How Strong is Lumber? Hydraulic Press Test! 

Hey check out our new HPC Shorts RU-vid channel ru-vid.com/show-UCQpl5I4vP_eI8y6k8po7WmA We will post all of our TikTok clips and some other shorter videos there if you don't always have time for longer videos on this channel.

Yeah, wood varies a lot in grain and knot patterns. Lumber yards grade it to help get what you need for the best price.

Wood... Much stronger in compression than tension... Grain makes a difference, as does angle. The type of wood also changes a lot of properties. I remember doing similar tests in a construction materials class in college.

The four boards were only four times as strong as a single board, because they are not bonded in any way. If you screw them together, or glue them together, they can transfer shear stresses between them (it is called shear flow) and act as one board. This is used in professional construction, of course. But on mountain bike trails near my house, they have bolted two boards together into a very narrow bridge for the bikers. It's very springy, but stronger than two boards. So jumping up and down on that is my direct experience with it.

It would be interesting to see the board standing up like a post, so the pressure is with the grain. Also plywood vs plank would be interesting. Also wood from different types of trees (oak, pine, etc.)

I would love to see how a whole unbroken log performs. Also, some real hardwood like Australian ironwood.

As a carpenter friend of mine likes to say, "Wood is an imperfect building material. It's only redeeming quality is that it's relatively cheap and abundant."

As someone who works in a lumber yard, this is one of the best things I've ever seen

This is my favorite science channel !

The strength, and weakness, of wood lies in its grain as others have said. And wood is much better at compressive strength than tensile strength, as you know from all the wood and paper explosions you've done. When force is applied directly to a knot that knot becomes a strength because it is essentially end-grain to the direction of force and can therefore take some of the force off the side grain. But when a knot is cross to the force it becomes a weakness, an inclusion about which the grain can split and break.

Should try and get a piece of LVL (Laminated Veneer Lumber) and bend it, should be stronger and more consistent strength.

In the US, 2x4s aren’t actually 2”x4” and usually pine. Plus the strength is in it’s height. I’d be interested in seeing different joists tested like 6” 8” 10” plus engineered lumber equivalents

There are more than 70 industrial sawmills in Finland, which produce about 11 million cubic meters of sawn timber for the world market every year. 🌲 🌳

I am so board. I wish something good wood come along and here we are!

you also needed to consider the water/moisture content. Structural wood is 20% water, furniture grade is about 4% I think? Also I bet that if you joined the 2x2's with wood glue or screws they would stronger (I bet?)

Can you compress sugar I want see what will happen. 😊

Put the NSW Government under it, lol

Since wood is best in pulling force, you need to make the PULLINATOR 5,000,000 to pull the wood appart.

Wood is Good. Or at least Prrritti Guud.

You need to try this with a 2x4 standing on its ends upright. I would think that would be stronger.

Would love to see how the 2x4's react when the ends are nailed together making one piece like they would be installed in a home.

The relationship between tension and compression becomes very evident here. The tests with the knots in the bottom of the wood instead of top makes a big difference. It's also very interesting with the relationship between standing and lying. On one you have more meat in the bottom, while on the other the difference between the axis of compression and tension is greater.

I run a MSR machine at work and when we manually test the lumber the mounts can rotate so it gives an even pressure on the board. Those steel supports put pressure on a small area. I bet it'd hold up better if you tried something similar

One thing I heard oft repeated while studying engineering, is that wood is never how strong you think it is. It might be stronger, but it also might be weaker. That professor really liked the 24 inch / 61 cm beams in that building.

How about testing if nails, screws etc. make the wood any stronger or weaker? For at least some consistency, you can use two pieces from the same plank for each test. Also, will smooth nails be shot out of the wood by the pressure (especially if you compress it lenght-wise).

The first one you tried turned up on edge. Watch the break carefully. The crack starts where the grain reaches the edge of the wood and propagates along the grain. The sudden failure happens when the crack reaches the area of the knot. The grain at that side of the knot is nearly vertical, giving no support for the load. When the load is abruptly transferred to the thin piece of wood on top, it snaps like a twig. The grain makes a critical difference. If you place the wood so the grain arches like a bridge, you should get better results.

I could have retired with the money you spent on lumber here in Michigan 🇺🇸 Love your channel!!

