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A Hatton-Brown Publication
Co-Publisher: David H. Ramsey Co-Publisher: David (DK) Knight Chief Operating Officer: Dianne C. Sullivan Publishing Office Street Address: 225 Hanrick Street Montgomery, AL 36104-3317 Mailing Address: P.O. Box 2268 Montgomery, AL 36102-2268 Telephone: 334.834.1170 FAX: 334.834.4525
Volume 40 • Number 8 • October 2015 Founded in 1976 • Our 417th Consecutive Issue
Renew or subscribe on the web: www.timberprocessing.com
Executive Editor David (DK) Knight Editor-in-Chief: Rich Donnell Managing Editor: Dan Shell Senior Associate Editor: David Abbott Associate Editor: Jessica Johnson Associate Editor: Jay Donnell Art Director/Prod. Manager: Cindy Segrest Ad Production Coordinator: Patti Campbell Circulation Director: Rhonda Thomas
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Classified Advertising: Bridget DeVane • 334.699.7837 800.669.5613 • bdevane7@hotmail.com
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Advertising Sales Representatives: Southern USA
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Randy Reagor P.O. Box 2268 Montgomery, AL 36102-2268 904.393.7968 • FAX: 334.834.4525 E-mail: reagor@bellsouth.net
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THE ISSUES ‘Massive’ Support Projects
NEWSFEED Sawdust Safety, Timber Suppliers Win
GOING DRY New Kilns, Mill Upgrades Boost Southport Lumber
KEEPING IT CUSTOM Gates Serves Cedar, Cypress Niche Markets
FIRST U.S. CLT PLANT Montana’s SmartLam Eyes Future Expansion
IRVING MILL REBOUNDS Ashland Operation Back In Production
PRODUCT SCANNER Crane, Reclaim Systems Spotlighted
COVER: Oregon’s Southport Lumber has switched to KD products while improving overall mill operations and beginning major new expansion. Story begins on PAGE 12. (Dan Shell photo)
Midwest USA, Eastern Canada John Simmons 32 Foster Cres. Whitby, Ontario, Canada L1R 1W1 905.666.0258 • FAX: 905.666.0778 E-mail: jsimmons@idirect.com
VISIT OUR WEBSITE: www.timberprocessing.com Member Verified Audit Circulation
Western USA, Western Canada Tim Shaddick 4056 West 10th Avenue Vancouver BC Canada V6L 1Z1 604.910.1826 • FAX: 604.264.1367 E-mail: tootall1@shaw.ca International Murray Brett Aldea de las Cuevas 66, Buzon 60 03759 Benidoleig (Alicante), Spain Tel: +34 96 640 4165 • FAX: +34 96 640 4022 E-mail: murray.brett@abasol.net
Timber Processing (ISSN 0885-906X, USPS 395-850) is published 10 times annually (January/February and July/August issues are combined) by Hatton-Brown Publishers, Inc., 225 Hanrick St., Montgomery, AL 36104. Subscription Information—TP is free to qualified owners, operators, managers, purchasing agents, supervisors, foremen and other key personnel at sawmills, pallet plants, chip mills, treating plants, specialty plants, lumber finishing operations, corporate industrial woodlands officials and machinery manufacturers and distributors in the U.S. All non-qualified U.S. Subscriptions are $55 annually: $65 in Canada; $95 (Airmail) in all other countries (U.S. Funds). Single copies, $5 each; special issues, $20 (U.S. funds). Subscription Inquiries— TOLL-FREE: 800-669-5613; Fax 888-611-4525. Go to www.timberprocessing.com and click on the subscribe button to subscribe/renew via the web. All advertisements for Timber Processing magazine are accepted and published by Hatton-Brown Publishers, Inc. with the understanding that the advertiser and/or advertising agency are authorized to publish the entire contents and subject matter thereof. The advertiser and/or advertising agency will defend, indemnify and hold any claims or lawsuits for libel violations or right of privacy or publicity, plagiarism, copyright or trademark infringement and any other claims or lawsuits that may arise out of publication of such advertisement. Hatton-Brown Publishers, Inc. neither endorse nor makes any representation or guarantee as to the quality of goods and services advertised in Timber Processing. Hatton-Brown Publishers, Inc. reserves the right to reject any advertisement which it deems inappropriate. Copyright ® 2015. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without written permission is prohibited. Periodicals postage paid at Montgomery, Ala. and at additional mailing offices. Printed in U.S.A.
