Making bulletproof wood

this video has been sponsored by brilliant A few years ago I was able to successfully make some transparent

wood

and I thought it was cool while working on that project, although I accidentally stumbled upon something else

wood

related that I thought was really interesting. I specifically came across this article published in Nature and it was called processing natural bulk wood into a high-performance structural material. From this title alone it didn't sound too spectacular, but their results were really impressive and apparently they were able to make pieces out of wood that was stronger than steel by weight, what I thought was even more interesting was something they said near the end of the article, It was just a quick comment, but they suggested that with their super strong wood it might be possible to make lightweight wood and low-cost Armor or in other words,

bulletproof

wood.

Until that moment, I had honestly never thought of using wood to block bullets, but the moment I saw this I felt like I had to try something. The only hard part was that one again. The idea of ​​wooden armor was just a suggestion they made based on some small scale testing and they never tried to stop a bullet with it; However, if their wood was really strong as they claimed, I felt that it should have been possible and thought. There was only one way to find out, but anyway, to get started, the first step was figuring out how to do it, so I looked at the experimental section of the article and it actually seemed surprisingly simple.

All I had to do was two basic steps. where the first was to treat almost any type of wood using some commonly available chemicals and then I just had to crush it and heat it, this was supposed to leave me with a really dense and strong piece of wood that was roughly a fifth of the thickness The only problem with the original piece was that although it seemed very simple, I didn't know exactly how to do it. I mean, for the first part it was totally fine and I had everything I needed to treat some wood with some chemicals.

The second part was the problem because I had no idea. From how I was supposed to evenly crush a piece of wood while heating it at the same time to do this, I thought I was going to need some kind of press. and my first thought was to get something like a panini press and pile a bunch of weight on it, however, I then converted the 5 megapascals of the paper set I needed into a unit I could actually understand and apparently it was 725 lbs per Square on this It meant that even for a small piece of wood I would have to stack thousands of pounds on it, which I felt would be a bit difficult.

It was pretty clear that I was going to have to use some kind of machine that was actually designed. to heat and crush at high pressures and decided to try searching online. The first thing I found was those press things you use to squish designs onto t-shirts, but as expected, they didn't get anywhere near enough pressure with a little bit. Although I searched further I stumbled upon what seemed like the perfect solution and it was something called the Nugs Smasher Pro. It was clearly intended to shred a different plant material and not wood, but either way I basically had everything I needed, I had two large plates and pretty To squish things evenly, it could squish them with up to 40,000 pounds of force, which was much more than I needed, and it had a built-in temperature controller that I could easily set to the required 100°C.

I really felt like it looked perfect and I wanted to buy it until I realized that the plates were made of aluminum which would be destroyed by the chemicals I would use and it also cost $3,600 which was almost $5,000 Canadian. This pretty much killed almost any emotion I had, but it wasn't a total loss because I now knew exactly what I needed, so with this in mind I ventured out to help Baba and within a few minutes I found what really looked like the perfect machine. It had some nice stainless steel plates that could easily resist chemicals, could crush with even more pressure and could exert around 60,000 lbs of force and had some easy to use temperature controllers.

The only problem was that it was still very expensive and the final quote I got was actually more than the nug Smasher pro at the time, this was also significantly more than I had spent on any project and the thought of paying that much for an idea that it might not even work made me really uncomfortable. However, I decided to ignore all logic and reasoning. and $5,000 and a few months later he was the proud owner of an extremely heavy wooden box. I was actually a little surprised at how heavy it was and was a little worried that I wouldn't be able to move it from where it was.

The delivery guys had thrown it away with Reggie's help, although we were able to partially drag it across the room and I thought this was a good place to open it, so I went to get a knife and started by cutting through all the plastic. I then began to lift all the metal tabs holding the top of the box together and then slowly opened it and revealed my beautiful little press. I then carefully separated the rest of the box and got rid of all the plastic. and accessories Reggie and I also broke our backs transferring this 400 pound hunk of metal to a dolly and at this point I was starting to get really excited after months of waiting the press was here in front of me and it was finally time to Try

making

some

bulletproof

wood to start with this.

The first thing he needed was some wood, and according to the document, it was possible to use many different types, such as cedar, oak, poplar, and pine. However, I decided to use pine because it seemed to give very good results and was also by far the cheapest and easiest to get. All I had to do was quickly go to Home Depot and for about $20 I bought one of the nicest pieces I could find, then I did some quick measurements and started cutting it and my goal was to get some pieces that measured about 12cm long, 3.5 cm deep and 4.4 cm wide.

