Wood is a fantastic material, if it wouldn't exist in nature we would have to invent it and the inventor would be richer than Bill Gates for sure. Try to find another material which is non toxic, solid and easy workable, ever lasting, heat insulator, good looking and low cost!
Agreed. I recall many years ago reading about an atomic bomb shipping container project by one of the local 'Defense Labs' (Sandia IIRC). It seems over time several 'devices' have been in plane crashes 'in service', one never recovered? Obviously that's not cool. The idea came up that they are often shipped 'not ready to drop' and a crash with 'cargo' like that could be really nasty......so a big bucks project (any other kind ever happen?) to build the ultimate protective case. Lots of prototypes tested in 'impacts' and FIRE. The idea is the plane could hit the ground (or a handy mountain) very very hard, then burn.
The winner, in the end, was a giant 'wine keg' made in layers around the device.....layers of Redwood. Yes, Redwood trees. A soft wood (good on impacts) that
doesn't burn. Yes, it's self extinguishing! In the local woods (where they grow), they get hit by lightning from time to time. Because of the way they're built (an extremely heavy tree, standing on a soft base for a very long time, the bottom few feet are 'rock solid', traditionally too hard to cut. This is why you see old photos of guys attacking the huge trunks from platforms 20 or so feet up. Areas logged in the past are littered with huge stumps still since the wood also 'doesn't rot'.
Because the trunks are so dense at the base, lightning does it worst there, not at the top where they're hit. They catch fire there and the inside often blows out as it burns for a while, leaving huge cavities at ground level. The trees live a very long time so that some areas (like along ridges) have one in ten or more 'burned out' but still very much alive. Animals, and even people, have taken up residence in some cases.
Anyway, layers of Redwood beat out the best man made composites 'money can buy'. And you know who those guys love to spend money.......
Wood is very cool, and organic and all. Definitely part of the 'VapMan charm', but I'd still buy one in ceramic or similar I think. As a 'something else', not a replacement, of course. Be fun to have a VM you could run through the dish washer I think.
OF
Another fun bit of trivia on Redwoods. There are two species, where I live we have the smaller 'Coast Redwoods', not the Giant Seqouias like grow in the high mountains (worlds largest trees). Fun name, officially English but with four vowels in a row? Stolen from the Indians you know.....
Anyway, the smaller species were thick in a blind canyon near the coast and they were disparate for work in the Great Depression (go figure) so a scheme to log the valley was hatched. They decided to seriously log off the trees, using an existing railroad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Western_Railroad
So they dammed the creek near the coast (to make a pond to collect the logs) and set to work. First, they burned the lot, the entire valley to the ridges. Scorched earth and singed Redwood trees. Less in the way, but still very hard work. The built a railroad to haul the logs out along the floor but there were two tunnels too small to pass the huge logs. So they bored holes in them, inserted dynamite and blew them into smaller pieces (lengthwise). When they had the 'pond' was full, they blew the dam and captured the logs as they headed out to sea.
Now for the really fun part. It's hard to express how massive these guys are (even though they're the small ones....). To 'grease the wheels' with the capitol (to get permission to log) they promised free Redwood to expand the main road into the capitol. In 1933 (or so) they built a second causeway into the capitol (over the wide slow river) next to the existing (concrete) one, 20 feet wide,
half a mile long.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yolo_Causeway
Yolo, another Indian word, is also the name of the county. More work, free materials, a win-win. But, the story is all that wood came from just two of those trees! Selected for the job and shown to the politicians. Two of the biggest, but each built an elevated roadway 20 feet wide and a quarter mile long. Whatever that is in metric, it's huge in Yankee measures.
Today tourists can take a steam train ride through the canyon. Several families live there and depend on weekly rail runs (no roads.....). Pretty cool for a tree.
Another interesting thing happened WRT Ecology. The fire killed everything the logging didn't. Several hundred species of trees and bushes wiped out along with the animals. The animals came back fast (they can walk....), the plants took longer and had to compete with each other for gound now getting full sun for the first time in a million or two years..... Only a few dozen major ones 'came back', something still being studied.
Makes a great day trip for visiting folks.
https://www.skunktrain.com/
Fort Bragg (on the coast, where the train starts and the Noyo River comes to the sea) is very cool as well, good history, beautiful country, and the grow lovely pot in the area I'm told...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Bragg,_California
Check it out next time you're in the area.
OF
)
) and a piece of horn for the mouthpiece of course... 
?