Talk:Oriented strand board

Comments
How does OSB differ from chipboard or particle board? osb: thickness:6mm 8mm 9mm 12mm 15mm 18mm 21mm size:1220*2440mm 1250*2500mm glue:MR,WBP,E1,E2 moisture:3-12% density:680-740kg/CBM features of osb 1 tight construction and high strength 2 minimum twisting ,delamination and warping 3 no rotten and decay ,strong against corrosion and fire 4 water proof ,consistent when exposed in the natural or wet environment 5 low formaldehyde emission 6 good nailing strength ,easy to be sawn,nailed, drilled,grooved,planed,filed or polished 7 good heat and sound resistant,easy to be coated — Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.228.16.93 (talk) 09:27, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

"There is debate"
While I like the even-handedness of "there is debate" over the environmental impact of OSB, I don't like the fact there's no second "hand" described. Or listed. Or implied. Just, "on the one hand," OSB can be made from young and/or fast-growing (lower quality) wood. And they don't emit much formaldehyde, which in the U.S. as a chemical would generally not be capitalized unless it's a brand name or something.

Fascinating article. I happen to live (and have, for thirty years) downwind of an OSB plant which, when set up, insisted publicly that it had to be sited here to access Douglas fir, which of all woods was the essential ingredient, a totally bogus claim accepted bya  desperate and ill-informed planning authority. The introduction of potentially increasingly toxic adhesives by a new owner was handled in a comparable way. We are now told that the children of a a downwind village several miles away are very fond of the intrusive plume from the chimney, a claim used to ease in an further environmentally intrusive expansion. Whatever the industry's raw-material and technical safety standards these days, and its environmental record, its environmental claims need closer scrutiny than they now get.81.153.175.218 (talk) 14:26, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Where's the "on the other hand"? As it is, this is literally an unbalanced section.

Also, there should be links to particle board and other (outdated, obsolescent) wood product technology which have been largely shunted aside by the cheaper, more capable OSB.Eh Nonymous 18:47, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

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On the environmental debate there are many topics for discussion. OSB is made from wood that was previously considered "non-commercial" and often left to rot or just not harvested. This is can be considered environmentally good or bad depending on your point of view. The wood itself is a renewable resource which is environmentally good compared to the alternatives of steel and plastic that originate from non-renewable resources. It is also, arguably, a method of sequestering carbon dioxide (at least in the mid term) as it prevents the wood from breaking down and releasing the stored carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere; but the manufacturing process (at least in the States) releases carbon dioxide from the heat energy sources required to manufacture the product and from the RTO (regenerative thermal oxidizer) required by the government authorities to destroy the VOC's (volatile organic compounds) released in the manufacturing process.

On the OSB, Chipboard front these are two different products with largely different uses. Chipboard is made from small particles of wood bonded with resin whereas OSB is made from larger flakes of wood bonded with resin. Chipboard is primarily used for furniture and interior architectural fittings and fixtures whereas OSB is a structural panel primarily used for North American style residential and low rise commercial construction. The overlap in use is a small percentage of total production and examples would be subfloor, pallet and packaging applications where chipboard sometimes gets used instead of OSB. This is however more prevalent in markets outside of North America. (Chipboard and Particleboard are the same thing).

A. Johnson

I concur, if there is a debate, let's hear both sides. I don't know anything about OSB, and I certainly learned nothing about the 'debate' on it's environmental impact from this article. I'm adding a NPOV tag. Dlabtot 14:28, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

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Where I grew up, *this* stuff was known as "chipboard". The stuff made from "small particles of wood bonded with resin" was known as "particleboard" or "sawdustboard". I couldn't tell you what the construction industry called it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.46.145.46 (talk) 01:06, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

'Buyers should ask whether zinc borate is added to their purchase.'
Why? What are the pros and cons of added zinc borate? 89.240.15.82 08:24, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Fascinating article. I happen to live (and have, for thirty years) downwind of an OSB plant which, when set up, insisted publicly that it had to be sited here to access Douglas fir, which of all woods was the essential ingredient, a totally bogus claim accepted bya  desperate and ill-informed planning authority. The introduction of potentially increasingly toxic adhesives by a new owner was handled in a comparable way. We are now told that the children of a a downwind village several miles away are very fond of the intrusive plume from the chimney, a claim used to ease in an further environmentally intrusive expansion. Whatever the industry's raw-material and technical safety standards these days, and its environmental record, its environmental claims need closer scrutiny than they now get.talk) 14:26, 19 March 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Delahays (talk • contribs)

zinc borate may have harmful emissions, both in its production and in its emission from OSB. However, structural insulated panels are relatively hard to replace so inhibiting beetle infestation etc would be a feesible option in terms of life cycle assessment of the building its used on.

