ClassX Video Lessons Youtube Channel Curiosity Stream Turning Trash into Timber: Exploring the Eco-Friendly Side of Recycled Lumber!
Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you couldn’t just buy lumber? With the recent surge in lumber prices, this question has become more relevant than ever. Andy from the YouTube channel “How to Make Everything” took on the challenge to create his own lumber using waste materials like cardboard, plastic, and sawdust. This experiment dives into the world of modern wood composites, which are typically made from a mix of wood particles and plastic.
Wood composites are known for their unique properties, making them suitable for various applications. Although they are generally more expensive than regular wood, using recycled materials could potentially lower the cost. Andy’s goal was to produce lumber without any material costs, relying solely on recycled resources. The main challenge was the labor-intensive process required to create the composite material.
One of the primary obstacles in this project was reducing the size of the particles. Andy anticipated difficulties in grinding the materials and achieving the right composition and mixture. The process involved collecting raw materials, such as plastic waste, cardboard, and sawdust, and using tools to grind them into smaller pieces.
Initially, Andy faced issues with the wood chipper, which proved ineffective for plastic. He resorted to hand-cutting the materials until he discovered that an electric planer could efficiently cut them into smaller chunks. This step was crucial for creating a workable composite material.
Typically, wood composites are formed using thermoplastics, which become malleable when heated. The most common method involves an extruder, where the plastic and wood mixture is pushed through a tube to form the desired shape. However, this method requires specialized equipment. Andy opted for a simpler approach: heating the materials into a gooey mixture and pressing them into a mold to create a board shape.
Andy constructed a mold using steel pieces from a scrap yard. He designed a U-shaped mold with a top plate to press the heated materials into a firm shape. Before attempting the recycled plastic boards, he experimented with a technique similar to making plywood, using wood fibers and glue. Unfortunately, this method resulted in a weak, crumbly board.
Moving on to the recycled plastic, Andy created a makeshift kiln with ceramic insulation and a heating element to melt the plastic. The process involved careful temperature control to avoid releasing toxic fumes. Despite these efforts, the first attempt at pressing the composite materials resulted in a crumbly and thin board.
To improve the results, Andy realized the importance of achieving uniform particle sizes. He focused on grinding the plastic into finer particles and using larger sawdust to match the size. The cardboard was boiled and blended into a fine pulp. Despite these adjustments, the second attempt still yielded a crumbly result.
Determined to succeed, Andy scaled down the process and used an expensive blender to achieve finer particles. This effort resulted in a solid wood substitute made entirely from recycled materials. Although the board was still somewhat brittle, it demonstrated the potential of using waste materials to create usable lumber.
While the experiment showed promise, Andy acknowledged the need for industrial equipment to achieve better results. An extruder could compact and mix the materials more effectively, paving the way for mass production of recycled lumber. Andy plans to build his own industrial equipment for future experiments, aiming to produce lumber that is both eco-friendly and cost-effective.
This project highlights the potential of turning waste into valuable resources. By exploring innovative methods and refining techniques, we can contribute to a more sustainable future. Stay tuned for Andy’s follow-up video, where he will continue to push the boundaries of recycled lumber production.
Research the different types of wood composites available in the market. Focus on their composition, properties, and applications. Prepare a presentation to share your findings with the class, highlighting the environmental benefits of using recycled materials in these composites.
Gather waste materials such as cardboard, plastic, and sawdust. Attempt to create a small piece of composite material using a simple mold and heat source. Document the process and results, and be prepared to discuss the challenges and successes you encountered during the experiment.
Select a company or project that utilizes recycled lumber or wood composites. Analyze their methods, challenges, and successes. Write a report on how their approach contributes to sustainability and what improvements could be made to enhance their processes.
Participate in a class debate on the potential of recycled lumber as a mainstream building material. Consider factors such as cost, environmental impact, and scalability. Prepare arguments for and against its widespread adoption, and engage with your peers to explore different perspectives.
Work in groups to design a small building or structure using recycled lumber and other sustainable materials. Create a detailed plan that includes material sourcing, construction methods, and environmental impact assessments. Present your project to the class, emphasizing the benefits of using recycled materials in construction.
Here’s a sanitized version of the YouTube transcript:
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[Music] My name is Andy from the YouTube channel “How to Make Everything.” Curiosity Stream challenged me to explore what if you couldn’t buy lumber. Lumber prices this past year have been astronomical, so I’m going to see what it would take to try and make my own from waste products such as cardboard, plastic, and sawdust.
