Has anybody ever successfully made an internal combustion or steam engine out of wood?
Can it be done?
Oh Mighty Cecil! Is the question worthy of thine attention?
Here is a wooden steam engine that appears to work just fine:
…and one that runs on compressed air:
A wooden internal combustion engine will not run for very long. It will either catch on fire or the wood will split, crack, or disintegrate in a short time, or it will seize as the components swell as they absorb the fuel and lubricants. A steam engine will last only a short time also, it wouldn’t catch fire unless you try to make the boiler out of wood, but the heat and water will rapidly deform the wood if the pressure doesn’t cause it to break in some way. So even if a wooden engine of either type was ever made it won’t run for very long, or if built with enough tolerances it would be extraordinaily inefficient.
It would be possible to create an engine made from composite material that includes some wood, but this would be rather pointless, and barely qualify as an engine made of wood.
ETA: I watched the video of the wooden steam engine above, and the presumed builder states clearly that it can’t run for long or it will blow up.
The one labeled as a “steam engine” appears also to run off of compressed air. Doubtless it could be adapted to run on actual steam (if you can boil water in a paper bag, you can do it in a wooden container, too), but as TriPolar says, it wouldn’t be very practical.
Trouble is, moisture causes wood to swell and deform - steam especially so (steaming wood can make it very pliant) - there’s quite a bit of difference between running a wooden engine on dry compressed air and running it on steam.
This would be quite difficult to design around - I would expect a short running time before failure of one kind or another.
many coats of marine varnish would be needed.
I agree that such a design would not be practical in any meaningful sense but you could get a well thought out design to work for a few minutes at least and the examples shown are close enough to prove that. The reason that people even attempt such things isn’t from a practical standpoint. It is simple curiosity about what could work even for a few minutes if you are a good enough craftsman. That is what steampunk engineering is also about. The fascinating thing is that you can get such designs to work at all without destroying themselves for a short time at least. After all, they are just a really fancy version of some early fire starting tools like the bow and spindle.
If we’re allowed to use bamboo (within the definition of ‘wood’), it might help - the inner surface of bamboo canes is not much use, but the smooth outer layer could be used to line the cylinder - by turning it inside out.
- By which I mean, slicing the bamboo into long slivers and shaping them for glued reassembly with the shiny parts facing inwards (a bit like how split cane fishing rods are made).
As long as the whole thing was designed for fairly low pressure, I even think a bamboo boiler might be possible.
But it still won’t run for more than minutes, I think.
Exactly - steam is the means to make wood incredible pliable and flexible. I doubt it would make a serviceable boiler (assuming you use something like an electric heater, not an open flame). Wood likes to split, so a pressure vessel for steam, made out of wood, is not a good idea. The engineers of the 1800’s spent a lot of time working on how to build boilers of metal so they would reliably not blow up during normal use.
The cylinders in a steam engine (or internal combustion(?) engine) are a tight fit to ensure the pressure difference causes work to be done - if there’s too much of a gap the result is most pressure escapes. Since steam and water causes wood to swell, the fit between cylinder and piston may be unreliable. (too tight and it seizes).
But, your post does remind me of the joke about Polish wood stoves, made only of the best wood. 
Classic picture of Stephenson’s Rocket Notice that both the boiler and the cylenders are mad of wood. Presumable the firebox, pipes, and cranks are not.
I’ve never heard of a Diesel or Otto cycle engine made of wood.
A Stirling Cycle engine might be viable. The down side is that although a Stirling Engine will work with quite low temperature differences, its efficiency is still dependent on that difference, so for an engine that is viable with wooden components, you are not going to get great efficiency. Worse, for a Stirling Engine to be as efficient as possible you need the engine components to as ot as possibe, which leads useful engines to have higher temperature components than a conventional internal combustion engine. But it might be possible to construct a very large lightweight engine that delivers modest power from relatively low temperature differences, ones within the range of wood.
The Stirling Engine has the advantage that it needs no water or steam in its operation; the working gas can be normal air. The natural insulating nature of wood is both a blessing and a curse. Most the the engine needs to avoid heat transfer, but the heat input and heat sink do need to transfer heat. Also the regenerator might be an interesting thing to design. A long bundle of thin bamboo pipes might work quite well.
Thinking about it, such a big slow bamboo Stirling Engine would be a very cool thing to build.
I suspect that rather than being made of wood, they are insulated with wood. Keeping both at a high working temperature will increase the efficiency of the engine noticeably. Modern steam locomotives have a metal jacket over fibrous insulation (often asbestos) for this reason.
I do a lot of wood bending using steam at 212 degrees, at higher temps and pressures the bending effect s modified greatly. It is purely a novelty and beautiful craftsmanship but useless.
I suppose an internal combustion engine would work if the fuel burned much cooler than normally: alcohol diluted with water, methane mixed with nitrogen, etc.
A stirling engine with a floating candle wick as a source of fuel.
A low temp Stirling cycle engine could work, especially working with a fluid in a gaseous state. Plenty of varieties of wood will pass gases axially through the grain. But it wouldn’t qualify as either an internal combustion or steam engine. The big problem will be the poor conductivity of wood.
Stirling engines tend to be quite low power - overcoming friction will be quite a challenge (it already is a challenge even if you have the choice of materials)
I think low power for size is a given for any wooden engine. I’m thinking of maybe one atmosphere working pressure. So we are looking at something more like the very old atmospheric engines, but more efficient and faster running.
The rules for a wooden engine could be interesting. All wood? How about nails, screws, bolts, maybe the odd metal band? If we are allowed to use something like wine barrel technology it is going to help. Otherwise we get into a question about adhesives. At which point I would be proposing epoxy resin, and the engine would technically be a fibre reinforced plastic. But if we are building an engine with dowels, dovetail joints, and rope, things are going to be a lot more limited (although possibly a lot more fun.) Allowing use of even a bit of metal makes things a heck of a lot easier. Bearings being the big one.