of you feeding of pieces into the planer : )
Pinned this comment, so maybe people will realize it's been made MANY MANY MANY times before.
@@matthiaswandel lol
@@tseckwr3783 Who are you calling karens? I didn't see anyone being rude about it. Seems like the only rude person here is you.
AKA bois d'arc - wood of the bow.
Are you sure? I'm in Missouri too and we call it hedge apple.
As an hobbyist bowyer you're pretty much spot on for bow woods. Osage orange is generally considered one of the best bow woods. High-quality yew is usually considered the ultimate bow wood, but it's very rare. Elm, dog wood, and ash are pretty popular too.
We also see that in history. The ancient greeks prefered dogwood for spears, javelins and bows, while the vikings prefered ash. Carriages and early cars, where also often made from ash. As was quite a few early aircrafts.
In my neck of the woods persimmon is the close equivalent of osage orange. My uncle told me it was great for hoe & rake handles and for wedges (when splitting rails) because of its toughness.
When we were kida we used to make bows out of Cornelian cherry dogwood localy (Croatia) known as drijen or drijenić, wounder how it would test
Very interesting. Was going to suggest Yew which I believe was the preferred wood for the English long bow.
@@garyknight8616 Yup. And the English longbow evolved from Welsh warbows, and those were made from elm.
Here in Flanders (Belgium), windmill builders always used the wood of Cornus sanguinea (Dogwood) for the spokes of a lantern transmission. So centuries ago, mill builders knew they had to use Cornus in a transmission because of the strength of this type of wood. And they had no "wood strength testing machine". Great video Matthias.
The English longbow was a powerful medieval type of longbow about 2 meters long and was made of yew. Yew wood is missing in your testings.
Oh, they very much had a wood testing machine. It was the application itself. And previous builds with different apparent most suitable types, I'm guessing. There is no kind of testing for the application like the application. :-)
Also, you can get a pretty good idea just bending smaller sections by hand to failure. And one of the main strength differentials in wood is grain. I expect if you go look at those members you will find very straight grained long grain termination woods were chosen. Those guys were not REMOTELY stupid.
Anybody who ever built structures using rain forest woods probably went insane considering just the amount of different species of wood available. :-) Interesting data point, thx.
Sitka spruce. We build airplanes with it. Strong, light, and stable. Douglas fir is also crazy strong, but it's heavier. Our propellers are made from hard maple. Very tough, very strong, buy when it fails, it shatters. Love your testing device!
Sitka spruce is also used for the soundboards in pianos and other instruments due to its excellent acoustic properties.
Yea, the piano industry keeps the aircraft industry stocked with acceptable wood.
Another advantage of Sitka is it is very split resistant when any kind of fastener is used. D-Fir is the opposite.
@@HondoTrailside It is as long as the moisture content of the wood doesn’t get too dry. For example the Sitka spruce used on piano soundboards can form cracks along the quarter-sawn grain when a piano is not stored in a controlled environment that maintains appropriate temperature and humidity levels. Older pianos are even more susceptible to cracked soundboards since the fibers in the wood have naturally degraded with age and don’t have the strength to tolerate wild changes in humidity levels or temperatures. Dust that accumulates on the soundboard has a tendency absorb moisture out of the wood and cause it to dry too fast, causing cracks to form over time. Piano manufacturers tend to quarter saw the Sitka spruce for the soundboards to not only resist the tendency of warping and cracking but to also produce a superior high quality sound output for their instruments.
Sitka Spruce has many uses but making a bow is not one of them. The Modulus of Rupture is too low. Being light in weight is not a top priority for bow woods. You want a low Modulus of Elasticity (springy) with a high Modulus of Rupture (bending strength).
I've read that Dogwood was traditionally used for wagon wheel hubs due to its abrasion resistance. This might be an idea for future testing. This feature would come into play for things like drawer slides or rockers etc. Another idea might be fastner holding power, as in, the force required to pull a screw or nail. I really like the testing for unusual/ non-commercial species of wood.
If Mathias ever decided to make a single bow, I'm betting the whole channel would go Joerg Sprave in no time.
Arrr Heh heheheh
Let me show you its features
Osage orange is also called Bodark / Bois d'arc, which as I understand is French for "bow wood". Historically, Osage people would make bows out of it. It's also has the highest thermal coefficient of any North American wood. It burns so hot it has cracked some stoves.