Postmaster: Please send address changes to Timber Processing, P.O. Box 2419, Montgomery, Alabama 36102-2419 Publications Mail Agreement No. 41359535 Return Undeliverable Canadian Addresses to PO Box 503 RPO West Beaver Creek, Richmond Hill, ON L4B 4R6 Other Hatton-Brown publications: Timber Harvesting • Southern Loggin’ Times Wood Bioenergy • Panel World • Power Equipment Trade
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THEISSUES
Dan Shell Managing Editor
PLUM CREEK, USDA SUPPORT ‘MASSIVE’ PROMO EFFORT 22
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ecent announcements dovetail nicely with the SmartLam feature article running in this issue on page 32 that details the background, current operations and future plans of the first U.S. cross laminated timber (CLT) plant in Montana. The SmartLam plant and another CLT plant in the planning stages at D.R. Johnson in Riddle, Ore. are both banking on wider acceptance and increasing use of what some are calling the “mass timber” family of forest product technologies that include laminated veneer lumber (LVL) and laminated strand lumber (LSL) in addition to CLT. As this issue went to press, the plan to create demand for such products and enlarge wood’s market share in commercial construction received two big assists from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) and Plum Creek Timber, with both organizations providing financial resources for the effort. In mid September U.S. Sec. of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, in partnership with the Softwood Lumber Board and the Binational Softwood Lumber Council, announced the winners of the U.S. Tall Wood Building Prize Competition. Two teams were granted a combined $3 million to support the development of tall wood demonstration projects in New York and Portland, Ore. The two winning proposals met the competition criteria to showcase the safe application, practicality and sustainability of a minimum 80 ft. structure that uses mass timber, composite wood technologies and innovative building techniques. Both will receive a $1.5 million grant from the USDA In Portand’s Pearl District, the Framework LLC 12-story urban + rural ecological project is to be constructed primarily of cross-laminated timber (CLT) and will support a distinct blend of functions including street-level retail, office, workforce housing and community space. In New York City, the 475 West 18th project’s extensive use of wood structural elements helps meet sustainability targets in the building’s design, construction, and operation, reducing energy consumption by 50% as builders seek LEED Platinum certification. Meanwhile, in Corvallis, Ore., Plum Creek officials announced a $1 million commitment to the Oregon State University College of Forestry’s new Oregon Forest Science Complex. The new home of one of the top forestry colleges in the world, The 85,000 sq. ft. complex includes an advanced wood products lab. The facility will be built from and dedicated to developing sustainable new wood building products, including CLT. According to Plum Creek CEO Rick Holley, “We see the OSU complex as a unique place that will effectively showcase the innovation and sustainability of wood products.” Plum Creek’s commitment is a key development for the $60 million OSU Forestry School project that’s being funded by private gifts and $29.7 million in approved state bonds. Efforts to develop new markets for innovative new wood building products are key to future industry growth. The increased acceptance of smart new wood construction systems that can reduce building and operation costs—and a project’s “carbon footprint”—will benefit all segments of the forest products TP industry. Contact Dan Shell, ph: 334-834-1170; fax 334-834-4525; e-mail: dan@hattonbrown.com TIMBER PROCESSING
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NEWSFEED INQUEST DELIVERS RECOMMENDATIONS British Columbia’s Ministry of Justice Coroners Service has issued operations recommendations to both the Hampton Affiliates (Babine Forest Products) sawmill in Burns Lake, BC and the Lakeland Mills sawmill in Prince George, BC, and to WorkSafeBC, while determining that the four deaths (two at each mill) were accidental during the sawmill explosions that occurred at each mill in 2012. The Coroners Service conducted separate inquests involving the incidents. Earlier WorkSafeBC investigations of both accidents pointed to motor gear reducer mechanisms of basement level conveyors as the likely ignition spots, inspired by sawdust and frictional heating, and noted that both mills were processing some mountain pine beetle diseased logs and that the related dry sawdust could have contributed to the explosion. WorkSafeBC fined both mill operations for alleged worker and safety violations related to the explosions, and both operations promptly appealed the fines. The fines levied by WorkSafeBC, which administers the Workers Comp Act for the BC Ministry of Labour, followed a Crown Counsel review and decision not to bring charges against either company. Following the release of the Coroners Inquest report, Hampton Affiliates noted the difficulty for the families of the deceased to relive the tragedy, and “the company can only hope this is another step in the long healing process from the events that happened over three and a half years ago. The company provided the coroner all of the relevant information it had and shared the engineering in6
