Traditional nails are wonderful things: a cheap mass-produced commodity that contributed to the development of the housing industry and, well, hold a lot of things together.
But they are also a problem: metal nails make it hard to recycle wood, and on finished wood surfaces they are often ugly and cause staining.
Now Beck Fastener has invented the wooden nail, a product so new that it has not been officially approved as a building product yet. Fired with a special pneumatic nail gun, the nails are made of beech, compressed with a resin so that they are as hard as aluminium nails; and come in lengths up to 65 millimetres.
The special design of the LignoLoc® nail tip, and the large amount of heat generated by friction when the nail is driven in, cause the lignin of the wooden nail to weld with the surrounding wood to form a substance-to-substance bond.
Possible uses include:
- Saunas (no hot nails)
- Furniture (no visible fasteners)
- Weatherboards (no streaking)
- Pallets (easy recycling of the wood)
- Flooring
- Boat building
Wooden nails may even revolutionise the Jewish funeral trade, where coffins cannot have metal fasteners!
Indeed, the possibilities for wooden nails are endless: no more throwing out wood because it is full of nails; no more streaking or bleeding on wood; no thermal bridges (transmission of heat or coldness) from nails; no more wrecking saw blades from hitting steel nails. Beck Fastener has nailed it.
Image credit: © Beck Fastener
Source: Lloyd Alter, Treehugger