This was very close to what the paper said was the typical sample size they used and I thought that at least for On my first try I should probably do exactly what they did, but either way, with all the pieces cut out, I sanded them. quickly to clean them up a bit and now my wood was ready to be fired so I went to get a 1 liter beaker. and I started by pouring about 600 Ms of water, then I turned on the agitation and when I had a strong vortex I poured 80 g of sodium hydroxide drain cleaner, all of this quickly started to dissolve and generate a lot of heat and over the next several minutes, everything slowly disappeared when it seemed more or less clear.

Then I bought this sodium sulfite that I bought on Amazon that was apparently supposed to be used to cure salmon eggs. I wasn't exactly sure what that meant, but anyway I just left it. at 40.3G and just like the drain cleaner I waited for it to dissolve, this ended up being quicker than I thought and just a few minutes later I had a relatively clear solution and was able to get rid of the stir bar at this point. At that point my chemical solution was ready and now it was time to add the wood, so I carefully lowered one of the pieces and while holding it in place I added more water until it reached the one lower down.

After that I put in a heavy watch glass. on top to push it back into the water and what I had to do next was heat it up nicely, so I turned on the hot plate and waited for it to heat up and over the next 20 minutes it slowly got hotter. and more yellow finally it was about to boil and it was around 100°C and at this point I just had to leave it like that. I then came back to it a couple of hours later and it had turned a dark orange color and things seemed going well during this time I also changed the watch glass for a flask full of cold water and added a small wooden spacer, this allowed me to completely submerge the piece of wood, which I felt was much better although it was probably fine how it was before, but anyway, at least based on the color, there was clearly a reaction going on here and, in theory, it was supposed to that the chemicals attacked the wood, more specifically they were supposed to attack and eliminate two main components of the wood called lignan and hemicellulose, which are the main elements that hold the wood together, but it was very important not to get rid of them completely because then all the wood would crumble and I would be left with a bunch of loose cellulose, so the goal was to only partially remove them, which would create a lot of extra space in the wood and the research paper had some good pictures of what was supposed to happen, for For example, they included a super close-up looking toward the end grain of a generic. untreated piece of wood, it's a little hard to tell exactly what's going on, but all the gray stuff is technically the wood itself and all the black areas are just empty spaces that the tree normally uses to transport things like water.

On the other hand, it was how it looked after they treated it and there was a pretty big difference with a lot of the lignans and hemicellulose gone, a lot of that gray stuff gone too and now it looked like a bunch of tubes. However, all the tubes were mostly made of cellulose and the important part was that there was a lot more space between them and the things that held them in place, this was supposed to make the wood much easier to crush and This was very important for the next step. but anyway, according to the document, I had to leave it like this for a total of 7 hours and this was supposed to remove the ideal amount of lignans and hemicellulose, so I let it sit here for a few more hours and when I got back to it, The solution was much darker than before, this told me that a lot more stuff had been removed and what I needed to do now was wash the wood, so I quickly got rid of this hot red chemical solution and then in the same I started to Pour the glass into a lot of boiling distilled water.

The goal here was to remove as much of the sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfite as possible and also remove any byproducts that may have formed many of these chemicals and byproducts. They were deep inside the wood, so I had to soak it for a while. The only unfortunate part was that the paper didn't say how long and all it said was that I had to dunk it in boiling water several times. I figured this meant more than just dipping it in and out quickly and based on almost nothing I decided that about an hour was a good time so I left it there and for the next hour the color of the water slowly changed and it felt like a good moment. sign because it meant it was pulling things out of the wood after seeing this I assumed that after each wash the water would become less and less colored but that didn't turn out to be the case it quickly became pretty clear to me that whatever was causing So the color wasn't a good indicator to tell me when I was done washing it and instead I had to keep checking the pH, if there was even a small amount of sodium hydroxide left it would turn purple which meant it was strongly basic and I kept doing this even after the third wash.

It was only after washing it seven times that the color was L green, which told me it was approximately neutral. He also told me that the wood should have been nice and clean and I threw it all away. the water was still orange, but anyway, after about 15 hours of cooking and cleaning the wood, I finally finished the first part of the process, what I was left with should have been a reduced piece of wood free of any nasty chemicals. I was really curious to see what it was like without a lot of lignan and cellulose from the hem.

I expected it to be very soft and squishy, ​​but that was not the case at all, even when I squeezed it as hard as I could. I could barely do anything and it was definitely still pretty difficult. I also tried to bend it, which I couldn't do at all and started to wonder if I had done something to the wood. It really felt like a generic piece. of wood that had been in hot water and it didn't seem like there was any major difference, plus it may look different with all that said, although even if it didn't look or feel special, it had done exactly what it said on paper. he said and it should have been good so it was finally time to test my beautiful new hydraulic press and the first step was to turn on the temperature controllers.

