Compsand Community

[Kit Sidwell]

Jesus was a carpenter

I've looked into the "R" foam....
The R stands for Regrind, the percentage they grind up and recycle.

The stuff i've checked out and done tests with, (no boards made though) is 50% regrind, so it has differing size beads throughout.
The fusion is lower, but according to the manufacturer, this is simply attributed to it's lighter weight (8kg/m3 - 10kg/m3), just as VH grade is harder to tear apart than lesser grades.

The main issue that has me avoiding it for now, it that the stuff I have access to isn't kiln dried....
As it's a packaging grade foam, they don't dry it.
All the other grades will end up in permanent applications, such as inside walls, etc, so they need to be dry.
They kiln dry it at 60 degC for a week! Something i'm not prepared to replicate at home right now.
If you want to store it somewhere dry for a few months, you could get the moisture content down.
I can make boards that flex well with the foam i'm using, and it's proven to me now, so i'm happy for the moment.

I buy my Paulownia by-the-tree-trunk, from a local plantation, so i'm lucky in that respect. It really is the most amazing wood.
I mill it myself with homemade jigs for my skill saw - works really well.It's a different one that I showed on Sways, if anyones interested. Takes some metal fabrication work to make.

[RoyStewart]

I'm not sure that the moral dilema is really between using old growth/new growth trees. Personally I would rather use mature trees that are nearing the end of there useful lives and have been selected for harvest as part of good forest management, than younger trees from a plantation that exists in an area of forest that was clear cut for the purpose of starting a plantation.

In New Zealand at least Paulownia is usually grown by farmers and people with lifestyle blocks or orchards who want to diversify with a few  trees. I certainly haven't heard of anyone clear cutting to plant paulownia, and it's such a small market that there would be little point in doing so.

Paulownia is beneficial to stock as the leaves which fall in the autumn are good feed and improve the health of the animals. The paulownia trees can also be continuously coppiced so harvesting the tree does not end it's life.  Paulownia also improves the soil which is grows in. 

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[tomway]

Hi Roy - yep, I'm sure forestry practices in NZ are up there with the best in the world.

My post was probably a bit subjective. Paul's motion is spot on. I'm just a bit bummed because I live in one of the areas he listed as a nono and I love building wooden boards  Always looking for ways to get suitable wood responsibly here.

Maybe there could be some kind of compsanders 'wood aware' logo that shows the builder puts some active thought into his/her sourcing of materials?

[paul cannon]

well you live there bro so it would be a lot easier for you to source timber that has say dropped in a storm
imnot saying dont use them
there some lovely timbers over here that i would like to use but only if they were storm felled or recylced

[Marco]

OK, So I know I had some tasks on my to do list here.

I've heard back from the bamboo supplier.

The 4' x 8' sheets of 1/8" flat grain is $76 USD per sheet.   
They also have an unadvertised two-ply veneer (1/21" or 1.2mm) he's getting me the price on that.
 
Also, they stopped carrying the sheet because they were getting too many returns as it is very brittle.
They had 4 sheets left at the local warehouse and I got a chance to look/touch it.
It's very nice but as he said, very brittle. i.e. you can split the strips apart very easily by hand.
The 1/8" is also quite heavy @ 16# per sheet. If I figure the rough numbers correctly that would bring the skins for a 6'6" fish out to 12# just for the skin.
I talked with Bob Mitzven this morning @ Tourmaline. He had his Western Red Cedar chambered fish (5' 10" I think). He says it's 14#, which felt about right.
Not much advantage to the 1/8" bamboo skinned compsand weight wise.

I'll cross post this to my Fishy thread and put all further info/questions there.

[Bernhardt]

OK, So I know I had some tasks on my to do list here.

I've heard back from the bamboo supplier.

The 4' x 8' sheets of 1/8" flat grain is $76 USD per sheet.   
They also have an unadvertised two-ply veneer (1/21" or 1.2mm) he's getting me the price on that.
 
