Can crushers come in various shapes and sizes and you can find many different materials used on them starting from steel to aluminum and also some high strength plastic and fiberglass but when I saw a can crusher made from wood I was pleasantly surprised. Can you imagine how cool you could make your crusher if you make it from wood as wood is more easily customizable and adaptable to your everyday needs? But despite those benefits this also poses a question if wood is strong enough to be able to continuously sustain those high pressures that it is suspected to when you try to crush an aluminum can?
To answer this question I have searched for both steel and wood strength measurements and I have to say that it is not easy to find some case studies that would show how both materials do in different situations but I managed to find some experiments that showed that wood is just as strong as steel when used properly in long time wear and tear and also the breaking point of both materials is quite similar but wooden structures are more likely to break in big impacts unlike metal structures that usually bend and have a bit more resistance. But to fully answer this question we would need to create devices that measure precisely how much force you need to apply to each and every Wood type and also each metal alloy because every one of these is different and you can’t compare pine with oak on the wood side and steel with aluminum in the metal side as they are quite different in every aspect of their endurance.
Wood is also much cheaper to get and that means you could potentially make your crusher much more cheaply but it also needs more work with that polishing and creating a layer of that outer coating so that no moisture sneaks inside this device. If someone would really want to make a wooden can crusher I guess he would need to create one from metal and an almost identical from wood and compare the materials costs and the time it took to make them both but also think about how he could automate many of those functions as you would need almost complete automation in mass production.
But nevertheless there are many woodworkers that are experimenting with can crushers made almost entirely from wood and what I can say from examining many devices like these is that they work just as well as any regular metal or plastic can crusher and they usually look much more resilient and are made with much more care because they are hand carved and polished. If you search for these wood can crushers you will find many plans and already build devices that look amazing but the sad part is that you can’t buy them as they are not mass-produced and that is a shame because a wooden device that can crush cans feels more natural and will much more easily be incorporated in many stylishly designed houses as even the rich are conscious about the environment and are willing to crush their beverage cans but I doubt that they would buy a plastic or cheaply made metal crusher.
In the future I hope someone will see that there is a potential market for these wood can crushers and will mass produce them or maybe fill individual orders with tested and proven wood crusher plans and just add some customization to those plans like color and handle design.
Here are some of the best Wood can crushers that I found searching on the World Wide Web.
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