There was a time when aluminum bikes were new but before the parts likely to bend were replaceable where many a bike owner had to buy a new frame due to misadventure. You can only bend aluminum once, then you’re done. When they started making cogsets with more than six gears they went with axles about half a centimeter wider, and you had a similar conversation. You can have the longer axles but you can’t change your mind after. They have to bend the stays slightly and there is no going back after that (and let me tell you, the mechanic got really quiet when they did the bend. You want to get it just right and every bike and every frame size is different. You pull until you feel the metal just start to give and just after that is your 5mm)
Steel frames could often be rebent. But they’re heavier and they don’t like moisture. And their strength to weight ratio is only about the same as wood. Probably also bad options for firefighters.
https://renovobikes.com/pages/why-wood
They cost a pretty penny, such that I would be afraid of losing or damaging them.
Now, in this case I wouldn't want to use steel, because it rusts and is heavier and neither are good for fire fighting.
Wood combustion temperatures are typically about twice that. Also, incidental heat contact can char the surface of the wood and leave it mostly structurally intact.
The mentioned charring is a very important property in buildings, as solid (hard-)wood pillars have astonishing endurance in a full-scale fire, due to them smoldering slowly from the outside in, compared to e.g. steel framing that quickly softens throughout. One additional factor is evaporative cooling/associated covering with mostly inert water vapor due to the water contained in the wood and the water released from the cellulose fibers upon thermal decompositon.
Can you point me to someplace selling 50' wooden ladders appropriate for firefighting?
I wonder if there is a way to age the wood to SF humidity/climate faster than real time. Just feels like there has to be.
And 13% moisture is relatively high. Kiln-dried hardwood for furniture is sold at about 8-10% moisture. Dried construction lumber is usually sold at about 19% moisture--just below the point which inhibits mold growth.[1] Heck, some of the construction-grade lumber at a big box store might already be at 13% just from sitting around for months inside the store. (Though they stack them poorly and this is one reason why the pieces are often so warped.)
I assume that they keep the pieces around for so long simply because they can. If your time horizon is decades, then you lose nothing by simply stacking the wood (without much stickering) and letting it sit. That doesn't take much effort, just patience. And considering how expensive and rare such long, defect-free pieces are, why risk losing pieces? I have no doubt they could dry the pieces faster, but they have better ways to spend their time. Their only immediate responsibility is to keep the years-long pipeline of wood filled.
[1] On the East Coast with a more humid climate, homebuilders purchase pre-dried lumber for framing. On the West Coast with a much dryer climate, builders traditionally buy wet wood for framing and the wood usually dries to <= 19% by the time they begin finishing the interior. (Wood primarily shrinks tangentially and radially, not longitudinally, so drying framing in place isn't usually an issue. See http://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/dimensional-shrin...)
This takes in the order of days, not years, without damaging the structural integrity by chemical decomposition that starts at relatively low temperatures.
If you are in a hurry, you can also put something like burnt lime in the chamber as that chemically captures the evaporating water without releasing it in these conditions. That way you can keep the humidity under 5% during the process if you spread the lime enough to capture the water as fast as it is driven out of the wood. You need to be careful to not burn the wood, but you should be able to use something from FLIR with some computer vision to check that no lumber overheats. The water also increases the absorption a lot, so this provides feedback that equalizes the humidity, instead of e.g. a runaway heating that would happen if dryer wood absorbs more microwaves.
If you're feeling bored, the Wikipedia article on wood drying is very comprehensive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_drying
Fast drying will also introduce stress and warping to the wood. It would not work when long straight and thick material is needed.
You'll probably damage the wood if you do that though. Now I want to try it in my vacuum chamber, but I'm not sure it'll hold vacuum for weeks/months at a time.
Which I think is the core issue, use other peoples tools unless you have some critical and unique requirement.