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formation and plans for the rebuilt Babine sawmill, which included state-of-the-art design and equipment to mitigate the risk of combustible dust in the future.” Hampton also noted that many industry participants testified and all the WorkSafeBC personnel verified that “no one involved knew of the explosive properties of dust in a sawmill environment. Hampton has been in the sawmill business for over 70 years in both the U.S. and Canada and had never heard of or experienced a similar type of catastrophic sawmill event.” Both Hampton and Lakeland have focused on safety measures and procedures at their respective newly built mills. The first of 12 jury recommendations for Hampton was to “ensure that all plants have proper outdoor lighting, a fire pumping station, a standalone first aid facility and well identified muster stations. All of these installations should be serviced by a fully functional automatic emergency power system.” The report noted that worker testimony concerning the Babine accident showed it was dark outside as power had been cut off during the explosion causing disorientation and the inability to make it to a safe place in a reasonable amount of time, and that the fire pump was unable to operate because of loss of power. The inquest report noted that evidence revealed that information on the explosive nature of wood dust was available in the public domain early as 2008. The report also issued 10 recommendations to WorkSafeBC, many of them related to inspection documentation and communication procedures. One was: “Ensure that work environment hazard alerts are communicated effectively. Update regulations and
guidelines promptly to reflect current knowledge in regard to combustible dust explosions.” The Lakeland Mills inquest provided 33 recommendations to a variety of entities including the Forest Safety Council, United Steelworkers’ Union, WorkSafeBC and Sinclar Group Forest Products.
WOOD SUPPLIERS WIN IN ALABAMA A Monroe County, Alabama circuit court jury and judge awarded seven timber dealerlogging companies a combined $8.1 million in late August in a civil lawsuit they brought against Alabama River Group Inc. and its former principal, George Landegger, for default on payments due from contracts in 2010. This was one of the largest settlements in Monroe County history. The defendants of the case have indicated they are appealing the decision. The attorneys for the timber dealers presented a case that Alabama River Group (Alabama Pine Pulp and Alabama River Pulp) misrepresented itself to the government in order to receive matching money from the then newly implemented Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP), but in the end left the dealers in a financial bind. The dealers alleged they entered into purchase contracts with various landowners for fuelwood at a higher than current market rate based off guaranteed contracts with ARG for a higher than market rate per green ton—all projected on payments ARG would receive from the Farm Service as part of BCAP. The BCAP, implemented in 2009, offered financial assistance to producer facilities that qualified based on usage of woody biomass in their facilities. The assistance was supposed to come in matching payments at a rate of $1 for each $1 per
dry ton paid by the producer or conversion facility in an amount up to $45 per dry ton. According to the dealers, ARG said it would set up the purchase of their delivered green tons at a lower than current market rate, but add incoming BCAP matching payments, which would actually raise the per green ton price significantly above current market value. Furthermore, the dealers said ARG was explicit in the payment arrangement: The dealers would be paid the amounts agreed upon, even if ARG did not receive its BCAP matching payment. ARG apparently qualified initially as a conversion facility under the program, but its black liquor byproduct (for steam production) was not listed as part of BCAP and the matching payment program fell apart on ARG. The dealers said they were never told of this development by ARG as the dealers bypassed other business opportunities. The Monroe Journal reported, apparently using an example in the case, that ARG, working from a market green ton price of $36, reduced it $6 to $30, and then calculated a BCAP matching payment of $11.25, bringing the total payment per green ton to $41.25, which would give dealers a $5 boost above current market value. But the dealers never received the enhanced rate. Each of the seven timber dealer-logging companies were awarded $1 million in punitive damages, and varying amounts of compensatory damages ranging from $77,000 to $344,000. Those companies include Ayres Forestry, BAR Forest Products, Conecuh Timber, Dry Creek Loggers, Pea River Timber, Pineville Timber and The Timber Company. Georgia-Pacific purchased the Alabama River and Alabama Pine pulp mills in July 2010.