I then waited for the plates to slowly heat up to 100°C and when I finally got there I carefully loaded my little piece of wood, did my best to get it as centered as possible and when I felt it looked good I started to lowering the top plate, it was a little slow and clumsy, but I finally managed. to sandwich the wood and now it was time to start shredding it so I went ahead and startedI pressurized it by manually turning the handle on the side and it worked exactly like a hydraulic jack, the only difference was that it was much slower. and every time I turned it it seemed like it was barely moving the plate, it was slowly crushing it, although it didn't seem like there was a big difference and at this point it was probably already 5% thinner, however it was also oozing.

I got a bunch of black liquid out that I really didn't want spilled all over my press, so I quickly wiped it up with a paper towel. I then started crushing it again and so far I was very happy with how it was going, unlike my hands the press was doing a much better job of crushing it and it seemed like it was much easier than crushing a regular piece of wood. This also made sense because, as I mentioned earlier, by removing much of the lignan and hemicellulose there was a lot more empty space and a lot less holding the cellulose together, so with a little extra pressure all of these spaces were supposed to voids would start to collapse and I think the paper again included some really interesting photos of this, this is of course what I showed before and hopefully this was what my wood currently looked like on the microscopic scale.

This, on the other hand, is what I was trying to do to it and again there was a huge difference in all the The empty space had practically completely disappeared and all those cellulose tubes had completely flattened out. Furthermore, the flattened tubes had also become intertwined with all the other flat tubes and this was supposed to greatly increase their strength, but I just continued anyway. crushing the wood hoping it would eventually end up like the second photo and at first it seemed like it was going pretty well, the only problem I had was when it got to the middle of the round thickness it looked like something bad was going on at the top It looked like some of the wood was rolling on itself and I was a little worried that it might break or something, however, I figured it probably wasn't a big deal and it's probably normal to have some defects when crushing a piece of wood like this one, so I went ahead and the goal was to get it to around 20% of the original thickness and I finally got there a few minutes later, at this point it was almost surprisingly thin and even though I had squashed it I still found it hard to believe that this used to be a whole block of wood, as well as being super thin, although the pressure on the wood was also around the 725 PSI that the paper had required and had apparently already finished crushing it.

So now what I had to do next was leave it like that and all the water that was still left in the wood was supposed to be slowly boiled at the same time, although the heat and pressure was also supposed to cause the wood to become this. stronger slowly because, according to the paper, all those flattened, interlocking cellulose tubes should start forming bonds within themselves and with their neighboring flat tubes. All of these bonds were technically just weak hydrogen bonds, but because all the cellulose was so close together, it should be able to form a ridiculous amount of them, it was supposed to be enough to greatly increase the strength of the wood and, thus, More importantly, to permanently lock it in its shredded form, this would make it very different from normal wood, so I would simply decompress it once the pressure was gone and I was very curious to see how this would turn out, although I then had to let it cook like that for the next 24 hours and when I came back, it looked like this.

He had become even thinner. I also noticed that the pressure gauge was at zero pressure, which I felt was a very good sign, because it meant that even without any additional pressure, the wood stayed nice and thin and I started to get really excited, it was time. To reveal, I densified and hopefully bulletproofed the W and when I felt it was ready I started lifting the top plate. I was really hoping to see a perfect little flat rectangle, but I was immediately disappointed. I mean, it was definitely flat, which I was happy about except it was also very wide, which wasn't a good sign.

There had clearly been some kind of softening effect because the wood wasn't supposed to spread at all and it was a bit sad to see either way. Then I went to take it. Out of the press and the moment I touched it, all my sadness quickly disappeared because it felt completely different from what I expected and it really didn't even feel like it was wood, but rather it was surprisingly heavy and extremely hard, almost like a Kind of Ceramic at the same time, although somehow it also felt like plastic and was really cool at the same time, although it was definitely far from perfect and just by looking at it I could see that the fibers were not flattened properly.

When I looked at it from the side I could also see some very obvious diagonal cracks and I was really hoping they were superficial. I then compared it to the piece of wood it came from and it was surprising to see how different it was. I mean, in theory it probably should have been a little less different and was about the same width, but I still thought it was really impressive to see how much thinner it had gotten and I found it hard to believe that this entire block had been squashed into this thin little piece, that being said, the next very important thing I had to do was test to see how strong it was, so it was of course at this exact moment that it decided to spontaneously fall apart, this was extremely sad. to say the least and it didn't inspire much hope, but everything changed when I tried to stab it with a screwdriver.

Then I kept stabbing him and I was honestly very impressed with how little damage he was doing better than me. I thought it doesn't really do much of anything, it's quite difficult to really try it, although I felt like I had to try and stab it as hard as I could and it was still really impressive. What wasn't impressive was my aim, but neither. In this way, the screwdriver was not only completely unable to stab him, but also seemed to have a hard time even scratching him. Obviously, this wasn't a perfect emulation of what would happen if a bullet hit him, but rather seemed really promising just as a comparison.

