Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/01/02/hemp-wood-here-we-come.html
…
14 Likes
Thats pretty awesome. Can hemp also be turned into some kind of plastic like bamboo?
11 Likes
While that may sound like some newfangled version of particle board, it’s not.
How not?
It looks and feels like oak, but is actually 20 percent harder than the famous hardwood tree. It also grows 100 times as fast. While it takes an oak tree at least 6 decades to mature, it takes hemp 6 months.
OK, so it’s very hard, fast-growing particle board?
18 Likes
18 Likes
That looks like a kind of fiber or particle board as opposed to “plastic.”
Like bamboo and other plants, hemp has alpha cellulose that can be converted into rayon and other cellulose-based plastics.
10 Likes
The damn IGNORE feature is glitching, yet again.
9 Likes
Wasn’t that the premise of “Up in Smoke”?
12 Likes
Can you provide details via PM to Ken?
2 Likes
I can
5 Likes
fascinating! better than expected
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzNTurPFHZU
2 Likes
my first thought, too!
2 Likes
The key difference is not in the plant materials going in, but how they are glued together.
Particle board is assembled kind of like an oatmeal cookie - you have the rough ingredients held together randomly with a sticky mixture, then cured. But instead of oats and raisins held together with flour and eggs, particle board is wood chips and sawdust held together with resin.
This hemp wood looks more like how bamboo lumber is made, using precise strips of the stem glued together in a controlled fashion. The article even mentions that “the company uses technology popularized by China’s strand-woven bamboo industry…” For a food analogy here, imagine the folding and layers that go into a properly made croissant or puff pastry.
28 Likes
My first response was excitement. Then I thought, well, it’s probably not going to be commercially available for forever, so then I was kind of disappointed. Then I remembered I am poor, and by the time I buy a home so much time will have gone by, that it might be available, then I was excited again.
17 Likes
What’s the burn factor? I’d hope it’s less flammable as a bonus.
12 Likes
It’s already a huge part of the automotive plastics industry which is one reason why hemp products are hard to find in textiles (real threads and yarns, not the inferior grade of hippie binder-twine found at craft fairs).
12 Likes
it just smokes!
16 Likes
Where did the word ‘marijuana’ come from? In the mid 1930s, the M-word was created to tarnish the good image and phenomenal history of the hemp plant – as you will read. The facts cited here, with references, are generally verifiable in the Encyclopedia Britannica which was printed on hemp paper for 150 years :
-
All schoolbooks were made from hemp or flax paper until the 1880s. (Jack Frazier. Hemp Paper Reconsidered. 1974.)
-
It was legal to pay taxes with hemp in America from 1631 until the early 1800s. (LA Times. Aug. 12, 1981.)
-
Refusing to grow hemp in America during the 17th and 18th centuries was against the law! You could be jailed in Virginia for refusing to grow hemp from 1763 to 1769 (G. M. Herdon. Hemp in Colonial Virginia).
source: The Marijuana Conspiracy: Why Hemp is Illegal - Benzinga
Prohibition ended 3 years earlier and the US had large bureaucracy of law enforcement with nothing to do. Also, Dupont Chemicals had patent and manufactured Nylon which hemp competed cheaply against.
I have wood/paper pressed floor boards. Not the best product, prone to water damage and humidity. Perhaps this hemp wood is better. 
18 Likes
You’re right that there aren’t a lot of textile supplies available, but I don’t enjoy sewing enough to be terribly bothered. I don’t do plant fibers in my knitting either. At least there are enough brands like Patagonia incorporating hemp into their clothing lines that I can buy basic hemp staples to replace my clothing as it dies. Cotton has nothing on the durability of hemp. It’s nice to see building materials like this as well.
11 Likes
