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MDF is currently glued together with something
containing
formaldehyde which makes it dangerous to burn and
presumably also quite harmful to saw without inhaling.
At
the same time, there are perfectly nice bits of real wood
hanging about which it seems a waste to set fire to but
aren't
big enough to use to make furniture, planks or
daleks, and there are also trees which produce nice
resins.
Why not put the two together and make nice fibreboard?
Get some scraps of wood you can't use structurally, chip
them then soak them in molten resin from an actual tree
before pressing them into boards. The result (provided
the resin isn't thermosetting) could be a versatile wood-
like structural material without an appreciable grain
which
could also be burnt fairly safely. You could also
strengthen joints made with it by heating, thereby
melting bits of resin together, or mould "wooden"
pieces.
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Annotation:
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the resin isn't the thing that's holding wood together. |
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Not when it's alive. The idea is to take some
sawdust and soak it in resin. Lignin sticks lumps of
wood together. I'm suggesting that resin is used to
cause particles of wood to stick together. |
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I dunno. Resin is very brittle. |
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Also, why do you expect burning resin to be any less harmfull
than burning man-made glues? Bubonic plague is natural too,
after all. |
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//Bubonic plague is natural too, after all.// Yes, but it makes a poor substitute for wood. |
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It would be used to stick the wood together, not replace it, [xen] |
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formaldehyde-free MDF is available. Not sure how great whatever else in there is, though. |
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You know what's a major carcinogen? Creosote. You know,
pine sap. Natural does not equal safe, especially if you're
heating and cooling it repeatedly. |
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I'm aware that creosote is carcinogenic. That's
_one_
resin. It doesn't follow that all resins are
carcinogenic, for instance myrrh and rosin. I'm not
suggesting burning it, just melting it. Creosote is
not generally from conifers in any case, but
chaparral (which i don't use in case you were
curious) and Betula, sorry, Fagus, or from coal tar. |
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The point of it being part of the biosphere is
nothing
to do with it being healthy, it's about approaching
carbon-neutrality and avoiding the introduction of
compounds which are likely to accumulate because
they don't get metabolised. |
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There are already hundreds of pressed board forumulations that have been experimented with. It's unlikely that much that is obvious has escaped the attentions of waste-recycling-for-profit in the building materials industry. Not to say that some fantastic, and very 'green' method will not be announced tomorrow; but what you've described is almost certain to have been attempted by now. |
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Natural resin : not going to pass flammability standards. Your house would burn like an E-Z LITE fire starting stick. |
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Lots of people seem to think that we stick shit together for sticky-ness. This is not true! Sticky-ness was solved a long time ago. We stick shit together for other reasons. Chief amongst those reasons is flame retardation. Why formaldehyde?Becuase it don't react! Well organically, anyway. |
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You want to make a friendly chipbaoard? Paint a fucking smiley face on the existing one... |
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bwouo man! fushazazle on de boaord be wik'ed cou! |
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Booyakhasha! C to the H2 the izzo! |
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// [M-D-F] recipe.
bigsleep, Dec 13 //
An idea crying out for this annotation - from the first sentence. |
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But i want it to burn well. Right now, i can't burn the MDF because it's not safe to do so. This stuff would go up like a firework. And [gnomethang], amazingly i didn't think of that at first. |
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Safety is overrated. I want asbestos sandwiches. |
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//It doesn't follow that all resins are carcinogenic// |
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Actually, it does - more or less. Most organic gloop is
carcinogenic when burned. Why? Because any organic
gloop contains a bunch of complex (often aromatic) carbon
compounds, which break down in all kinds of complex ways
when heated (which also happens when sawing). |
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The worst effects happen when the stuff is burned at
relatively low temperatures, or with inadequate oxygen.
Under these circumstances, just about everything from
coal to wood is carcinogenic, roughly to the same degree. |
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If you want to design a non-carcinogenic-when-burned
glue, you would avoid natural products like the plague. At
least with synthetics you have a chance of finding
something simple whose breakdown products you can
understand and whose combustion yields relatively few
carcinogens. |
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[-] because this idea is based on a romantic misconception
that nature actually gives a shit. |
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Thanks Max. It's nice to learn something new. On a somewhat related matter, I recently wondered how it is that silica dust could result in silicosis when cowhands, sheep herders, Arab nomads, invading Huns, etc, etc, have been gulping lungfulls of silica dust for since, well forever. |
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The diference, I discovered, is how the grains are broken down. Our lungs have adapted to the vast majority of silica dust on the planet because it it microscopically pretty smooth. We just cough up a little mud. No harm done. |
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The dangerous variety is generally 'man made' by saws, chisels, crushers, blasters that fracture the grain rather than wear it smooth. It was hard to get siicosis in the old days using just a hammer and chisel, but still possible. It's just a lot easier today with powertools. This dust is microscopically jagged. It's difficult to dislodge from the lungs and tends to tear things up. It's exactly the difference between a shard of broken bottle on the beach that has been there for fifty years, or was just broken yesterday. Only the latter is likely to ruin your day. |
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And thanks to you, also, outloud - I too have acquisited new
information, and am gluternaturally pleased. |
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