I then did the same thing with one of the raw pieces of wood and the difference was pretty obvious - the screwdriver could drive it in easily and I didn't even have to use much force either way. Now I felt a lot. I was more hopeful about my little piece of densified wood and the only thing I had to do next was see if it could really stop a bullet, so I quickly made this little wooden thing to mount it on and clamped it in a vise and then I quickly added one of my pieces of densified wood and with it firmly in place I went to get my gun, which was really just a pellet gun.

This is not just because shooting a real gun inside my building is super dangerous and is also a serious crime. Because it made a lot more sense to start small, I first had to make sure that I could actually stop a projectile and if I did, I could move on to more powerful things, that being said, although the pellet gun was now loaded and after After a few days of work I was ready for the first real test so I lined it up carefully and started gently squeezing the trigger and I was really hoping to see the pellet deflect like the one 2 three screwdriver, however that was not the case.

So. everything that happened and it was almost comical how bad it was the high speed footage I got was also completely useless and I was a little embarrassed to have set it up. Then I looked at the camera footage that was pointed at the back and apparently it had just exploded, it really didn't look like it even tried to stop the pellet and honestly it was pretty sad to see, especially after spending thousands of dollars and waiting months for it. try this, which you also did. Even sadder was that this pellet gun was 16 times weaker than one of the weakest real guns, so it wasn't even remotely close to being able to stop a real bullet, and at this point, things weren't exactly looking good. at the same time.

Although I was very aware that this was only my first attempt and that the piece ID made was not exactly of the highest quality, this was made very clear to me when it had spontaneously fallen halfway and there was obviously plenty of room to furthermore. I was really impressed by how well it had blocked the screwdriver and, in my opinion, this showed that it had the toughness to potentially block a projectile, so I figured all I had to do was somehow make it stronger and stop it from exploding. . and I had some ideas that I really thought would work, the only problem was that right after this I had to start moving into my new office and I completely trashed this whole lab.

Then I had to build a completely new one and it was only 6 months later when I was able to start working on this project again, anyway, I went back to it and the first very sophisticated thing I had been waiting to try was to seriously use a piece of wood much bigger, although this was a very simple change but I really felt it would make a big difference and I will explain why in a moment with that being said, the first thing I was going to have to do was treat it and I did more or less exactly the same.

Same as before because I didn't think anything really went wrong with this chemical step. The only thing I did slightly different this time was that I used a much larger beaker and attached it with a glass tube this way it would hold up completely. submerged all the time and after heating it for 7 hours the solution had turned almost black. I then quickly took everything apart, carefully removed the wood and washed it to remove the chemicals and again after 15 hours of work I was left with a wet mess. wooden block looked and felt exactly the same as the first attempt and the only difference was that it was larger and this time I loaded it into the hydraulic press, although I oriented it with the end grain facing the camera and from here The point It's just that things are going to be quite different because it was pretty clear to me that this pressing step was the biggest problem and I actually had a lot of things I wanted to try.

The first was to do everything possible to center it perfectly. on the plate and had made some marks to show me exactly where to place it. I would also use a ruler to confirm the final placement and this was very different to last time where I centered it completely with the wood. instead, although I then started to lower the top plate and this was the moment where I expected the larger piece to start being useful, this is because with its much larger surface there would now be much more space for the top plate will be placed. sit up and in theory this should help keep it level.

This was something that didn't even occur to me during the first try because I thought the top plate was fixed in place, but I later found out that I was apparently able to notice that I also noticed this happening when I looked closely at the pictures again. and I saw a very subtle but clear tilt just before things started to go wrong. It was only an extremely small change and was probably less than a couple of degrees, but crushing the wood at even a slight angle would be really bad because it would force it to be pushed to the side and this would almost definitely cause it to stain.

This was also especially likely to happen if the piece was significantly off center like mine and if the top plate was forced to simply move. balance on a small piece of wood, so basically tilt was the biggest thing I was hoping to avoid here and I really felt that simply using a larger piece and centering it perfectly was going to have a huge effect on top of this, although I also decided not to preheat the plates at 100° C and try to crush the wood much more slowly. I thought this would give the water a lot more time to come out and prevent any strange internal pressure from building up which could damage the wood etc.

So far things were going pretty well, it seemed like it was basically getting thinner and that was exactly what I was hoping for as I kept going, although unfortunately it started to spread at the bottom and it didn't seem like I could do anything to stop it even slower either. do a lot and when I looked to the side I saw something horrible. He had also started rolling over like the first time, but it didn't seem as severe. and I thought it was probably okay so I kept going and finally it seemed like the wood had reached its limit and instead of getting denser, at this point it was just flattening out from the sides, although the pressure on the gauge was also around . the 725 PSI mark and when I saw this I felt like it was the right time to start cooking it so I plugged the press into some outlets I made by hijacking the power to my dishwasher because I didn't have any real 220 PSI outlets.