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NEWSFEED LOG TRUCKER SHOWS BRAVERY Northeast Georgia log trucker Don Davis has experienced lots of twists, turns and jams in 34 years behind the wheel but he never dreamed he’d face the dire situation that jolted him while on the job August 28 and led to multiple gunshot wounds. According to reports written by Joe Johnson and appearing on Online Athens, a service of the Athens Banner-Herald, Davis was preparing to leave the A&L Logging logging job in rural Oglethorpe County with a load of logs when a gunman, Ryan Arnold, on the run from authorities,
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emerged from the woods with a rifle and climbed on a skidder. Seeing Davis’ rig, Arnold commandeered it and Davis, forcing Davis to head toward a nearby highway. Earlier, authorities had responded to a domestic disturbance involving Arnold and his former girlfriend, Haley Hill, and surrounded his residence, unsuccessfully negotiating for Hill’s release. Arnold, 23, bolted with Hill in tow, forced her into his pickup truck and drove away. While being chased by sheriff’s deputies and state troopers, Arnold allegedly shot Hill and pushed her out of the moving truck. After firing at chasing officers, Arnold abandoned his truck near the Wilkes
County line and made his way to the logging site. Meanwhile, officers had formed a roadblock on the dirt road leading from the logging site. With a gun in his face, the truck driver was ordered by the gunman to ram the barricade, but Davis, 58, refused. According to family members, this led to a scuffle in which Davis put his foot underneath the accelerator and Arnold tried to remove it. Arnold allegedly shot Davis in the leg and pushed the accelerator to the floor, crashing through police vehicles as officers opened fire. Family members said Davis was shot seven times in one shoulder, one hand and both legs, and Arnold was incapacitated by at least one gunshot wound. Both were hospitalized. Davis, who resides in the
Madison County community of Ila, underwent surgery and was released from the hospital after only four days and continues a painful recovery from his wounds, which may leave one hand permanently impaired. He faced additional surgery. Arnold was released from the hospital and jailed. He was initially charged with feticide, kidnapping with bodily injury and multiple counts of aggravated assault. Murder and numerous other charges are expected when the case is presented to a grand jury. Hill, 23, was pregnant when shot. Her baby was dead upon delivery at Athens Regional Medical Center the day of the shooting. She was subsequently declared brain dead and kept alive by life support systems to preserve her organs for donor recipients.
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NEWSFEED SCHWEIGHOFER ADDS CAPACITY Schweighofer Group is buying a sawmill in Saxony Eastern Germany from Klausner Group. The Austrian Schweighofer Group is taking over the Kodersdorf sawmill and as a result will expand its wood products capacity toward the border triangle between Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. “This step is very significant for the Schweighofer Group. Our first location in Germany will enable us to open up an important market and to expand further from there,” comments Gerald Schweighofer. Schweighofer notes of the purchase that the Klausner Holz sawmill in Saxony was built 10 years ago on a large site, which offers enough
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space for expansion. The supply of raw materials is very good in the region. The costs of transport can be kept very low due to the central position and the transport connections. Apart from that, the mill has an excellent base of customers and suppliers. The sawmill has specialized in processing spruce and pine and has an annual production capacity of 1.2 million m3. Kiln drying is supplied with heat from its own heating plant. The planing capacity is about 400,000 m³ annually. The mill employs 250. Schweighofer intends to expand the business during the medium term and one can therefore expect that there will be additional jobs created as well. Friedrich Klausner comments, “The Schweighofer group is also a successful family-owned company and has a long tradition in wood
industry. Therefore we found the optimum buyer for our mill in Kodersdorf.” Schweighofer started operating the first sawmill in Romania in 2003 and has become a leading company in the European wood processing industry, employing 3,100 at six locations in Austria and Romania.
