What Are Engineered Wood Products?
When the average person stops to consider what the strongest
materials to build with found in nature, the first thing to come to mind
is steel. Hey, who can blame them because after all steel is some
pretty strong stuff to build with. Just the same though, did you know
that the material that a black widow spider spins its web from is in
fact stronger than steel and some 20 times lighter?So there are in fact better materials to build with out there but it all comes down to things like cost and weight factors. That is how much any given material costs to produce, and how much it weighs. You see, expensive materials drive up the cost of a building which you of course know, but so do heavier materials. For instance steel is very expensive and time consuming to handle.
So even though it's been around being used to build with for centuries, in spite of its inherent shortcomings, wood continues to be the number one choice in home building materials. It's relatively affordable and also light. It's also easy to cut and attach using just a saw, a hammer, and a handful of nails. Even so, all along wood has had one glaring flaw, and that is its grain.
Wood grain might be good on furniture but it's where wood tends to split when used as a structural building material. You see, pound for pound, wood is really one of the stronger of the available building materials but it's the grain in wood that is the problem. Not only does it tend to come apart along its grain but periodically a defective grain can be the source of a hidden, more exceptional problem.
Perhaps the very first of the engineered wood products to be made was common plywood. Now plywood gains its strength by alternating 1/8 inch wood layers so the grain runs counter to one another and the net result, is that it's a full 8 times stronger than a normal piece of wood of the same dimensions. Plywood also tends to have a high sheer or lateral strength.
Now do keep in mind that these 1/8 inch layers of wood can be laminated to several thicknesses, so not only is this system used to make plywood that's primarily used on surfaces but it is also used to make beams. Engineered plywood beams up to 4 and even 6 inches thick that are used to span distances far greater than a comparable sized piece of standard lumber could.
One more way that the grain in raw lumber is done away with to produce another type, or style of engineered wood products, is by shredding or chipping wood into chips fibres, or long strands. Once this is done these materials can be pressed, formed, or moulded into building materials like oriented strand board, or OSB. OSB is a type of low cost particle board that's used in home building, and general manufacturing.
