It’s Bulletproof, Fire-Resistant and Stronger Than Steel
As the dwindling supply of Marine Timber starts to bite, this article by Christopher Mims in the Wall Street Journal caught my eye.
Inside a cavernous warehouse, in the midst of a half-finished industrial park not far from a Civil War battleground, robot arms the size of Cadillac Escalades are rehearsing their moves for a tightly choreographed dance that will commence later this summer.
A strange new substance will begin rolling off the assembly line: soft wood transformed at the molecular level into something stronger than steel yet one-sixth the weight.
Its name is, maybe, a bit on the nose: Superwood.
Its maker, startup InventWood, says it could someday replace steel I-beams in the skeleton of a building, while being impact-resistant enough for bulletproof doors. It’s also fire resistant—the outside carbonizes in a way that protects the inside, and it won’t sag in a fire like steel. It would be a coup if the company can replace a good chunk of construction-grade steel and concrete with scrap wood that is otherwise unusable waste.
Superwood is also, I can attest, beautiful. The densification process deepens its color and brings out its natural grain. Alex Lau, InventWood’s chief executive, handed me several of the oddly lustrous, improbably stiff boards as we toured the company’s test lab and under-construction factory in central Maryland.