Originally published at: Wooden velcro attempted, with limited success | Boing Boing
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I’d be interested to know how much of this is a fabrication problem, where getting wood to form the ideal hook-and-loop shapes is just deeply nontrivial; and how much of it might be a material property thing that could only be resolved either by a change of scale(since macro-level wood a more or less prosaic solid; but its fibrous tendencies are easier to bring to the fore if you scale down a bit); and how much would require outright cheating and converting some of the cellulose in the hook-and-loop area into one of the cellulose-derived semisynthetic fibers that have much more plasticky properties.(rayon, viscose, one of the more plasticized celluloid formulations)
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I’d expect that at some point Shenzhen will automate with a purpose built machine
depending on the classic return value
If they do; I really hope there’s a video. At least according to Our Wiki Overlords, the origins of velcro fabrication involved some years of dedicated experimentation, despite enjoying the freedom to exploit more or less any commercially viable fiber that seem to have useful properties; so some specialist wood-flenser will likely be a joy to see in operation.
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well… the effort was so random I might be able to do better myself ha ha…
Liked for this, alone. 
That first attempt worked significantly better than I expected it to. I’d bet that if this was a consistent pattern machined into the wood instead of semi-random gouges it would work even better.
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