[Music] Basically, what I’m going to be trying to recreate is modern wood composite. This is a material made from a combination of wood particles and plastic, which has unique attributes that make it preferable for certain situations. Normally, composite wood is a lot more expensive than regular wood, but with today’s prices, that might be more achievable. My secret weapon is going to be using all recycled material, so theoretically, this is not going to have any material cost to produce my actual lumber. The sticking point might be the amount of labor it takes to actually make it, but if you have a lot of free time on your hands, this is potentially a way to make free wood.
There are a few challenges I expect along the way, both in getting a good shape in my form and also good composition and mixture. Last time, in my last project where I tried to turn grass into ethanol, one of the biggest shortcomings I ran into was reducing the particle size, and I expect that’s going to be another challenge in this project—trying to grind up all of my products. That’ll probably be one of the biggest challenges, and the next will be just engineering something that actually works for pressing it and trying to get the right ratio of plastic and wood. Oftentimes, they add other components into it as well. This is going to be a little bit of an experiment with a few challenges that hopefully will lead to some usable lumber to actually build something with.
First, I collected the raw resources through myself and donations from friends. I was able to get a pretty large supply of usable plastic waste, as well as a large supply of cardboard and sawdust just from the floor of the workshop. Then I purchased a few extra tools to help grind everything up.
[Music] The wood chipper proved to be somewhat ineffective, and plastic just got jammed inside, so instead, I had to resort to hand-cutting a lot of it. Eventually, I figured out that an electric planer can be pretty effective at cutting them up, and I roughly followed some directions I found online to crudely cut and weld a frame to feed the bits of plastic into the planer, grinding them into small chunks.
[Music] When it comes to wood composites, they’re generally made up of wood particles and plastic particles. The plastic is usually a thermoplastic, which is a plastic that, when heated up, becomes malleable. There are two main ways to form it into the shape you want. The most common way is called an extruder, where you melt the plastic mixed in with your wood and other materials and push it through a tube to fill whatever shape you want to extrude it. However, it’s a little complicated because you need a heating apparatus and a screw to push everything through while it’s still hot. There’s an easier way; the results are probably not going to be as good, but it’ll be easier to make. When you’re trying to do it yourself, it’s probably a better bet. I’m going to do the simpler method: heat everything up into a gooey mess, squish it, and build a basic mold to get roughly the shape of my board. This is just an excuse for me to play with the materials.
First, I went to the scrap yard and collected a few different pieces of steel that I think will make a good mold. I have a two-by-four shape, and I’m going to cut off the top of this to create a U-shape with a top plate. As it heats up and gets to the right temperature, I can then pump some hydraulic jacks to crush and press it together to be nice and firm. In addition to a structural 2×4, I also want to make something more like a sheathing layer, kind of like plywood or siding.
Before moving to the recycled plastic boards, I thought I’d try a simpler technique first, similar to how plywood like OSB is made—gluing wood fibers together with urea-formaldehyde glue and pressing them into a solid block. Unfortunately, this result was pretty ineffective, resulting in a very weak board that crumbled when I tried to take it out. So let’s move on to trying it with the actual recycled plastic and see if I can get a better result.
[Music] I was able to cut and weld the metal frames and then laid out some ceramic insulation around them to build a makeshift kiln. I have the heating element wrapped around the bottom, separated by fire brick. I have it all wired up with a solid-state relay and a thermocouple that will read the temperature and control it to keep it at the right temperature, which is important when melting plastic. Most of the plastic we’re trying to use is not toxic at a low temperature, but if I get too high, it starts to release fumes, which is not ideal.
So this is in Fahrenheit; I hope otherwise I’d be in trouble. Unfortunately, that is how hot it is in here. It’s set to 100, fully heating up. The thermocouple is reading, the relay is on, and I can feel the heat coming out of there, so I think we are all set. It actually worked! Now to wire this up in something a little bit safer, and we can start making some lumber.
Let’s move on to the composite wood and see if I can get something a little bit more usable by filling the long mold with chunks and ground particles of plastic mixed in with some fine sawdust. I’m going to hold off on the cardboard for now, as it might have been the cause of the failure of the first attempt. After heating the plastic to its melting point, I started to apply pressure and press everything together.
Just a quick reminder: if you want smart, fun content like this video in the future, go ahead and subscribe to Curiosity Stream’s YouTube channel, as they’re the ones helping me with these challenges. I did the first attempt with pressing the composite materials, and the end result was not very great. It’s very crumbly, and a lot of it did not mix well and just kind of falls apart. It also soaked in around the edges of the top plate and is now stuck to it in a lot of places, so not very usable. It also turned out really thin; I thought I put a lot in there, but it compacts down quite a bit.