👍🏻 checks out
Maclura pomifera has been known by a variety of common names in addition to Osage orange, including hedge apple, horse apple, the French bois d'arc and English transliterations: bodark and bodock, also translated as "bow-wood"; monkey ball, monkey brains, yellow-wood and mock orange.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maclura_pomifera
I always really enjoy when a UA-camr's viewers get involved in their projects. It makes the community aspect of this so much more evident.
I love seeing these tests, can't wait to see more.
Wow, That is a LOT of data! Thank you for taking the time to be so complete. I am always impressed with your level of detail. I really enjoyed your mouse trap videos as well as your joinery tests. It has been a pleasure to be a subscriber for all these years. Thank you!
This kind of information is surprisingly hard to find and very useful for woodworkers. Thanks for all the tedious work testing this and sharing the information.
Awesome! I'd love to see updates in the future with other really stout woods like live oak and lignum vitae.
I love all the information you provide in so many of your videos. Thank you very much!
Osage Orange is an amazing wood. Such a neat pre-historic tree. Even better for bows than the legendary English Yew. Grows naturally in such a small area of North America in Texas and Oklahoma and just a tiny part of Arkansas
Not sure your list is complete/correct, I live in Eastern Kansas and we have Osage Orange trees everywhere, including at least 10 in my yard.
Tons of hedgerows in Kansas too.
We had it on our farm in south east Nebraska. Prized as an excellent fence post because they would never rot. Not at all straight though. Makes for a crazy looking fence.
Ohioan checking in, I probably have 30+ Osage oranges in my fence row. It is strange though because if you look up a map of where they grow many do show an area similar to the one described by the original comment.
@@TheBananaPlug He is referring to its original natural range. It has been spread all across the US and parts of Canada but not naturally.
Thanks a lot for your time and efforts and for providing us with the data.
I love the set up more than the test is itself. I just love all the little automations you’ve added haha
Great jig Matthias , love it
I'm not sure why, but youtube hasn't been showing your videos in my subscription feed. I'm glad I realized it! Now I have tons to go back and watch!
Hello Mr. Wandel, thank you for a great demonstration, and the machine you built to measure the amount of force necessary to break the different species of wood is amazing. I appreciate your wooden gears and being able to measure the forces and plot graphs on your laptop.
Your videos never fail to please. Keep up the Great work!
Cheers from Sweden
Thanks for doing this. Loved learning!
Thanks for making your data available on your website! This will be useful to me for a long time!
Very very cool! I'll keep this in mind for future projects.
Nice tests and excellent work!
It's good to have data like this.. 👍
Totally awesome study!! Thanks for doing this AND sharing it! 👏👏
Great video! I thoroughly enjoyed watching.
Some scientific process, some random guy with an interest in something. So pure
Great work. Thanks for sharing the spreadsheet.
That was one of the best videos I've seen in a very long time.
I love the engineering concept on wood! You could make videos on different concepts and usability of woods.
It would be interesting to consider moisture content. I would assume that green wood of any variety would be different than dry wood.
Congratulations on your work! Have a wonderful 2022 with great health and success!
Back in the 90s I did some work for Team Aircraft, and when I visited their factory, that was basically the system they had for testing the spar wood they put in their aircraft kits. Except, they had a frame like yours but contained within it was a bathroom scale and a bottle jack, that simple. I didn't see your earlier video, but I gather you also tried that.
This new machine is incredible.
Great job sir! Thank you for this.
Thank you...you amaze me with your skills!!!! I know many others would agree with me.
Most awaited Topic. Thankyou.
Amazing video and concept!
Very interesting. Thanks for this. Grain orientation would affect results considerably as would grain runout over the length of the test piece.
Now, we'd love you to do the same test with riven wood, with force applied with grain vertical and grain horizontal. No rush.
I though the same thing.
For a non structural engineer, you’re pretty good explaining structural engineer things! Great video (again).
Thank you for the writeup and the video.
Very impressive, Matthias!
the editing in this video is so good.
I REALLY ENJOYED THIS VIDEO MATTHIAS.
So much info I never knew I needed to know.
This is great work. Hopefully one day someone will get this table and chair thing figured out.