However, after that I was able to turn on the heating andnow he just had to wait and hope it wasn't another disaster. I came back 24 hours later and was very curious to see how it turned out, so I started carefully lifting the top plate and this time I wasn't immediately disappointed. God is still very hot but he looks pretty good. I mean, it definitely still had a lot of issues and had those diagonal cracks like before, but what I thought was really exciting was the other side, which was honestly pretty perfect, it didn't look like there were any cracks at all and the top was also very pretty, it was actually very similar to the original pine that IID started with and it had no strange looking texture or gaps between the fibers this part looks great, it's perfect.

I then compared it to the original piece and saw that it didn't extend as much and was definitely much better than the first attempt, so clearly using a much larger piece and doing all the other little things helped me a lot and I was very happy with the result to know if it was actually better and not just a prettier piece of crap I was going to have. I had to shoot it so I grabbed my pellet gun again and thought about shooting the ugly side first and expected it to explode like last time, however instead it just deflected and hit me in the head and I was really I was surprised that there was clearly a significant improvement and even on the bad side, it didn't even look like the little ball had a chance to go through it, it only made a small dent before being completely crushed and I thought that was really cool.

I watched it bounce like a little pancake just in case and to make sure it wasn't a fluke or something, I decided to shoot it a few more times and each time it bounced back easily, apparently just by squishing it. Better I had made it much stronger and my pet gun was no longer a challenge instead of blowing it up. Now it was just

making

small dents and after seeing this I started to get really excited because now I had real evidence that this could stop a projectile and the The idea of ​​stopping a real bullet made me feel like it could actually be possible.

The problem was that even with this significant strength improvement, he was pretty sure that a real bullet would still destroy him. This is because my pellet gun only fired .22 caliber pellets that weighed less than a and only went about 500 feet per second. On the other hand, although this is the reel bullet equivalent to the 22 caliber, the 22 LR, it weighs more than twice as much and reaches almost three times the velocity in theory, this means that it should be able to deliver more than 16 times more energy than shot and I really didn't think my piece of wood could hold up to that, I mean maybe I could have made something that was double or triple, but 16+ times was crazy for some reason, although I still had faith that this could do it, but I was sure.

Somehow I would have to strengthen it even more in my mind. There was also only one real way to do this and somehow I was going to have to keep it from spreading. If I was able to do this, not only should this give me something that was significantly denser and much stronger, it should also be of higher quality overall and without any of those diagonal cracks I really thought it would be enough to stop at least the 22 LR. and again I had some ideas that I thought would work for a long time. Long story short, nothing I did seemed to make a difference and after a couple of weeks of trying a bunch of different things, I was losing my mind because I tried everything I could think of, both for the chemistry and for the pressing, and finally I got to the point where I was simply blaming the wood itself.

I was really starting to think that maybe pine actually just stunk and was too soft to hold its shape, so as a last ditch effort I tried switching to oak which was a hardwood, however this again didn't seem to make any difference. real and the wood was still being crushed when I saw this, I honestly felt like quitting, but at the same time I was starting to think it was really strange that the newspaper didn't mention anything about this. I also suddenly realized that they were only showing cartoon versions of their press and this made me start to think that all this time they might have been secretly using something more than just a press.

I mean, I have no idea if that's actually true, but I felt like they had to be using something to physically prevent it from spreading and after 30 minutes of having no idea what I was doing in Fusion 360 I was able to design these two pieces and I then sent them to a machining company and after a few weeks I was the proud owner of this piece of stainless steel. I hoped it would magically solve all my problems and the idea I had was super simple, all I had to do was shoehorn in my treatise. piece of wood and then on top of that I would add this other piece of stainless steel.

I could then load all of this into my hydraulic press and now it would be impossible for the wood to be crushed on the sides, in my opinion there was no way this could fail and I immediately started preparing a new piece of wood. The only tricky part this time was that if I wanted the wood to fit perfectly on my template, it had to be the perfect size in an ideal world. I could have done it previously. I cut it to fit the template exactly, but that wasn't really possible because the wood expanded while it was being treated from a lot of testing.

I also found that the amount that expanded was somewhat random and depended on a lot of factors. like how much moisture was already in the wood and it wasn't going to be something I could reliably predict so I was going to have to cut it after the treatment and I went through the whole process of soaking it and washing it when it felt like it was the most free of chemicals possible. I ran it through my poor band saw. Having to cut wood while it was wet and potentially full of chemicals wasn't exactly ideal, except I didn't have many other options, but so far anyway.