Also, they stopped carrying the sheet because they were getting too many returns as it is very brittle.
They had 4 sheets left at the local warehouse and I got a chance to look/touch it.
It's very nice but as he said, very brittle. i.e. you can split the strips apart very easily by hand.
The 1/8" is also quite heavy @ 16# per sheet. If I figure the rough numbers correctly that would bring the skins for a 6'6" fish out to 12# just for the skin.
I talked with Bob Mitzven this morning @ Tourmaline. He had his Western Red Cedar chambered fish (5' 10" I think). He says it's 14#, which felt about right.
Not much advantage to the 1/8" bamboo skinned compsand weight wise.

I'll cross post this to my Fishy thread and put all further info/questions there.

You can build a cedar/paulownia hollow in either in Paul Jensen's, Roy Stewart's or Rick Blundell's method using only handtools. You can glass it with Bamboo cloth or just hand rub and seal the exterior with oil.
No foam no fiberglass just glue and sealers and those can be biobased as well.

As Eva the Boardlady once said if an engineer was inventing a surfboard he would've made the core out of air.

Just something to think about as your mind goes green

as there are others ways to get there using just wood and not having to core out and waste big thick planks..

Like Roy's often said, all you need is a 1000 little pieces of wood to make one of his creations.

[RoyStewart]

 Well this person has been barefoot for 15 years, and I only wear  New Zealand wool !

 I'm not quite sure what you are driving at, you seem to think that those who are critical of 'bio' or 'green ' products are somehow less committed to the environment than those who just jump on the bandwagon and accept everything maketed as green.. . . ..  but really we have to be critical we have no other choice.

The fact is that people in 'developed'  nations use a vast amount of resources and that won't change just by making a certain crop or bio process part of the manufacturing process. . . . you are still going to be using the same amount of resources or more by making resins plastics fuels etc from crops. . . . essentially all that is being done is that the fossil fuels are being 'laundered' ( as in money laundered ) through a crop in orer to make it marketable to the public.

People seem to think that there is some magic brew whereby we can  blithely continue to  consume 20 times what we need in order to survive, but we can't.  The levels of consumption we have are only possible due to fossil fuels, the fossil fuels are a vast store of energy which we are squandering.  Without fossil fuels it will be impossible for us to produce the same surplus . . ..  organic farming and manual labour cannot produce 10 or 20 times what a person needs, and cannot produce enough to keep us consuming at the current rate.

So most of this bio green  movement is just a smokescreen which hides the fact that we are still squandering resources at an unsustainable rate, it just lulls people into a false sense of security.  Bio fuels for example use more fossil fuels top produce than if the fuel was mae directly from fossil fuel. . . . thus they make the situation worse, and that's not even taking into account the destruction of the land which is caused by large scale fossil fuel based monoculture.

The usual argument against all this is that we have to simply join the green movement and have faith that all these ' little' teething problems will be sorted out later, but the whole premise of the movement is false.

Regarding wood, paulownia is good for the environment, I can grow it in my back yard where it improves the soil,  no fossil fuels are required to grow and mill it.


So please do me a favour and don't insult those of us who use their critical faculties in these matters by calling us cynical, we all proceed as we think best, and it is not immoral to come to our own conclusions.. . . .  although it might not suit your current business plan for us to do so.

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[paul cannon]

strange!!!!
what happend to the post

[RoyStewart]

 Not sure, but he's out there promoting our wax recipe on Swaylocks right now so he's doing something right 

 Greenlight offered us the NZ distribution for their stuff but I'm not sure about it, the bamboo cloth is tempting but I know what knitted cloths are like they are basically just resin absorption cloths and they have little tensile strength, that's if it's anything like knitted cheesecloth.

 I just figured out if I use 30 to 40 litres of epoxy a year then it's not much fossil fuel compared to driving a vehicle annually, and if it produces something of lasting value then it's not all bad

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[paul cannon]

like i said plastic is a good use of petroleum
much better then using it for aircraft carriers

[vpravada]

if anyone finds Paulownia in SD let me know