New Hand Plane, New Material?

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Just thought I would have a little fun here and see if anyone can guess what kind of crazy hand plane I am creating now. I'll give you the qualities of this new material and you can make guesses as to what this material is. There is no prize for winning, just FWW bragging rights. Extra bragging rights for those who get the patented name of this material

1. Its 100% biodegradable though the cutting iron will be metal
2. If I drop it, it will dent, but not shatter
3. If I drop it in water, it will float
4. This material is not new, it was touted in 1943 or so but has never been used in any true application that I know of
5. It consists of two materials EVERY woodworker has in its shop; bar none
6. It can be cold welded, in fact it does not take heat to fuse together
7. Casting this material is incredibly simple, but cure time can be quite slow

That is all I can think of for now, but may be able to add other materials if guesses are way off. Guess away, and yes this is a WILD material to use as a handplane.
 
Not bad Jason, you got it in 4 posts, with help from Stu of course.

Yep, I have had this idea for a hand plane material for quite some time. For those that do not know, Pykecrete is basically 83% ice and 17% sawdust. By mixing sawdust with water and then freezing it, you get this incredible mixture. It is incredibly impact resistant and strong. Incredibly the ice does not melt nearly as fast either, taking 2-3 times longer to melt due to the thermal effeciency of the sawdust.

It was suggested by a man name Pyke to Winston Churchill in the mid-40's. By having a boat made out of pykecrete (sawdust and ice) an aircraft carrier could be made that was impenetrable by torpedoes and yet could easily be fixed if damage was done. Of course ice also floats so its pretty hard to sink a ship made out of floating material. They even went so far as to build a 30 x 60 boat in Canada and by using a 1 hp refrigeration unit, it kept the ice from thawing.

So since I lack the funds to build a 58 mile floating Pykecrete bridge from Alaska to Russia to connect us with London via car, (hey you heard it here first) I figured I would have to make due with a handplane.

It would be idea for woodworkers who do restoration work as they could simply create their own planes from blocks of pykecrete and go to work instead of special ordering them. Of course for us regular woodworkers, it would be some nice to work on that dock and let it float on top of the water between uses :)

As far as I know, no useful purpose has been proposed for this incredible material since its inception. As a guy at work said, making a hand plane out of 83% ice is the most insane idea he had ever heard of.
 
Ta DA!!!! I get bragging rights!! WOO!! :p

So ... how would you handle a few problems:

1. Ice is cold - your hands don't like cold much. Wear gloves?
2. Summer heat usage - make a new one every night before you leave for the day, i guess?
3. Maybe this isn't too bad: Grain raising with moisture - maybe that's a good thing? Raise the grain just before ya slice it off?
4. Sticking ... i wonder if Pykrete is as slick as it may seem?
 
Ta DA!!!! I get bragging rights!! WOO!! :p

So ... how would you handle a few problems:

1. Ice is cold - your hands don't like cold much. Wear gloves?
2. Summer heat usage - make a new one every night before you leave for the day, i guess?
3. Maybe this isn't too bad: Grain raising with moisture - maybe that's a good thing? Raise the grain just before ya slice it off?
4. Sticking ... i wonder if Pykrete is as slick as it may seem?

Its pretty neat stuff Jason. It is cold, so you are right in that you need to wear gloves, but the material does not melt like you think. In fact it melts very slowly so at night you can toss it in a refrigerator, freezer or insulated lunch pail and have it keep indefinitely. So that explains away your first two points, and kind of makes the third a moot point. Still, I would not call the material super slick since the material is like a plastic-particle board hybrid.

The block of pykecrete I am shaping now did not mix well with the sawdust on top of the block, and its amazing the strength difference between plain ice and the ice mixed with sawdust. Drilling makes it feel like plastic, while shaping with a chisel is like slicing off particle board. The sawdust is somewhat rough, but there is enough ice in between the particle to make the material smooth and slick too. It's certainly a unique material.

I guess I have the same problem every one else has ever had who has toyed with the material...other then building a floating bridge to Siberia, what do you do with the stuff?
 
Other applications ... I wonder ....

Could it be used for standard bridge piles as baracades? I wonder what the cost/benefit analysis of that would be over the standard materials.
 
You could use it to make self contained tree or plant seeds.
make balls from it with the seed in its center, and drop them or even fire them against the ground from an aeroplane. They would dig in the ground, the moisture would help the seed to start to grow and the sawdust would act as fertilizer, or it could have fertilizer mixed with it, I wonder if you could freeze manure in the same way I guess that it would be quite similar. But not on your kitchen fridge of course.
In this way you could plant hundreds of acres of unnacessible deforested land quite easily.

Copyright by Toni Ciuraneta january 2009
 
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