I’m going to try a few different things to hopefully remedy this. I think my biggest issues with this first attempt were that I used really fine sawdust and fairly large plastic chunks. If I’m able to get the different materials of the composite to similar sizes and then pre-mix them, I can probably get a much better result. So I need to grind the plastic into a finer powder, probably use larger sawdust that matches that size, and then probably get the cardboard a little smaller than how it comes out of the shredder. This is definitely going to add a lot more man-hours to the process, but I’m hopeful we can get this to work.
First, I need to grind the plastic better. The shredder I was able to use with the wood planer worked fairly well, but it’s still tedious to feed every little piece of plastic into there and make sure it’s the right size before it goes in. Instead, I’m going to try throwing everything into a big pot and melting it into a giant glob. Then I can go at it with the hand planer, which should allow me to get a large supply of relatively finely ground plastic. For the cardboard, it’s still fairly large after going through the shredder, so I’m boiling it to break it down a bit with some added lye to help, then running it through a blender to get a fine pulp and drying it into chunks.
[Music] Unfortunately, even with more evenly sized particles, the second attempt yielded a very similar crumbly result without much integrity. I think the only solution is going to be to go even finer, which can be really difficult to do at a large scale. So I think I’m going to have to scale things down. Unfortunately, a workshop fire caused the loss of some of my tools and access to my main workshop, so we’re going to have to wait until a second part to really scale this up into something more usable.
[Music] After several attempts, we actually have a fairly decent and solid result! This is a wood substitute that was successfully made using just recycled materials—pieces of plastic, discarded cardboard boxes, and sawdust. Together, they formed a fairly decent and hard surface. It was only when I ground everything as fine as possible using an expensive blender that I was able to get a pretty decent result. It’s equivalent to a decent particle board—something that you could technically make furniture out of. It stands up a lot better than all the other attempts, and even still, there are clear opaque pieces in here where things are not evenly mixed, which is why it’s still a little brittle.
But I think this is a solid proof of concept. This is all recycled material, so technically, this is completely free. That being said, it did take a few hours to process all the materials and grind them up, so it’s maybe a $25 to $40 piece of wood. Plus, there are a lot of upfront equipment costs: the electric planer, the blender, toaster oven, and the paper shredder—it’s about $600 really to achieve this.
On an industrial scale, you’re going to need some industrial equipment that will use an extruder, which in the process of compacting everything will also mix it. I think that will yield a much better result than this. So I’m going to do a follow-up video where I’m basically going to build some industrial equipment myself to both shred and extrude this, and I think that will lead to a much better result. I think it’ll really open the door to mass-producing some usable lumber that is effectively free because it’s made entirely out of recycled items.
So you’ll have to check out that next video, which will be coming up pretty soon. For more videos like this, be sure to subscribe to this channel right now and look for Curiosity Stream on social media. Links are in the description. Also, if you have any ideas on how to make this experiment work better, feel free to leave them in the comments below.
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This version removes any informal language, personal anecdotes, and specific references to challenges faced, while maintaining the overall structure and content of the original transcript.
Recycled – Processed or treated materials that have been used before and are reused to create new products. – Engineers are increasingly using recycled materials in construction to reduce environmental impact.
Lumber – Wood that has been processed into beams and planks, a stage in the process of wood production. – The structural integrity of the building was enhanced by using high-quality lumber.
Composites – Materials made from two or more constituent materials with significantly different physical or chemical properties. – The aerospace industry often utilizes composites to create lightweight and strong components.
Materials – Substances or components with certain physical properties used in production or manufacturing. – Selecting the right materials is crucial for ensuring the durability of the bridge.
Plastic – A synthetic material made from a wide range of organic polymers that can be molded into shape while soft and then set into a rigid or slightly elastic form. – The environmental impact of plastic waste has led to increased research into biodegradable alternatives.
Wood – A natural material obtained from trees, used for construction, furniture, and various other applications. – The use of wood in building design can contribute to a more sustainable construction process.
Sustainable – Capable of being maintained at a certain rate or level, especially without causing environmental degradation. – Sustainable engineering practices are essential for minimizing the ecological footprint of new developments.
Waste – Unwanted or unusable materials, substances, or by-products. – Effective waste management strategies are critical for reducing pollution and conserving resources.
Eco-friendly – Not harmful to the environment; designed to have minimal impact on the ecosystem. – The development of eco-friendly technologies is a priority in modern engineering projects.
Production – The process of creating, manufacturing, or producing goods and materials. – The production of solar panels has increased as demand for renewable energy sources grows.
