What are some alternatives to wood lumber?

Question

For beam frame and sip construction

Answer 1

Cold Formed Steel

Answer 2

1

Answer 3

2

Answer 4

All valid answers so far. I'll just add my two cents. First of all consider what it is you're creating. It's not a Louis the XIV writing desk. I'm in Florida, and most decking lumber is the cheapest grade possible, but treated. Obviously there are "WOODS" most suitable to repel insects, hold up to weather conditions longer; but they are still, just a Deck. Cedar is a great choice for a wood that insects will leave alone, but is still Conifer, and subject to the environment. RedWood is great; even attractive; but another Conifer, and as subject over time to Nature. Teak or Mahogany might make a "sweet" deck, but be as expensive as any other exotics, and perhaps out of your budget range,,,if you can even find enough. Steven Wolf AKA (The Deck Doc)

Answer 5

The world is awash with undervalued, underutilized small round wood.

This stuff is overstocking many of our forests, especially in the west this leads to accumulated fuel for savage fires.

I say "roundwood" rather than "lumber" (which would be a processed form of roundwood) because small round wood is at least three times stronger than the largest dimensional material (lumber) that can be sawn from it.

Pound for pound, it is hard to find anything as strong as round wood, and since we have so much of it, why not use it?

Answer 6

There are currently products available in the same sizes as standard lumber that are made from recycled plastics. Local government here is using this material in the construction of their City Parks and so forth.

Answer 7

3

Answer 8

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Along with stone, mud and animal parts, wood was one of the first materials worked by early humans. Microwear analysis of the Mousterian stone tools used by the Neanderthals show that many were used to work wood. The development of civilization was closely tied to the development of increasingly greater degrees of skill in working these materials.

Answer 9

Glu-Lam for big breams is great

Glu-Lam is short for glued laminate, it is an engineered wood where several layers of wood are glued together to make a very strong member

Answer 10

Saving Trees, Saving Ourselves

07/26/05

Preface - Straw Logs. Complete article 2630 words including references and images available instantly by signing up to Convergence Weekly
With good wood becoming scarce, and this planet’s last remaining forests best left in the ground, how will a burgeoning population house itself? Strawboard, which substitutes discarded straw chaff for wood in plywood and particleboard, could be one good answer.

Welcome to the age of daunting scarcity and up-against-the-drywall ingenuity. If necessity is the mother of invention, over the next few decades, as cheap oil runs out and the spiraling costs of climate change rock every society on the planet—look for total transformation in the products we use and the ways we conduct our lives.

With good lumber mostly a memory, 48-square-foot plywood panels fastened to a framework are an efficient way to enclose space. But plywood “good both sides”—without knots and voids—is scarce enough to be prohibitively expensive.

So why not build “panel” structures using strawboard? Unlike today’s low-quality plywood counterparts, these panels are made from a farm waste product that is quickly grown, and gives off no deadly formaldehyde fumes in its use and manufacture?

Three North American manufacturers—PrimeBoard in North Dakota, Prairie Forest Products in Kansas and Isobord Enterprises in Manitoba—currently produce “strawboard” made of residual wheat straw instead of wood.

“Strawboard's nail- and screw-holding capacity and moisture resistance outperform competitors. It machines smoothly, offering a superior laminating surface. An acre of wheat usually produces about a ton of straw.” Sawmillng News reporter John Dietz Making strawboard from chaff also beats burning that fiber in the fields, poisoning the atmosphere, as well as the lungs of wildlife, people and planet.

ISOBORD
Isobord is a furniture-grade particleboard made from a unique combination of cereal straw and isocyanate resin at a gigantic $140-million facility in Elie, Manitoba. Production involves unbinding, chopping, hammering and refining the arriving bales of straw into fine particles that are formed into mats, then blended them with resin to form the right thickness—mostly under robot control.

“The product's texture is between particleboard and medium-density fiberboard,” Dietz discovered. In lab tests, Isobord also says its strawboard has “demonstrated greater structural strength, greater fire resistance, more dimensional stability and better screw retention” than wood-based particleboard.

More plants will have to be built pronto to meet demand. With about 80% of Isobord’s Manitoba production already presold for the next five years to leading makers of kitchen cabinets, countertops and prefab furniture. In full production, this facility alone contribute approximately 2% of North America's expanding demand for particleboard—cranking out 130 million square-feet of 3/4" strawboard annually.

THE LAST STRAW?
That’s a lot of straw. But worldwide, an excess of about 2 million tons of straw and chaff are produced every year. That’s a lot of strawboard from a “free” material. To supply the Manitoba plant, for example, about 350 farmers in a 50-mile radius have formed a co-op, delivering 400,000 half-ton bales of straw annualMore good news: The 180 000 tons of wheat straw used every year by Isobord is equivalent to sequestering 267,000 tons of CO2.

Of course, strawboard—like lumber—will eventually release its carbon back into the atmosphere. But if at the end of their lifetime, strawboard panels are burned in power plants instead of fossil fuels, a true reduction in CO2 emissions can be achieved. Danish farmers already burn their excess straw in power plants to produce electrical power.

A design flaw resulting in tremendous waste of trimmings eventually forced the sale of Isobord to Dow Chemical Canada. (Dow makes the non-formaldehyde MDI resin used to bind particles of crushed straw chaff into fiberboard sheets.)

FIRST STRAWS
Two federal Post Offices and dozens of homes and commercial buildings proved to be not the last but the first of many straws used in big-building construction, after Agriboard of Electra, Texas audaciously replaced conventional 2x4 fame construction with an entire modular panelized building system utilizing compressed straw panels.

RAISING CANE
In the spring of 2000, Louisiana saw the opening of the world’s first bagasse particleboard plant. Instead of being burned and added to the atmosphere, 1.2 million tons of sugar cane chaff is used every year to manufacture 18 million square feet of ¾-inch particleboard. Lighter in weight and more moisture resistant than woodchip-derived particleboard, “DuraCane” is mainly used in furniture and flooring.

In Britain, Westminster Abbey and more than 350,000 homes now use partitions made from strawboard. Europe has also been partitioned using strawboard—at least in its Brussels headquarters. also strawboard partitioning. The ceilings of the Brisbane Stadium are made from strawboard. Ditto the roofing at Eton College. Prefab homes going up in Jamaica are also made of strawboard, which could also prove to be an ideal post-hurricane rebuilding material in the Caribbean and other tree-scarce regions.

Surprisingly, given the current deepening environmental crisis, strawboard start-ups still must bootstrap themselves with insufficient capital, shutting down and re-opening with each hiccup in the seesaw marketplace. No giant forest-processing corporations are producing this alternative.

Yet.

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