I love looking at a piece of wood and imagining the shape of the tree it must have come from. Figure in wood is created by how trees grow! youtube.com/shorts/TBc_g...

I’ve known for years that softwoods and hardwoods were different, but I had been told a few different reasons for why, and the details of how they were different never really clicked. One of the things I enjoyed learning about the most was in digging into the “why” of this question.

This caught is by surprise! Absolutely honoured! blog.lostartpress.com/2025/05/05/c...

On the origin of wood. Andy did a dig into lignin and the convergent evolution of lignins by different plants. Some day I will have to talk about that more, because it’s so cool. In the meantime, learn about old trees that sound like dinosaurs and softwood cells! youtube.com/shorts/dLeJt...

Let's talk about wood! youtu.be/RNAgyHCZz2E

Renewables were 92% of new power added in 2024. Low carbon sources now accounts for 41% of worldwide electricity. Though, I can’t help but look at this graph and think about how much better it would look if we weren’t retiring nuclear plants so much faster than we’re building them.

Been working hard on this project for over a year. Glad to see it starting to come out! youtu.be/fJDMRPnaMcA?...

Let the enemy rage at the gate; let him knock, pound, scream, howl; let him do his worst. We know for certain that he cannot enter our soul except by the door of our consent. -Saint Francis de Sales

Recently fascinated by negative thermal expansion materials which actually shrink when hotter or in contact with water. I was pondering the possibility of making a filler for wood that expanded and contracted with rh in an opposite way to wood. I emailed a scientist on a whim. Loved the reply

Doing some work on my video series on wooden surfaces. The first video will be on wood and trees. The last part of which involves talking a bunch about ebony and making some drawer pulls out of old piano keys.

This is going to sound so stupid with everything going on, but ikea hacks are something I think should be enshrined in a museum if ikea furniture is ever placed in a museum. Additionally, the idea that someone would undo an ikea hack to “return it to it’s original design” is deeply upsetting to me.

Trying to bring some of My nerdy thoughts and experiences to more people: www.finewoodworking.com/2025/01/17/a...

A colleague of mine just revealed a trick he found for replicating aged foggy lacquer coatings, and it’s goddamn brilliant. To understand why, I want you to understand three things: 1. The cloudiness in aged lacquer is due to micro-cracks and tiny gaps between the coating and the timber. 🧵

I’m so excited to dig into this. The details of oil curing with different catalysts and treatments is one big remaining mystery to me.

I am a climate scientist and this is correct ⬇️

I was trying to understand how olive oil breaks down in wood and I came across this paper on using olive oil or linseed oil to intentionally encourage fungal growth on exterior surfaces to create a protective biofinish. Has anyone heard of or tried this? Thoughts? www.mdpi.com/2079-6412/11...

So mayonnaise is a common home remedy for removing white rings in furniture. The arguments for its use seem to be “I did it. It looked great”, and the arguments against are “what? Gross”. Given that some mayonnaise recipes have a lot in common with egg tempera/oil paint blends, I need more details.

A quote I just read as part of casual research: “Non-linear relationship between shear stress and yield rate of mayonnaise sauce has been widely [assessed] by Power law, Herschel Bulkley, Carreau and Cason models to determine the consistency coefficient, apparent viscosity and flow behavior index”

For a fun article I’m writing, I wanted do a little research into Mayonnaise and was somewhat disheartened by how many research papers I was quickly able to find on the specific degradation mechanisms of Mayonnaise compared to many of the materials I’ve been trying to better understand in my work.