Everything seemed to be going pretty well until it was completely cut and I noticed something strange, it seemed like most of the inside of the wood was completely dry and didn't look like it had been treated at all at first. I started to think that maybe the bandsaw had just dried out the wood from friction, but that wouldn't make sense because there was still a perfect line of moisture on the top and bottom either way. I decided to hope that magically everything was okay and I picked her up carefully. on my new jig, then on top I added the huge block of metal and now I had to load all of this into my press to do this, I just carefully slid it in and did my best to line up all the edges like this.

It would be perfectly centered in the middle of the plates and when I felt it looked good I lowered the top plate with all of this in place, it should have been done and all I had to do was start smashing it this time. I didn't have to worry at all about it squishing sideways and I was also able to go much faster and this was a million times better than anything I had done before, also just based on the amount of water coming out. I felt there was no way the interior of the wood wouldn't be fully treated.

I was able to collect a few hundred MS, which for me was too much if it was only coming from the outside of the wood, but who, who. It tastes either way it was finally done and for the next few hours I did it again every 20 minutes to repressurize it. This was not something I had done in previous runs, but from all my failed attempts I learned that this was important. This is because as the water left the wood, the wood itself slowly shrank and the pressure on it gradually decreased, so if you wanted to maintain the high pressure needed, you had to keep coming back to it until almost all of it was gone. the water would have run out. and then left it for 24 hours when I finally came back to it the next day.

I was very curious to see what it was like, at least from the small part I could see on the front, it already looked like it was by far the best result I've ever had and all I had to do next was open it. The only thing I was worried about was all the dark substance and honestly I was really worried that it might have stuck the two pieces of metal together. All in all, disassembling it would be an absolute nightmare, but fortunately that was not the case. Inside was a beautiful piece of densified wood and it really was by far the best result I've ever had.

Look at that, it looks really good and the edges, how flat they are, sharp and flat, that's really good. One extremely important thing was also that it didn't have any of those diagonal cracks and, furthermore, it was even thinner than any of the other attempts, considering it had those too. Not pushing any of its volume to one side, this meant it was significantly denser and overall felt much stronger and more durable. I was really impressed and after a lot of time mulling over what seemed to be a really simple task. I had finally made significant progress and felt like I was close to being perfect.

It didn't really seem like there was much more I could do to improve it and I felt like the time had finally come to do a real test. It's time to see if this can really stop a real bullet and I honestly felt like it could. I have faith that I could prove it like this. This was also perfect timing because I spent the last year trying to get my gun license here in Canada specifically for this project and by chance I had received it a few days before, so with this license in hand I was able to legally borrow a .22 rifle to my friend and drove very far to where it wouldn't be a serious crime. to photograph it, I mean, in theory I probably could have gone to a local field or something, but for some reason I really wanted to do it in a forest and it had actually taken me months to find land where I could legally photograph in any direction.

Then I started putting the whole setup together and I couldn't help but have flashbacks to the time I did the acetone and I had to set up a bunch of stuff in a random forest this time, although it was actually worse because it was a lot colder and wet and it was It was raining on and off and I had a lot more things to set up, however it still wasn't too bad because on the way I picked up my friend Evan who runs the channel code and was helping me with the The only sad thing was that he wasn't dressed at all either and that his first experience in Canada was this cold, wet forest, but anyway we had finally set up all the cameras and it was time to get the wood in place to do this.

I decided to use a very sophisticated method and simply taped it to a large block of Styrofoam. Evan then placed a stick behind him to prevent him from leaning back and at that point he was finally ready for the first real test. The only challenge now was that I had to have a decent aim and hit the wood and also not destroy my chambers, which were uncomfortably close anyway, although with all this in mind I loaded the gun with a single 22 LR bullet and finally the It was time to see if all this work was worth it, so I carefully aimed a gun that I had only fired once before and then quickly ran to stop the high-speed camera the moment it approached, although I was immediately worried about what that I saw, then I quickly got rid of the gun that I probably shouldn't have been running with and went back to take a closer look, so it looks like there's a hole right there and, uh, there's also a hole in the back.

I think the verdict is that it was. It's not bulletproof, no, on the bright side, I had actually got it right, but on the sad side, it was pretty clear that a real gun was much more powerful than a pellet gun, yeah, that didn't work out like in the first try, it's also kind. It looked like the back had just exploded and it hadn't even stood a chance. This was definitely not the result I expected and I was actually feeling quite sad about it. Well, that's it, let's go home when I get back. although I was able to clean it up and get a better look at it and realized that it actually wasn't as bad as I thought, I mean it still wasn't ideal and the bullet had clearly gone through it, but the important thing was that not only had I catastrophically blown it up, but It looked like it had been stripped sequentially in layers and it didn't even look like much of the wood had been removed, it also looked like if I pushed it hard enough I could basically put it back together and this made me feel like it wasn't actually that far away. to stop it.

