If that’s your concern you can already buy ceramic knives in any kitchen store. Or go full Raven and knap a glass knife yourself
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I mean there are definitely crafts that use natural body oils as part of their toolset.
But as a gilder you only need a tiny amount from your cheek, so that the gold leaf sticks to the brush. No way that would be enough to coat a nail.
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What about industrial hemp? According to wikipedia hemp has “a significantly lower lignin fraction” than wood pulp so it would require just as much less chemicals (Not to mention it is a much stronger fiber). Impact could be reduced even more with a fungus based pulping method. Since I saw a similar article to this one some years ago on slashdot I’ve fantasized about the possibility of replacing tree wood with hemp wood.
I suppose we could use recycle paper too.
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what’s the tensile strength compared to iron?
How much plastic, steel and other non-renewable resources are involved in the hardening process? Is there a net gain? It’s definitely great to be inventing new things and exploring, but there’s a difference between making an interesting thing and actually coming up with a workable solution to a problem.
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Implying steel is unsustainable is nonsense. It’s one of the few materials we have that is actually and genuinely recyclable. It can be reused infinitely with no degradation. Plastic recycling is basically all a lie, and recycling paper is dubious at best. You get maybe one additional use out of it for low grade applications if you also mix in half virgin material.
Yes, steel production is currently carbon intensive, but that’s just because we currently do it as cheaply as possible with no regard for negative externalities. That’s not steel’s fault, it’s a lack or government regulations on industry.
This whole article is greenwashing PR rubbish.
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Well, if you are trying to disappear people, that’s what the quicklime pits are for. 
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Right. DiethylMercury is also organic.
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So it can take a finer edge, but how wear resistant is it?
How “tough”? (in terms of tolerating lateral deformation without any sort of cracking/chipping then returning to true?)
Ceramic knives already exist. They are commonly manufactured with a steel insert at the request of airport security or similar, but it’s easy enough to find the without.
IIRC Lignin is one of those amazing biomaterials that refuses to dissolve in pretty much anything short of concentrated sulfuric acid.
That’s why they use so much H2SO4 in paper mills.
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There’s absolute sharpness testing rigs.
They are a test stand that applies an exact and standard amount of tension to a standardized wire, and measure the force a sample blade imparts on the wire before it snaps.
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There are other questions to ask: 1) how long does this material retain that edge while in use? 2) how easy is it to sharpen it again? 3) how many times can you sharpen it?
I have sincere doubts that this material will outperform steel in any of these three.
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EMP test rigs?
Trestle is the world’s largest structure composed entirely of wood and glue laminate.
IIRC, including the nails/bolts.
Structures for radio frequency emissions testing are best constructed without any metals.
They aren’t? Damn, gotta let my knife salesman know. 1,50 € per knife and you are good for a decade.
A dull table knife is a reason to boycott a restaurant.
If they’re good for a decade that’s a pretty good indication they aren’t sharpened and don’t need sharpening. The other name for table knives is butter knives. These things aren’t usually ground to a edge, though they’ll be formed with a bit of one. Often get a few very mild serrations.
To be really clear about it. The thing in the video is not as sharp as my unsharpened butter knives.
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Hard?
I haven’t been keeping up: I wanted to know more about the research team’s “wooden batteries” and “transparent wood” mentioned in the VOA video. I don’t recall hearing about either.
I’m curious how much is actually recycled, though. Do any US cities allow hunks of steel in the recycling bins? My experience is that most (if they have anything at all) have a metal-recycling dump you need to manually bring stuff to, so probably nearly no one does. And I don’t know about worldwide.
I genuinely wonder which is easier: invent some new green material to replace steel in some applications, or change the steel industry through regulations to require more recycling and greener production.