EXPORTS LAG 2014 PACE Log exports from Washington, Oregon, northern California, and Alaska totaled 329MMBF in volume in the second quarter of 2015, an increase of more than 21% compared to the first quarter of 2015, the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station reported. During this same period, West Coast lumber exports increased by 16% to 189MMBF.
Despite these recent increases, West Coast exports of logs and lumber in the first half of 2015 were lower than they were during the first half of 2014. “Port strikes during the first quarter of 2015 reduced overall log and lumber exports from the West Coast, which makes the increases we saw in the second quarter significant,” says Xiaoping Zhou, a research economist with the station who conducted the analysis and compiled the data. “Although these numbers represent a within-year increase in exports, the West Coast’s 2015 log and lumber exports to date have decreased significantly compared to 2014 levels, mainly due to reduced demand from China.” Compared to the first half of 2014, log exports in the first half of 2015 decreased by nearly 39%, while lum- ➤ 40
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EVOLVING
SAWMILL By Dan Shell
New products, mill initiatives and expansions lead Southport Forest Products toward major growth phase.
W Mill Manager Greg Dickey, left, Maintenance Manager Jay Jackson 12
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NORTH BEND, Ore. orking through and rebounding from the toughest economic conditions since the Great Depression, Southport Forest Products has bounced back with a new KD product line plus mill and facility improvements geared toward a major expansion scheduled for completion in 2016. Right at 10 years old this month after starting up in October 2005, Southport’s mill had overcome several startup challenges, says Mill Manager Greg Dickey.
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Initial two kilns at left started up in 2012; far right kiln was added in 2014.
“We worked for a while getting the mill up and running at a good speed. We had hit a pretty good stride, then the downturn hit us and we had to curtail back to one shift, trying to survive like other mills and doing what we had to do.” Dickey notes that a quality, value and recovery study done in conjunction with Perforex (now Poyry) just prior to the downturn was a big help in weathering the storm of poor lumber markets. “We developed key performance indicators, and determined we were overlooking others as well,” Dickey says. “A lot of good came out of it, and if we hadn’t implemented a lot of it we would have had a much tougher time working through the downturn and its challenges. It’s one thing to produce ‘x’ amount of board feet, but to do it right is another.”
GOING DRY As markets improved following 2010, Southport’s owners and managers made the decision to add kilns and offer a
SCS system aids operation of kilns, heated by W&D boiler from Ponder Burner. TIMBER PROCESSING
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Barge slip improvements enable ocean-going vessels at new, on-site multimodal port facility.
dried lumber product. “We decided that dry lumber was the way to go because it opened up more sales opportunities for us,” Dickey says, adding that currently almost all the mill’s 2 in. lumber is dried. The mill initially added two kilns from American Wood Dryers in 2012, then added another one in 2014 to reach its current 100MBF annual kiln capacity. The dry kiln system includes PLC-based kiln and boiler controls from American Wood Dryers that also incorporate data from an SCS Forest Products kiln moisture detection system that provides feedback for advancing the kiln charge. Kilns are heated using natural gas, fired in a W&D boiler supplied by Ponder Burner, which handled installation. The Southport mill is the first industrial customer to utilize the natural gas line feeding the industrial area on the “north spit” peninsula at the Port of Coos Bay.
