Stronger Wood

Very interesting. I wonder whether this super-wood qualifies as "natural wood" for Rule 2.4.2 "At least 85% of the blade by thickness shall be of natural wood". I suppose not, given how it's obtained.

Quoting from the article:

wrote: The new process used here has two steps. First, natural wood is boiled in a mix of sodium hydroxide and sodium sulphite, which is actually similar to the process made to create wood pulp for paper. Next, the wood goes through a compression phase to collapse the walls between individual cells. Heat is added to encourage new chemical bonds while the wood continues to be compressed. Those processes are able to strip out certain polymers to allow the new wood to reform while also keeping other polymers essential to the wood's strength. The strengthening ultimately comes from large numbers of hydrogen atoms bonding to nanofibres of cellulose, already naturally in the structure of the wood.

On the other hand, you probably won't want to have thick layers of this stuff in your racket anyway, 80% reduction in thickness also means it has a 5x higher mass density.

But I can see the marketing: "the first wood-reinforced all wood blade"; "the non-composite composite blade", "the composite blade with all-wood feeling", etc.

Sounds like the second veneer of Persson Powerplay.

"Very interesting. I wonder whether this super-wood qualifies as "natural wood" for Rule 2.4.2 "At least 85% of the blade by thickness shall be of natural wood". I suppose not, given how it's obtained. "

"It is no longer natural. At least, it is not found in nature that way. Super-wood is deeply different down to the molecular level."

Those processes are able to strip out certain polymers to allow the new wood to reform while also keeping other polymers essential to the wood's strength."

Edited by Fulanodetal - 02/12/2018 at 7:48pm