I really felt like something a little stronger could have done it and as a final test I wanted to try adding a second layer to this. It was actually something that the paper tested and they found that just one extra layer could make it five times stronger and I felt that this would be more than enough to try this, although of course I was going to have to do at least a couple more. pieces and unfortunately I had to go back to cooking and shredding wood, however, to go faster I decided to expand the entire cooking part and in thislarge stainless steel pot I was able to load in four pieces, the setup itself was also super simple and keep them all separate.

I just used a bunch of glass rods and used the stainless steel cookie rack to keep them separated from the bottom. I also used another cookie rack on top to help keep them all together and set them down with some heavy steel. rods to keep everything in place. I then heated all of this using a generic induction cooktop and overall this was much better than doing each one individually and saved me a couple days of work. The only strange part was that I ended up having a lot of problems with the grinding step and every piece of wood I made had problems when I took it out of the press it would be nice and flat but as it cooled it would slowly warp. and it would get weird and this wasn't a problem I had before, I had no idea why or how the first attempt had magically worked, but anyway, after a few days of repeated failures, I was really starting to worry if I couldn't perfectly flatten the pieces and get rid of them.

With all the warping, it would be impossible to make a decent two-ply version somehow, although this problem ended up being a good thing and caused me to accidentally upgrade the wood because in a desperate attempt to fix it I simply threw away one of the pieces. press at 100 C and crushed them with 60,000 lbs of force. I then let them cool slowly to room temperature and when I took them out the piece was not only perfectly flat, but it was also even thinner. about 10% thinner than before which also meant it was about 10% denser and hopefully even stronger, but I still ended up making a bunch of extras in case I needed them and after a week of frustration it was finally time to glue some to do this.

I simply chose one of the pieces I liked the most and quickly sanded the top. This was very important because the surface was very shiny and I was worried that the glue would have a I had a hard time sticking to it when I finally felt that it was nice and rough, although I wiped the dust off with a paper towel and what I had to do next was adding the glue. I had no idea which glue to use and which would be best. I didn't want to take a bullet, but I found this at Home Depot and it said it was impact resistant, so I decided to go ahead and emptied almost the entire bottle and did my best to cover the entire piece, knowing that this piece had its grain pattern in a vertical direction.

I went and took my second piece and carefully lowered it with the grain horizontal, this way the grain patterns wouldn't be perfectly aligned and would be at 90° to each other and doing so was supposed to make it significantly stronger that being said, although I kept sliding it to spread the glue as much as possible and when I finally felt it was nice and I even squished it with the big metal block just for good measure. I also put a tungsten cube in it and let it cure. Then I did it again 24 hours later, got rid of all the metal and cleaned it and this was the final result.

What I had now was a nice block of Densified Wood and just looking at it, it honestly didn't seem much stronger, however, the way it felt was actually very different and I'm not sure how to describe it, there was something about it. which made her feel much more solid. and significantly stronger than the single piece, I also felt that it would actually be able to stop all 22 and that it wouldn't be a pathetic failure like the other one. Of course, there was only one way to find out, so I went back. I went out into the woods and this time it was bad in a different way because it had taken me so long to make the wood that all the snow was gone and replaced by a million mosquitoes and black flies.

This is crazy, a whole can of bug spray didn't even seem to help and to survive we just had to go as fast as possible, but anyway, on a more positive note, I had made a much better mounting system for the wood and I attached it to this metal thing that I then pushed. I turned it into a much stronger and heavier foam block and it was time to shoot, it should be fine, that's all we need. I have faith. I think it will be good. I think it will be good. Then I loaded the gun. a bullet and prepared to fire it again.

I really hoped I didn't miss it completely and then I immediately ran to turn off the high speed camera unlike the other time although I wasn't immediately disappointed because I didn't see the same clean hole as before, this time it looked like the bullet had entered through the front part and for some reason I felt it was a good sign, I don't know if it happened, yeah, I don't know. I don't know if it turned out well, it turned out well, not how, the moment I saw this I honestly felt a little frustrated because I really thought this was going to work, really?

I was also starting to think that this project might just be completely hopeless because if it couldn't even stop a 22 LR there was no chance of making anything I could even remotely call bulletproof. energy if you look at how deep the bullet went it looks about the same distance it pushed the wood and stopped it oh my goodness that's a success so apparently I gave up hope too early and with two layers of densification. wood I had technically stopped the 22LR in my opinion this was really cool but at the same time I didn't feel it was good enough because the rear still broke off.

I was actually a little worried that this would happen and this was why, in case I had also made a three-ply version, in theory this should have been even stronger than the two-ply and I felt like it would solve all my problems, however at the same time I also felt that this was my absolute last chance to make it work because adding more layers would make it too thick at this point it was still thinner than just one of the raw pieces I had started with and I felt like this was the absolute limit if this didn't work.