According to a report from the Energy Trust of Oregon following the first two kilns’ installation, the project resulted in $131,000 annual savings in gas and electric utility costs. The dry kiln addition benefited from Energy Trust cash incentives that enabled the mill to add heat exchange vents and variable frequency drive fan controls. This further increased the kilns’ operating efficiency. (An economizer on the boiler also captures heat energy that exits the boiler stack.) The kiln project led to a variety of additions and upgrades to accommodate the KD product, including dry and cooling sheds, and a manual paper-wrapping area and related transfers, chains and lift. The planer mill received a new Baxley Equipment tilt hoist and stick collection system when the kilns went in, and the planer infeed system was upgraded with multiple transfers in late 2013. (A used stick placer
Log yard expansion, paving another big facility upgrade. 14
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was added at the green sorter as well.) There have been additional improvements in other mill areas: a Comact lug loader on the green end trimmer, a green end trimmer scanning and optimization package from Baxley Equipment and expansion from 26 to 45 bins on the Baxley green sorter. A USNR MillTrak system, with 3D cameras at log infeed and mill infeed belt, was added in 2014. High resolution cameras—technology that’s getting cheaper and increasingly spreading in sawmill operations—have been added throughout the Southport facility, both as visual monitors and as components in control systems. Examples are the four 16-camera Revo monitoring systems that “watch” various areas and operations all over the mill. Then there’s also the Cognex camera system at the planer mill’s slowdown belt leading to the grading line that captures visual data used to help control lumber flow to the grader. A similar system ahead of the green-end trimmer lug loader utilizes several IFM 3D cameras to measure lumber pile depth and aid in metering flow to the trimmer. “Video is a great tool, and you can record so many hours so if we have a problem or something that’s ongoing, we can take a snippet of video to play at a meeting or give an operator feedback,” Dickey says. Already using an existing barge slip on the mill property to bring in logs when Timber Processing visited in 2006, Southport has upgraded the barge slip infrastructure along with expanding and paving the log yard. The company worked with the Port of Coos Bay to establish a multimodal
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barge facility with direct access to rail and road: The slip itself was enlarged to accept ocean-going cargo barges handling inbound logs, outgoing chips and a variety of break-bulk cargo. The project included paving, curbing, tie-downs and an auto-fleeting system, plus a new chip pile reclaim system and belt conveyor for loading barges. Currently the system can load up to 800 tons/hour, Dickey says. Also, a new BM&M shaker screen was added at the mill to boost chip quality and to handle additional volumes.
MAINTENANCE Adding equipment and boosting production can push lumber manufacturing systems, and a major initiative the mill has undertaken is increased emphasis on maintenance and uptime. Leading the effort is Maintenance Manager Jay Jackson, who has 39 years sawmilling experience, including seven years working on maintenance reliability for Weyerhaeuser prior to joining Southport in 2013. He began building a team to increase mill uptime and minimize maintenance interruptions. Steps to accomplish that included hiring maintenance leader Patricia
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Perforex study revealed key indicators.
Petersen to assist with the organizational effort. They purchased the Manager Plus maintenance management system and began the implementation, identifying assets, clarifying work instructions, and setting maintenance standards for the mill. Existing mill employees bought into the maintenance initiative, though there might have been some initial discomfort with the culture change, Jackson remembers: “One of the supervisors started off
asking why we needed to do this at all, then a month later he’s saying he can’t live without it,” he says. Right off the bat Jackson started with standards for the use of an adhesive to ensure bolts stay tight as installed and establishing expectations around torque standards. “If you have a solid tightening and torque program, you can reduce downtime a ton there,” he says. Moving from reactive to predictive preventive maintenance as the mill is increasing piece count and production is also a challenge, Jackson says. He cites a log singulator gearbox as an example: “They fail every so often, and you lose two to four hours of run time when you lose one. So you set up to change the gearbox out before that happens. We set it up initially at nine months, but kept reducing it as piece count picked up.” The gearbox example illustrates the evolving process of predictive preventive maintenance. “The gearbox was a recurring event, where before we’d just run to fail and take the downtime hit,” Jackson says. “Now, we’re changing out before failure while still getting maximum life out of the asset.” As piece count and production increases, preventive maintenance also
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needs to shift from time-based to cyclebased prescriptions, Jackson explains, as mechanical systems perform more cycles of work in a given time period. “Time was a starting point, but as we continue to grow we’re switching from time to cycles,” he says. The mountain of information generated by the typical modern sawmill machine center provides plenty of data that’s imported to the Manager Plus system. The convenience of smart phones and iPad-type devices makes sharing the information much easier. “We do a lot of data collection to facilitate our preventive maintenance and also give information to operators so they can see the results and how maintenance impacts overall operations,” Jackson says. The maintenance manager also makes extensive use of the cameras located throughout the mill and notes that at any given time he has 20 or so cameras up on his office computer to keep track of operations. “Cameras are great for drilling down to root cause issues,” Jackson adds. The maintenance initiative included a new parts inventory storeroom and added emphasis on having the most common wear parts on hand. “The system is as good as the data you put in it, and with
Manual wrapping an example of employee job ownership.
