/ Rob Beschizza / 9:09 pm Wed Jun 19, 2013

Why gadgets are no longer made of wood

John Brownlee at Fast Company:
There are two reasons. One is practical; the other spiritual, about the way we look at what technology represents to the future. Let’s start with the practical. ... "It’s too hard to work with. Wood is alive."

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  1. Because our gadgets basically leap frog the ‘craftsman’ stage of development. Quick development and production before someone else did it first. Injection molding and plastics for the form factor. Instead of engraved crafted wooden items.

    Despite spiritual,and practical. Financial is biggest factor.

  3. The folks who bought fine furniture TRF radios in the twenties, only to have them rendered utterly obsolete in five years, leaned that lesson the hard way.

    We’ve been learning ever since.

    1. That had nothing to do with the construction of the cabinet.  That’s like saying that the metal casing on my receiver is bad because it can process S-Video and lacks Component and HDMI.

      If anything, the vintage furniture radios have an interesting quality in that it’s possible to retrofit something else into the cabinet, either a different kind of radio or a different kind of device entirely.  More modern cases are so specific to the electronic parts inside that it’s not generally possible to retrofit even if one likes the outside look of a given device.

  4. “”To injection mold a piece out of plastic, you can make it in just a minute, and it will probably only cost a couple of bucks”

    Bucks? More like cents.

  5. Some still are, at least at the interface level. Everyone should check out the incredible work of Randy Jones at http://madronalabs.com. He makes the best computer controller I’ve ever seen or touched and wood is essential to his work. The minute I encountered the Soundplane my hands immediately knew what to do. 

    Also my good friend Peter Bussigel makes gorgeous nDial step controllers/sequencers out of wood. http://bussigel.com/pb/category/instruments/

    Monome has also used a lot of wood in their builds as well. http://www.monome.org

    The maker movement and open source hardware culture also bring wood back into the conversation in a great way. All of this is at a smaller scale, but it is conceivable that wood will find a greater voice in tech builds (and not just in kitschy or retrofetishist ways) especially given contemporary interest in sustainable design.

    1. Which is also covered in the article, explaining that wood is a niche material.

      I personally think that the biggest reason is that wood is durable, is meant to acquire character over a lifespan, but our electronic devices are more ephemeral. We think of them as units, to be swapped out in whole when they grow obsolete.

      That is a big part of the argument right there: manufacturers want to sell units, not swappable parts. A wooden case suggests that the device was designed to age, and very few products plan to be around so long to warrant the cost.

      And then there is the way wood only occupies a small time frame in device manufacture. In the past, wood was the “cheap” or “light” alternative to metal casing. Once it no longer filled that niche, it fell to the wayside.

      I suspect that like the Steampunk movement with its rediscovery of baroque filigree details, there will be more mood used in retro casings. But not on an industrial scale any more…

      …except maybe if Ikea gets into the game.

  6. “Why gadgets are no longer made of wood” because gadgets are “mechanical things”, and gears, springs, sprockets, cogs, cams, keys, escapements, rackets… suck when they’re made out of dried parenchymal cells.

    from http://www.etymonline.com/gadget (n.) 1886, gadjet (but
    said to date back to 1850s), sailors’ slang word for any small
    mechanical thing or part of a ship for which they lacked, or forgot, a
    name; perhaps from French gâchette “catchpiece of a mechanism” (15c.), diminutive of gâche “staple of a lock.”

    2. I wasn’t aware that an iPhone is a “mechanical” device. In fact, I’m not certain that there is a single one of “gears, springs, sprockets, cogs, cams, keys, escapements, ratchets” in it.

  7. When making some types of things, wood is a less-desirable material simply through it’s lack of tolerance for abuse.  A cell phone case with wood panels replacing plastic panels would probably have a lot of cracked panels across a product line.  The panels need to be so thin that wood is unsuited.

  8. 30 years ago the majority of electronic  gadgets were still cased in wood? 

    I’m 46 and that’s not the youth I remember.  I remember faux-wood, i.e. plastic that’s supposed to look like wood and brown – as not to clash with the wood furniture – was still  en vogue.  But that’s about it. Stuff like tvs and radios and tape decks, etc, made out of wood looked antique even back then.    More metal back then, though.

    Also, sustainable?  With gadgets lasing three to six years – somewhat  longer for high-end music systems – using quality wood looks like waste to me.  