The creaking of the wood sounds like my knees !

I wonder if it would be stronger if when you stack them, also screw them together. It should be stronger because of the shear strength of the screws.

Next up different types of wood in cubes like you did for metals, everything from balsa to lignum vitae

Do you think it would have made any difference if the separate pieces were nailed or glued together?

I think that screwing the Four 2x4 sections together would also increase the woods strength. Maybe?

Timbürrrrrrrr

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why you should never stagger load-bearing structural elements in your builds.

Different types of wood is either softer or harder, get yourself some varying types in varying sizes, and please make another video! TRY OUT A 4X6 BEAM FOR SOME REAL MADNESS

The Turd one was the best. Lol Just kidding, you speak English very well. Been a big fan for a long time. Keep it up.👍

Love it! Keep them coming!! (I was also super surprised that knotty wood *could be stronger!). It makes sense of you've ever tried to drill a screw into the knot, but I'd think it would decrease the overall strength by introducing many weak points. 🤔

Different sizes and grades of wood have different structural PSI ratings. Different species of wood would also be very different. It would be very interesting to test and see if your testing matches published data. It would also be interesting to see tests of engineered building materials against natural building materials.

Would be interesting to see the strength difference of old lumber and new growth lumber. like wood from a house built 100 years ago

The 4x4 was weather treated which makes it stronger. I was hoping you would try different kinds of wood, like oak and cherry along with weaker woods.

Try gluing them together into a laminate and you may find the performance of the 2 2x4's stacked to one 4x4. The glued surface provides more support due to the stack not slipping against each other.

Everytime I saw this I feel satisfied

I love the Hoodraulic press channel. As well as Beyond the Press and Anni Vuhonsilta.

I'm drinking tea out of a stainless steel vacuum flask. The maker's website says it's bulletproof and can survive being dropped off a cliff. But I doubt it could resist being crushed.

I think this proves that it's better to fight a hundred duck-sized horses, than one horse-sized duck.

Try it with our Australian Red Gum timber, and also try down the grain splitting

Lumberjacks and Carpenters: "This science, and these physics, and these other smart points......" Me: "That extra content crush was epic!"

Fresh green poplar wood is considered a semi-cheap wood, compared to Hardwoods. I built a staff out of it because of its flexibility. I rounded a ( 1 1/2" X 1 1/2" X 6' ) or (38 mm X 38 mm. X 1.829 m .) I could not break it over a dumpster with my bare hands after 5 min of beating on it!

Lumber is so expensive right now, forget diamonds, this is now your most expensive crush

When you showed the cross section I immediately understood: the knot creates arches inside the wood!

You need to do plywood at different thicknesses, different brands, and different spans, at different widths.

The world: Lumber prices are skyrocketing due to a shortage. HPC: So today, we are going to destroy a bunch of lumber.

It's apparent that a lot of people don't understand the differences between hard wood and soft woods.

lol i loved the wood crush on the extra content

Got wood?

Admit it! You just didn't want to chop firewood this week.

Maaaan... This was an expensive video today.. Nothing but the best for his subscribers!

This notification literally gave me morning wood

Knowing how much wood costs nowadays, this must have been the most expensive crushing video HPC has ever made.

For some reason the cracking noises the lumber makes when breaking are really satisfying.

Yeah there will be a lot of difference with the wood If it's seasoned it will be a lot stronger than fresh wood Also going with the woodgrain is stronger than against Also knots etc will affect it

You forgot to try vertical orientation. If you think about the structure of a house, it's the vertical planks that transfer all the weight to the foundation.

Lumber. Holds up my house. So strong enough... Barring a tornado, hurricane or massive flood... Or if there was a gargantuan hydrologic press from aliens that might crush my house. Lol

Please make one where you compare the strengths of different woods.

“How strong is lumber?” Vastly and greatly depends on what type of wood…

Wow, Finnish 2x4s look like they're actually 2x4.

Putting the 2X4 on edge, so that the 4 inch dimension is vertical, increases the stiffnes but doesn't increase the strength; it doesn't seem intuitive, but it becomes obvious when you look at how much more the bottom edge must stretch than when the timber is put flat on its 4 inch face.

Stand the board upright and push with the grain.

That is actually scientific. Experimentation and observation.

