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Comment by nkurz | Hacker News Reader

I learned recently of another surprising welding technique. It turns out that if you rub together the right kinds of wood at the right speed, you can actually weld wood to wood!

Friction Welding of Wood (text): http://ibois.epfl.ch/page-20697-en.html

Linear friction welding of wood (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0k04hjdYuQ

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That's what wood glue is for, it's strong as wood if your joint is tight. Personally, I love the look of box joints. Buy a chisel and try one, it's mesmerizing.

Stronger than wood, in fact. A properly assembled glue joint will be the last thing to break on a wooden part. That reminds me that I should really get back to working on that desk I was building... months ago.

> Stronger than wood, in fact. A properly assembled glue joint will be the last thing to break on a wooden part.

With the caveat that depending on grain orientation w.r.t. the joint, wood movement[1] can very significantly weaken some glued joints to a tiny fraction of their original strength, in a surprisingly short period of time. IIRC, Matthias Wandel (aka the Woodgears.ca guy) referenced above has a nice example of a poor joint vs. glue design in one of his videos, but I forget which one. :-/

[1] Primarily due to expansion and contraction due to changes in ambient humidity.

If you haven't already, check out this youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Matthiaswandel

https://youtu.be/W1pvUlQgYtk

Ah yes, reminds me of the night when I was binge watching Japanese woodworking videos. That dovetail joint, man.

Welding is also very strong, but it has limitations and weaknesses.

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