Patricia and the maintenance guys getting good information, then you can run your inventory and purchasing effort through it as well,” Jackson says. Overall, the maintenance initiative was a challenge at first because of a lack of data history, Jackson says. “But we’re more than a year in now, we know the facility better and we’re starting to get good data. Our uptime is 91% for the year so we’re on a good path.”
MILL FLOW The mill acquires logs through timber sale and open market purchases. Species sawn are Douglas fir (90%) and hem-fir. Log specs are 3 in. to 16 in. diameter in lengths up to 45 ft. One LeTourneau log handler unloads trucks, decks logs and feeds the merchandising line. A PSI merchandising line now supported by Price LogPro features a
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Nicholson A8 debarker and USNR scanning and bucking optimization package. The 4-saw PSI system executes bucking solutions. Southport operates a close-coupled single pass USNR breakdown system with USNR scanning and optimization. After accumulating and singulating, logs are scanned and flow to a knuckle turner infeed preceding a set of chipping heads for opening faces and step profiling heads for sideboards before processing through a set of quad round saws. In a sideboard transfer area sideboards
drop and rejoin the flow downstream of a USNR Vertical Shape Sawing gang system (VSS). Meanwhile, two-sided cants are re-scanned before feeding to the VSS that can chip and saw on the curve and also profiles top and bottom faces. Showing an example where better maintenance leads to better performance, Jackson notes that the VSS top and bottom drum heads have multiple segments and lots of heavy mass. “Keeping them lubed and moving freely was a challenge, so we did an upgrade where we upsized the cylinder and added lineal
rails to aid in the motion,” he says, adding that prior to the conversion a piece with a lot of curve requiring a long stroke would occasionally cause some chatter, “but the lineal rails eliminated all that.” Since the VSS drum head project the mill has also added lineal rail systems on the side profiling heads as well. Lumber flow converges downstream of the VSS outfeed, then flows to a set of chains and deep pile transfers for unscrambling—aided by the 3D camera system that helps meter and control chain speed depending on lumber pile depth. A Comact lug loader feeds to the Baxley trimmer with Baxley scanning and optimization. A set of SCS Forest Products moisture detection pads downstream of trimmer outfeed was added in 2013 and allows additional sorts based on moisture content. From the 45-bin Baxley sorter lumber is transferred to a rough dry storage area, then on to the kilns. Dried lumber is moved to the planer mill with its improved infeed area and tilt hoist, then fed through a Stetson-Ross 614 splitter head planer. Lumber flows across a Wagner in-line moisture meter, then to a slowdown belt. Boards flow to a Baxley board dealer before entering a FinScan auto grading system with board turner. A paddle fence and positioning gate precede the Baxley 1 ft. PET trimmer that feeds to a Baxley sorter. A Samuels strapper readies packs for the manual wrapping station.
UPDATE As a key to the mill’s current and future success, both Dickey and Jackson note the pride employees take in ownership of their jobs and the mill’s performance, whether it’s production and maintenance personnel working as a team or the manual wrapping crew delivering the sharpest and tightest packages possible. The managers also cite employees’ experience and technical skills, such as inhouse development of the material flow control systems using camera data. Such experience and expertise is sure coming in handy right now, as the mill has just begun a major expansion project that includes adding a new Price/LogPro merchandising system and new Comact DDM-6 small log line, new Comact stacker and new CEM whole log chipping system scheduled to start up in TP 2016. 18
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CUSTOM
MILLWORKS By Jessica Johnson
North Carolina’s Gates Custom Milling stays focused on niche markets.