Not all Borate compounds are hazardous: Disodium Octaborate Tetrahydrate is an emission free low to zero adsorption  alternative that is recommended for application in wood construction as a prevenative treatment for wood boring insects and prevents/ kills fungi. Na2B8O134H2O The material is available from a number of manufacturers: Nisus Corp., Termite Pruf ,Solubore , and Board Defense. James Hade 21:24, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

WOOD-FLAKE GRAIN ORIENTATION
The article states, "It is manufactured in wide mats from cross-oriented layers of thin, rectangular wooden strips compressed and bonded together with wax and resin adhesives (95% wood, 5% wax and resin)".

Of all the OSB which I have ever seen, the most that can be said is that perhaps slightly more of the flakes are oriented to the long axis on the visible layer of a 4 x 8-Ft sheet. This is counting any flake which is at less than 45-deg to the long axis. Who knows what goes on inside a few layers ?

I think that most users will find the properties of these sheets to be very close to uniform in all directions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.214.128.139 (talk) 19:37, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

OSB sheets typically have a clearly marked strength axis. The orientation may *look* random, but it is not completely so, and the resulting material does have the strength axis engineering property alright. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.150.5.2 (talk) 19:13, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

MATERIALS AND MANUFACTURING METHODS
An explanation of how the resin-wax material is applied to the wood chips is needed. The example photo shows the strands laid out prior to pressing but they look very dry. Is the adhesive applied to the chips before laying, or to the mat after it is laid? How is consistency in the distribution of the adhesive acheived? Is the material routinely tested by a certified (ASTM) process as it comes off the production line?

In the chipping process, it can safely be assumed that the cells along the sheer plane of each chip, and long each edge are cut open, crushed, fractured and shattered. These are the surfaces that receive the resin/wax.

Is the wood that is used in OSB first Kiln dried, dried after chipping, or is green wood used, and assumed to be receive the equivalent of being kiln dried during the pressing process? This is important to understand regarding the potential for insect, mold, and mildew infestations.

Is the resin typically natural or synthetic? James Hade 13:05, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Thickness

 * rm Typically a 15 cm layer will produce a 15 mm panel thickness. Obviously nonsense. Is it the other way? Source? &mdash; Xiong &#29066; talk * 23:07, 24 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Seems perfectly believable to me: 15cm thick layer of chips gets compressed down to 15mm. It's hard to imagine how the panels could be thicker than the input after being squashed. --Jaded-view (talk) 05:33, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

OSB Panels
Which is the correct side out/up when installing OSB panels? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.74.224.153 (talk) 20:15, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Free Advertising
Are jobsdone.com and smartply.com (in external links) not just commercial ads? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.161.118.199 (talk) 16:10, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Informal Caption
Can the caption stating "OSB sees a lot of use in housing construction." be changed to "OSB sees extensive use in housing construction."? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.178.189.227 (talk) 17:13, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Environmental impact
The section refers to a journal paper which suppose to support a claim about low emission level of formaldehyde. But in fact this paper does not consider OSB: "This study analyses the effect of various indoor temperatures in under heating system on the emission of formaldehyde from building finishing material such as laminate flooring, plywood flooring, MDF and Particleboard." I believe the claim should be removed or more appropriate reference should be provided.

Chipboard vs. Oriented Strand Board
Chipboard and oriented strand board are not the same thing. See these pictures from a company that sells both. . John Nagle (talk) 18:49, 8 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I added a note to that effect that, hopefully, will either remain or get revised instead of being reverted, because we really need a clarification of this in the article.
 * When I searched up chipboard, I was directed to "particle board" and the phrasing currently in use there led me to react with "OK, what I've called chipboard since I was little is the stuff pictured under Oriented strand board because those clearly are too big to be 'particles'", followed by a jump to this article where the lack of any mention of some people calling it chipboard led me in here, all ready to ask someone to find a citation to swap things over.
 * I didn't know chipboard and OSB were different things until just now and, upon searching up some pictures from URLs that *aren't* timing out, my conclusion is that a LOT of people (pre-Wikipedia me included) will intuitively reject the "chipboard is particle board" term of art because it just seems too implausible that such a clean, concise, visually intuitive linguistic distinction either has no meaning or that you need to get out the calipers to distinguish "particles" from "chips". SSokolow (talk) 07:40, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Ecological alternative
Can we also mention the ecological alternative "OSB"-like plates made by Han Wösten using Schizophyllum commune ? See https://www.nature.com/articles/srep33640 https://www.uu.nl/en/news/tu-delft-and-utrecht-university-expose-new-layer-of-fungi

KVDP (talk) 14:19, 22 April 2017 (UTC)