    Next, thermic.  Electronics, especially computers, produce a lot of waste heat. And wood is a good insulator.

    1. It was more like 40+ years ago. I have some early Seventies Japanese stereo components with plywood cabinets. They are very nice. The mid-Seventies is when the wood-grained contact paper on a metal cover took over. By 1981, the sleek metal look was all over.

    2. Our Zenith black and white and our Garrard stereo with record changer were both in wooden cabinets.

    3. Yep… I’m a couple of years younger, and I agree… most electronincs were definitely not encased in wood, or if they were then they were old (our old radio). But… going to 40 years ago… when I’m thinking of the 70’s, the big difference with today is that we really didn’t have that much electronics. And the ones we had were to be used for a long time… and any wooden ones were stationary, for show. And, that kind of brings it, at least for me, to the point of wood and why we don’t want it for gadgets…

      The article says: “That’s both part of wood’s charm, and why many people don’t like it, especially in electronics. They don’t want to admit their gadgets will one day be antiques.”
      No, I would say it’s totally the other way around. We know our electronics will be obsolete. Buying our electronics encased in wood would mean we will have that piece for the long haul, which we don’t want to. We want to replace it when there is something new and shiny. So we use the replacable material… plastic. The ones we do buy in wood (goes for solid wood furniture, too) is the ones we want to keep for a long time… and for show.

      1. Yep… I’m a couple of years younger, and I agree… most electronincs were definitely not encased in wood,

        I’m roughly the same age, and I’d only partially agree, depending on what you mean by wood. I remember lots of cheap audio and TV equipment up to the mid 1980s having cabinets made from chipboard or fibreboard, usually covered in a glossy black film. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a full-size speaker that wasn’t made primarily from chipboard.

        1. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a full-size speaker that wasn’t made primarily from chipboard.

          And it’s unlikely you ever will (at least on a mass produced scale).  That has more to do with mass and structural rigidity than anything else.  A speaker cabinet is more akin to IKEA furniture, while the speaker itself would be the gadget in this case.

  11. let’s leave the wood to artists and craftspeople. i can imagine what would happen if (say) apple or samsung decided they needed five million identical slabs of bird’s eye maple or teak for their next run of iphones or monitors.

    and why the hell am i posting as “splarble” now? fucking disqus.

  12. I’ve built lots of wood equipment in my shop for use with various saws because I won’t ruin a $250 blade if I overshoot a bit. 

  13. How about the fact that at a thickness that suits the scale of modern devices, wood is simply not strong enough? If you made laptop of plywood, the wood alone would need to be 3mm thick. Metal and plastic can be made extremely thin by comparison.

    1. An actual casing out of wood would not be practical for our smaller-is-better devices, but one can use a thin veneer on top of the plastic casing… if one wants the wooden look. 

      1.  Veneers crack and warp with moisture. I like woodworking, but adding veneers is corny and kitsch. I have literally no idea what the deal is with Americans and faux-wood panelling on cars and walls.

        1. Heh, yea (on veneer being kitsch). But I rather have a warping veneer on the phone than have the actual phone casing warp and crack (as I’m pretty sure the thin casing would do).

          My I-don’t-get-it with faux wood has been wood sided cars in the US. I kind of get faux wood panels made to look like exotic wood panels, but on the side of a car?????

          1. Although on cars it does look ridiculous, I chime in with the fact that when I lived in the US as a kid, it was all just after the rage, and those cars have a happy nostalgic nest in my mind’s eye.

            I’d never drive one.  They explode on contact.

            Also in the UK they used it – eg on the Morris Minor.

            And some specialist cars have wooden chassis – Morgans, Marcos.  Googling around, lots had wooden bodywork.

            Wood is fantastically workable.  I’m waiting for wooden aircraft to make a comeback.

    1. “also working with wood is not hard”
      Yes, that’s what I was wondering about the article. They make woodwork to be something only old craftsmen can do (one quote used “weird”). I don’t think it helps in getting more stuff made out of wood if it is made to be some kind of mumbo jumbo magic that is very hard to get right.

      1. They spoke to a bespoke audio gear merchant. Those people would describe anything is possible only for classically-trained metaphysicians if it were part of their production process.

      2. Wood needs a different skill set then plastic or metal.  If you learn those first then wood is hard by comparison.  Those of us who grew up learning basic carpentry skills handle the tricky bits automatically.