Great experiment, very useful regarding the price of wood. It is certainly wise to look at your chart before buying any wood for a specific project. Thank you much. Merci beaucoup.
Amazing work
Always learn something new from my favorite Canadian polymath.
Great as always.
Wow! Amazing. So much work. Only comparable with project farm! :) Thanks for sharing.
I was just about to say posting the spreadsheet would be nice. Then I watched the end of video.👍
Thanks for this test, and for including the spreadsheet on your woodgears site. At some point, if it's possible, I'd like to see how poplar performs.
don't have any.
With @@matthiaswandel poplar isn't popular!
Its very easy to listen and relax to an honest voice, this is my night listening and sleep white noise type of asmr.
Really great video.
Amazingly interesting! I've got a bunch of dogwood in my garden, but never even considered it to be a productive plant. I have them for esthetics (the smaller branches are bright red in the winter) and because they make for excellent hiding spots for yard birds and bird feeders... It grows so easily once it takes root, so now I'll have to look into changing my cutting plans for this winter. I'll scrub some of the willow and ash and replace them with dogwood now. Funnily, the dogwood bushes are also the favorite place for my dogs to lie in the shade in the summer time!
great video. Thank you
This was really relaxing to watch
What a fun project!
Two questions:
1) What kinds of podcasts does Matthias listen to in the shop?
2) Would grain density at the test point have an effect on the penetration force result?
@matthias we need more of this.
Magnificent work, interesting machine, thanks
Hi Matthias,
I really enjoyed this video, and I love your bend testing machine. I'd like to make one someday for myself. A few points I'd like to bring forward:
A better bend test is a four-point bend test, as this distributes stress evenly along the length of the sample rather than focusing it in one place. The benefit of this is that if there happens to be a slightly weaker point at or near the centre, a 4PBT will accommodate it while a 3PBT will not. Essentially, the 4PBT gives you a true average of the strength acros the whole sample, while a 3PBT tells you the strength right at the centre.
In bowmaking, the value of a species or sample of timber for bowmaking is not its stiffness, nor its mass, but it's allowable working strain. The working strain is the elongation/compression that elicits a given (small) amount of plastic deformation. For example, Yew is an excellent bow wood because it's working strain is around 1.0% (a poor bow wood will have a working strain of about 0.6%).
Interestingly, two bows made of different timbers with similar working strains, but different densities, will have a similar mass... *despite* their density (and almost certainly stiffness) being different.
For those who may be interested, I wrote a series of posts about bend testing timber for making bows here:
ozbow.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=5450
And I wrote a bit about how to categorise and rank the merit of species of wood for bowmaking here:
ozbow.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=13765
Hello, I went to the traditional bowhunting site and was surprised to find out there are actually formulas when building a wood bow. Very interesting and complex. You probably won't see this question but will ask it anyway. This isn't about which is the best bow wood matter of fact the wood I'm looking for probably would make a lousy bow. What type(s) of wood would you recommend that is very springy and has the greatest bend (10' long and bending almost in half) before it breaks over multiple bendings? Would this wood continue to exhibit these qualities after a period of time and drying? The properties would be more like a living green sapling that resists breaking because of its flexibility. I demonstrate primitive trapping and have little access to small fresh-cut saplings and hope there is a type of wood that will work from year to year. My email is under the about tab when you click the red circle. Thank you.
I am very happy to see this data collected! I have had a passing interest in the strength to weight measure because of homebuilt aviation. Apparently many wood airplane designs are engineered using softwoods (particularly sitka spruce) because of their "superior strength to weight". However, by playing around with some numbers from the Wood Database, one can easily find that Shagbark Hickory, Black Locust, White Ash and Black Walnut all give excellent strength for their weight despite these first two being among the densest woods in the US. I would love to see you give a broader test comparing more samples of some of these highest strength woods against a broad sample of the common softwoods, especially those used in aviation (spruce, Douglas Fir, Birch). Sitka spruce in particular has become difficult to source and expensive so it could be very helpful for homebuilt/ experimental/ amateur engineers and builders of all walks. Also, I understand that grain orientation and density can create great variability in these tests. Not just grain angle vs force vector, but end grain and ring orientation, ring density (may even be backwards in "ring porous" hardwoods from "diffuse porous" softwoods). so a lot of variability to watch for in your testing. However or whatever you choose to do with you test rig, keep up the good work!