Thank you for the interesting test. I never thought wood was so strong.

tree videos are so exciting

Now we know why they don't build bridges with spruce. At least when one collapses you get that nice pine aroma.

The last piece of timber was much stronger compared to the others because the grain was much denser, the year rings were narrow and close together which tells us that that piece of wood had grown slower, and therefore is stronger. The outcome from the stacked pieces also would have been different when they were glued or screwed on top of each other.

Multiple smaller pieces together if properly glued together, are far stronger than the same size / thickness as a single piece. This is because you get different grain structures and by gluing together, they cannot just slide linearly.

Lots of places to go with this. I want to see lignum vitae, and the spectrum of other woods. Rowan for instance! You could also do similar tests on wood bearing composites.

You could glue the 2X4 together and apply light pressure until the glue sets. Then see what pressure it takes to break the simple laminated beam.

Well, that is more wood for the sauna stove.

if there was some morning wood, everything would go wrong

This was probably the most expensive video considering the unbelievable high wood prices.

Please do more lumber tests! You should count the number of year rings in each lumber and display, that is very important! Also try with the same lumber whe the year rings are pointing up and down, their curve. Also put in round timber of the same amount of year rings and dimension :D :D :D

The first piece was probably weaker because you put it "upside down" in comparison to the one with the knot in it. Nice video, I would like to see different types of wood if I may suggest.

You should try the wood pieces vertically instead of horizontally

Try some oak, birch, beech, walnut woods. These are classified as hardwoods. Pine, spruce, fur, or SPF, are softwoods.

Because of the anisotropic nature of lumber, they have their compressive and tensile strength along thier grain than across. This is why lumber are restricted to tension members.

The first piece shown had the grain running in lots of bowl shapes from the side. The second piece was the opposite way up when it was being crushed (you turned it upside down for us to look at the inside break) so the grain was running in lots of dome shapes along its length. I conclude that dome shape grains would be stronger than bowl shape grains, but this might be worth testing.

Try to make lumber out of hard wood (maple, oak, beech, ash) and do the same tests

Ha I was just looking this up last night. Lol 🤣😂

My week of lumber destruction on RU-vid. On another channel they were testing the strength of different types of glue joints.

8:57 That was a great sound.

"HOLEE F***EN SHEET" - le hydraulik prez man

Please do maple across grain vs pine along grain one over the other, pine can crush maple, it will make a good video !

Good indication of the forces at play when wooden ships, eg Shackleton's Endurance, are crushed by ice. And the endurance was specially reinforced with thick oak beams.

Next time : A DIAMOND !

Love how your 2x4 look like actual 2"x4" dimensions. Here in Canada and US, it's ~ 3.5 x 1.5, but called 2x4

When you showed the cross section at 3:17 it looks like the circular shape may create some sort of dome effect to distribute the weight differently? I've done experiments like this in the past with toothpicks. The geodesic domes always held up best. Perhaps that has something to do with the added strength??

The press got it's black belt

3rd test should have had knot on top. Great video, as always. Viewer in Detroit MI USA, always looking forward to your post's.

You made firewood!!! Kool

In the next video you can do the same tests but with different types of lumbers. (oak-pine and etc..)

Syysuunnalla on valtava merkitys lujuuteen. Säteensuuntaisesti sahattu on jäykempi. Mietipä esimerkiksi, kuinka jäykkä on jäätelötikku siihen nähden, kuinka ohut se on. Jos syysuunta tikun päästä katsottuna ei olisi niin kuin ne jäätelötikuissa ovat, olisi se tikku paljon taipuisampi ja katkeaisikin helpommin Eli siis se, mitä yritän tässä selittää, niin jos otat vaikka 2 kappaletta kakkoskakkosia prässättäväksi ja toisessa puun syyt menevät päästä katsottuna pystysuuntaisesti ja toisessa vaakasuuntaisesti, niin se pystysuuntainen on lujempi. Tietysti sillä edellytyksellä, että puut ovat muuten tasalaatuisia ja siten vertailukelpoisia. Esim. yhtä paksuja, yhtä nopeasti kasvaneita, oksattomia jne. Ja tietenkin samaa puulajia. Hitaasti kasvanut tiukkasyinen puu on lujempaa kuin lannotteilla nopeasti kasvatettu höttöpuu.