If it doesn't work, I would have to find some other solution or, more likely, I would just leave it. Okay, I think it's good, but anyway, at this point I was ready to try it, so I carefully aimed the gun and this time my aim was. terrible, I ended up a bit lost which was a bit sad but what wasn't sad was the result, it looked like the bullet hadn't even made it past the first layer and just to confirm this was real I shot it again. happened, he just fragmented it, that's all he did. Look, that's all.

It didn't even chip at all, so apparently three coats were significantly better than two and when I looked at the high velocity it looked like the 22 LR didn't even do that. I have a chance, I mean, it totally exploded the first layer of wood, but the bullet itself was also completely destroyed and bounced off like a bunch of fragments. After seeing this I was really excited because I had finally stopped a real bullet using wood and by definition I had made wood bulletproof, however it was also one of the weakest bullets possible and when I looked up the armor levels at bulletproof, the tables didn't even go up to 22LR, it seemed like the lowest rating was the common 9mm which is often used in pistols and this was the minimum of what many people considered bulletproof.

The only scary part was that the 9mm was significantly larger and compared to the 22 LR would have about 2.1 times the energy on top of that. although it also had a copper casing which would give it more penetrating power and I didn't really think my poor block of wood could stop one, however I felt that if I really wanted to consider what the IID did bulletproof, it had to stop one. 9mm pistol and Fortunately, I had borrowed another gun from my friend, this one felt much more powerful than the other one and I wasn't really feeling optimistic, well, security, my poor wood is evaporating this time, I actually saw chunks fly from the piece of wood. and I was also a little surprised by what I saw, wait, it stopped it, it actually stopped it, what is it, it's there, it's just flat, man, you see the whole flattened bullet there, that's cool, it didn't even get any deeper that he. uh, that the 22 is the same depth and it's a damaged piece of wood, so apparently the 9mm actually not only destroyed it and adding that third layer had clearly made it a lot stronger, it was also cool to see the bullet go.

It flattened out almost instantly and stopped completely on the second layer and I was really surprised that this happened. The only worrying part was when I looked at the back and it looked like it had almost exploded. I was about to explode. I didn't do it in any way, although it stopped him and at this point I felt like I could officially say that IID made a bulletproof W. I mean of course it was still far from perfect but it was much better than I expected and it was definitely better than the regular wood I had started with, this became especially clear to me when I tried to shoot a big stack with the same 9's. mm and even with seven layers it was almost not enough, the bullet was actually very close to being fired. throughout and in comparison it was shockingly bad, it literally stopped at last, with all that being said, although this whole project was primarily intended to be a proof of concept and to see if wooden armor was possible.

And I guess the answer is yes. I mean, it definitely still needs a lot of improvement and this is not something I would want to use currently, but I think it has a lot of potential. I also think it could be really interesting. To try and combine it with other materials like plastic, metal or even Kevlar, I really think it's possible to make something that's less than half the thickness but still able to easily stop 9mm bullets and maybe even some more powerful ones for that matter. Now, although I think I'm tired of cooking, grinding, and shooting wood and am instead going to work on some tastier projects, like turning Styrofoam into cinnamon candy, so this project ended up being a lot more tedious than I thought.

I thought initially and, in the end, it took a long time. More than just chemistry to make it, this is actually one of the main reasons it took me so long to finish it and I've found that my lack of non-chemistry skills in general has delayed at least a few other projects. I've been trying a lot harder lately to get better at things like math, physics, and programming, and luckily there's been a really fun, easy, and free way to do this more specifically, although I've been using a brilliant way, which I think is one of the best ways to learn math, data science and computer science, because not only are all of their lessons super concise and interesting, but they are also interactive, which I think makes them much more fun and much more game-like.

What I really like is that all of their lessons are divided into many small sections, allowing me to analyze each topic at my own pace. This has been great for me because I often only have 5 minutes here or there, but I've still been able to make particular progress. I've been working on the Python programming course and I only have several lessons, but I've already learned a lot. However, I also made a lot of mistakes and what has been really nice is that each time there has been a super useful and helpful explanation, but anyway, having said all that, I have really enjoyed it and if you are interested in learning something new from a fun way, I definitely recommend checking them out right now.

You can do it too. Try everything Bright has to offer free for a full 30 days by simply going to shiny.org Nile Red or clicking the link in the description above. The first 200 people to sign up using my link will also get 20% off an annual premium subscription and, yes, that's it, as always. Thank you very much to all my followers on Patreon. Everyone who supports me can watch all my new videos at least 24 hours before I post them on YouTube. You will also get access to all the older videos that I had to delete and if you support me with $5 or more you will get your name at the end as you see here