Impressive testing automation
It was interesting to see how well the results matched up - despite only testing a single sample of each - with historical uses of the timbers.
Very cool. Thank you
There was quite a section in the Boyer's bible on this topic. This is awesome info for that hobby. I'm betting there are lots of video links getting spread through bow making forums right now. You make some great content Mathias!
In case anyone is interested, it's available for free download at pdfdrive.
Thank you Mathias!
I remember making a bow from Dogwood as a Cub Scout in 1970…….it was native to Connecticut😎
Great information for us into Axes (Handles). Thanks for the info👍🏻
One thing missing from your bow analysis, which was very great so thank you, was compression and tensile repetitive stress in wood. From what I’ve read, osage is great in both. Elm is great in tension but the micro-fibers crush and permanently deform in repetitive compression resulting in the springiness and draw weight of the bow to degrade. Interestingly, makers of ancient Holmegaard bows seemed to know this and made design decisions minimizing wood in compression
Very helpful.
Very useful info!
What an awesome video, the heart pine was a surprise
Thanks for sharing. I am looking for some wood for a canoe outrigger boom, that is both strong and flexible. This kind of video is a great help.
Very interesting tests! One additional factor to consider alongside strength when choosing a wood for a project is availability. For example, in the UK and most of Europe, elm is sadly almost non-existant and so not readily available (and what is available is very expensive).
Very interesting as always! Just a quick tip that others have probably mentioned. Osage is pronounced OH-sayj with a soft "g"... the same as sage. It gets its name from the Osage people, a native American tribe of the great plains. They would travel sometimes hundreds of miles to locate this tree for their bows, so your findings align with their experience. Colloquially, I grew up knowing this tree as "horse apple." It's extremely rot-resistant, and is probably the best heating wood in North America.
Yeah, as a European, I paused the video to check Wikipedia for it. In French it's bois d'arc, which is literally wood for bows.
@@Kevin75668 Yes, but just slightly, Apple has 27 million BTUs per cord, while Osage Orange has almost 33 million BTU per cord.
Osage orange is also called hedge in some areas. Burns fantastic but not very fun to cut or split. Throws a ton of sparks too.
Hi, Matthias - We lived in Missouri, outside of St. Louis, a km or less from the Femme Osage river. There were lots of "Osage Orange" trees along the river's path, down past the Daniel Boone homestead to the Missouri River.
Young Osage orange trees can be coppiced, whereas you cut the tree close to the ground and many new shoots will emerge and grow thickly. This can form a fence which is said to be bull strong, horse high and hog tight.
Great video👍
Nice. I did know you are a inventive programmer too. The data gathered is really gold.
Great stuff.
you have the patience of a saint, well done, very interesting
Pretty interesting testing and results, Matthias! 😃
I wonder if straight grain vs whatever makes much of a difference.
Anyway, happy holidays! And stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
Yes grain structure/pattern can make a huge difference
Good to see that we made the right choice with ash flooring when it comes to "dent resistance".
Very cool video!!! !!
I would love to see you test some of the antipodean timbers from Australia and New Zealand such as Jarrah which is quite incredible and Kauri and heart Rimu and Kahikatea and some Asian ones like Kwila and Teak and Acacia and Gaboon/Merbau etc. This data is awesome. When our boat was built dad tested samples of plywood with a round lead ball dropped from about 1m high with the ply resting on dirt/grass - on all plys except the one we ended up using it went through, off the one we used it bounced. Indeed the hull got a few big hits over the years and always survived with no damage or localised damage that was easy to repair :-)
Spotted gum would be cool
Do it yourself. His system is amazing but it is way overkill, at the aircraft factory i was associated with they just used a welded frame like his, a bathroom scale and a 10 dollar bottle jack. But obviously a wood frame works also.
Also, look up spine tester. Gives you stiffness info which is more relevant anyway. With stuff like spars of boats and planes, and musical instruments, and arrows and bows, or floors, what you want to know is how much can you get out of them without them flexing beyond an accepted tolerance. You don't want them to break so testing them to failure is way past what you want. So for instance joists are sold as 240, 360, and 480. That is the amount they deflect over a given span, under the given load. so over 480 inches that spar would deflect 1 inch while the 240 would deflect one inch over 240 inches under the same load. The point being the deflection is way less that in a test to destruction.
this is an awesome video
Thanks for this test! I build instruments and I just made a 5ply ash neck blank for either a bass or guitar. Seeing it being ranked quite high I'm confident it's a good choice and will make a good neck :)
Great stuff as always.