        1. I suspect that the mere presence of ‘tricky  bits’ is considered a significant vice.

          Efficient mass production(as opposed to ‘craftsmanship performed by many craftsmen under the same roof’) really requires minimizing the number of ‘eh, just use your judgement here until it works’ steps.

          Regardless of material, the phrase “File to fit” is enough to cause your friendly local mass-production process guy to unhinge his lower mandible and emit a horrible clicking sound and a stream of acidic bile.

          1. The dumb thing is CNC machines can and do make multiple wooden things that are exactly the same and are all perfect, in fact I would argue that plastic injection moulding is for more complex especially making the mould in the first place.

  15. Well … *lovely* gadgets are still made of wood.

    My kids love the little french VILAC cars, which have superior momentum and low friction running.

    And I am going to love my new guitar amp, which is to be encased in finger-jointed pine.  And, of course, tweed.

    Wood is lovely.  But does need protection – especially rare and over-exploited species like Brazilian rosewood.

  16. I’d be inclined to suspect that the fact that ‘gadgets’ are no longer the size of furniture also has something to do with it.

    For the few objects that still do require size(proper speakers, say) wood isn’t uncommon; but why would a gadget the size of a laptop(or, like a modern TV, one that is nearly all screen with almost no merely-decorative surface area) emulate some sort of wooden furniture?

    1. I’d be inclined to suspect that the fact that ‘gadgets’ are no longer the size of furniture also has something to do with it.

      Possibly also why we throw things out every year or two in favor of something newer and shinier, instead of using them for a decade or more.

  17. What happened to wood?

    (1) Poorly done veneer in mass market furniture.
    (2) Ugly faux “wood grain” appliques (sticky paper)
    (3) Mass market tree farming (pine, yuck!) and the long term risk and expense of growing specialty woods like maple, walnut, cherry, etc.
    (4) Wood is inherently less uniform in quality than moldable materials.

    And, of course, the extra expense and difficulty of working with wood makes using wood as a purely aesthetic detail hard to justify.

    A cell-phone where wood replaced plastic (or metal) on the case – assuming that wood could replace the case without any functional side effects to signal propagation or device thermal properties – would probably be 4 or 5 times as thick even using oak (one of the strongest woods, although not necessarily the most aesthetic.)

    A flat screen TV with a wood case – would be a flat screen TV with a tiny border of wood.  Hardly worth the effort. Who looks at the case of a flat screen TV anyway – except for the first time.

    *** BUT *** if the reason that wood is so seldom seen on disposable, mass-market consumer devices is because of some bizarre revulsion at working with “living material” – then we’re a VERY sick society.

    Time to take a (wooden) baseball bat and apply it liberally to such squeamish people.

  18. Next step: When I buy a car that is half spaceship, the glass canopy lit with heads-up displays like an IronMan suit, computer AI co-pilot operating subsystems on my voice command, controls and instruments gleaming and glowing (ie any modern luxury car), can this gleaming spaceship interior please not be decorated with bits of dead animal as if Ug The Caveman had never evolved beyond the cave?
    I get that leather is expensive to produce, which gives it a perception of being a luxury material, and I get that it is durable in ways that we struggle to best, but the aesthetic dissonance of draping a spaceship interior with stitched-together carcass hides caveman-style, is jarring.

    1. I think there’s actually something pretty cool about that aesthetic dissonance.

      Brooks leather saddles are known the world over as pretty much the ultimate long-haul bike seat. Every now and then, one gets bolted to an otherwise sleek aerospace-grade carbon weapon.

      I’d never do it, because I don’t do the kind of miles that would lead me to contemplate such a heavy seat, but it does make a certain kind of sense; despite all our materials tech, natural materials remain the benchmark for contact points.

  19. On a related note, the wood you get today is not the same as wood you got 30 years ago.

    My father does a lot of work in wood, and he claims that the quality of wood has dropped dramatically.  Wooden furniture has given way to chip and particle board, which are cheaper and more pliable.  Nowadays a lot of the new 2x4s he sees for sale are twisted and near-useless.  It’s not that the good stuff is out of his price range; it’s that he can’t always find it when he needs it.  

    1.   I live in and work on a four hundred year old timber framed house. 
      Back then they had wood that lasts over 400 years. 

  20. The favourite wooden gadget that I own is the Atari Music Video. The graduated colours of the buttons complements the colour of the wood grain beautifully.

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