I once was told that natives in Canada would make bows using black spruce that slowly grew I’m harsh places. The tight grain would make it suitable for bows.
Related to that, it would be interesting to see how lamination affects strength and flexibility, according to the number of layers.
Cheers.
very smart designs
Excellent video as usual, thank you. I would like to see you testing Paulownia (empress tree). It is a lightweight tree but still it's said to be pretty strong and would be perfect for furnitures if only the surface was harder.
Can we appreciate how good birch is considering how easy and fast it is to grow.
With such a good spring, you could use it to power a rolling cart or your blower/siren.
Matthias nailing the thumbnail game 👌🏻
Teak wood is worth considering it's regarded as strongest wood for making furniture in India. The best is considered Central Province Teak wood as it has much less moisture in it compared with African varieties.
Purple heart would be interesting too, just to get the two big wood shipmaking lumbers.
Thank you!
As always, good content. It is a great starting point to figure out the properties of different woods, but to make it a more accurate test one would need more than one sample of each wood species, 5 to 10 of each? And to make it a valid test on the species, each sample should come from different trees (of the same species of course), but getting all of those samples would be very hard.
If you calculate the cross section moment of inertia you can find out the tensile strength. Since all the samples are the same it should be rather easy to include in the spreadsheet
Wood is not an isotropic material: the material strength formulas do not apply.
@@philippeperrin8675 but if you calculate the tensile strength you know the strength in the grain direction, dont you?
@@niske The material strength formulas apply in the elastic range and not at break. Matthias' test is very interesting and impressive to compare woods. However it would be necessary to know the admitted load without the sample remaining deformed once the load has been removed.
Young's modulus or elasticity modulus only applies in the direction parallel to the grain. It is between ice and brick for most woods except bamboo.
It would be bending strength, not pure tensile strength. Although you could argue all the samples failed in tension, it's really not a pure tension test.
Гениально! Вы большой молодец!!!
I’ve been building my own bows over the last couple years. As I was watching this I though, “dang I wonder what bowyers would think of this” and then you talk about bows. That was pretty cool. I only make 3 piece take down bows now and I use fiberglass. But the first bow I made in high school was a hickory board bow. It for sure breaks with a bang. I didn’t have the grain running the right way and it snapped in half on one of the limbs. Cool video, thanks
Seems like a very tedious way to make kindling, although more interesting than the usual way :)
Would love to see you test Ipe!
Such a fantastic resource you are, Matthias. Thank You.
Just curious, were the samples stored in your shop long enough to have had similar moisture content?
I imagine in the winter there the humidity is quite low.
for two weeks or so. They are small, so they acclimatize faster.
@@matthiaswandel Always a step ahead, way to go man.
I know you are not a "BOW MAKER" but your a "MAKER" and a fine one. You can make awesome. Make a bow Please. Two kinds as noted above. It will get tons if views all of yr subs and all the subs of bow videos. Plus yr skills and input would help alot of folks
Please make a bow. A basic board bow then using ur skills a laminated one would be even better using ur wood data against common woods use for bows.
It would be greatly interesting and would be entertaining and knowledgeable...then test them via.speed , power, ease making and anything else
@@kendion4597 The way Matthias builds everything else, it wouldn't be long before a good bow would be made.
@@kendion4597 Bows are hard from what I'm told! They seem to require a different mindset to most other things. I've no experience personally, but a friend of mine is an archer and I asked her :) She said that most fletchers and other bow-adjacent folks don't make anything else! Bows take a lot of time and dedication and specific knowledge it seems. I doubt he has an interest in gearing his entire operation to making bows for youtube and giving up income from other sources for the time it would take to be "youtube-good-enough".
I built my desk pc out of cedar and red oak plywood. The grain can certainly look quite nice, and I used denser boards for the pieces covering the plywood tops edges and the apron. However, a lot of the other boards are quite soft and there are some small dents where something hard hit the legs. The upside is how cheap the wood was since it was dimensional lumber cedar and probably wasn't intended to be used in furniture.