W GATESVILLE, NC
hen Mark Tuck entered the sawmill business he had a lot of ideas for the future—but he didn’t lose sight of the past. The Radford graduate and self-proclaimed conservative spender knew he wanted to take the mill to the next level, but wouldn’t do so at the expense of Gates Custom Milling’s core principles. So he took it slow, and watched the mill grow from a remill facility to a full sawmill with a capacity of 8MMBF per year. Tuck says what has inspired the growth mode the last 15 years is the idea that in business you can’t stand still. “You’re either going in one direction or the other,” he says. “Our niche business is constantly changing. How can we do it faster, better and more of it?” Gates Custom Milling first started in 1979 by Brian Martin, Tuck’s father-inlaw. Gates did very little of its own production on-site at first. Instead, Martin would go to larger operations and see if they had large customers that wanted smaller things that he could handle, while also producing Atlantic white cedar products. In the beginning, Gates was basically just a planer mill and some dry kilns. But then in 1982 the mill burned down and Martin was forced to rebuild the planer and vintage block dry kilns. After the fire Tuck came on full time.
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Cedar, cypress, poplar mill produces specialty products.
Gates Custom Milling officially diversified out of just Atlantic white cedar in 1987 with an addition of a sawmill and soon began re-milling other species. Southern cypress and poplar were selected to run through the new mill, thanks to the ease of procurement. It wasn’t the addition of the sawmill that was the biggest change for the company, Tuck says. Instead, he cites 1992 and the arrival of his wife, Nancy Martin Tuck, to
the office staff that really propelled the company forward. He says that she brought a level of expertise in the office they desperately needed, coming from a strong background in banking. She does all the selling as well as procurement. He says simply, “She’s running the business.” The husband and wife team run the mill with complementing skill sets: Nancy handles the business; Tuck handles daily mill operations, with his eye always on capital
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A full decade of capital improvement projects has given Gates Custom Milling more market flexibility while reducing operating costs.
projects. Tuck says that in the early 1990s, when they were still finding their rhythm under the new operation’s structure, with more species and new management, the mill struggled. An inconsistent supply of Atlantic white cedar really set the mill back at times. Tuck remembers reporting really good months, gaining momentum and then finding it very hard to get raw material the next few months.
CAPITAL PROJECTS Moving at a steady clip since 1998, Gates has seen one or two large projects every few years. It hasn’t always been easy, but has allowed for a diverse product mix that isn’t so dependent on one particular species. When the decision was made to overhaul the sawmill, Tuck went with MIT for a headrig and carriage thanks to the attractive price point for what he believed to be a very good package. “It was a low enough entry price for us to get into that level of sawmilling. It turned out to be fantastic equipment, very well built,” he says. After running Atlantic white cedar, southern cypress, maple, ash and other hardwoods, it became clear to Tuck the moulder needed to be upgraded. The mill upgraded the moulder (Weinig) facility in 2003 and saw a great improvement in quality. At this point, everything capital projects-wise had been rather smooth. The work was done in-house, which took longer, but was cheaper, allowing for big projects to be completed on small budgets. But everything changed for Gates when Tuck decided it was time to bring the idled
Nancy and Mark Tuck use their complementary skills and strengths in managing the business.
Sorter installation added to automation level. TIMBER PROCESSING
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dry kilns back on-line in 2005. Nancy says it was one of the most challenging things they’ve done. “Our species are not very easy to dry, especially cypress, since it tends to have wet pockets. It took a lot of trial and error to figure it out,” she adds. Tuck believed it was a necessary step to bring the mill to where it needed to be. Having the ability to dry their own lumber, instead of sending it off and then bringing it back, reduced costs. Tuck decided to put in a Dawson Brothers lumber sorter in 2007, further reducing labor costs and bringing the mill into another level of mechanization. After the addition of the sorter, it became obvious the mill’s residuals weren’t being fully utilized. So, in 2009 a CBI grinder was added to the mill, putting Gates in the hardwood mulch business. Tuck realized in 2011 that the time was right to make some changes in the vintage planer (Woods) mill. A separate line was added to the planer mill to process all kiln dried lumber. Previously, kiln dried and rough green lumber all traveled on a green chain to the trimmer and moulder. At the same time as the planer mill project, Tuck really saw an uptick in the mulch business and decided to place a
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Mill residuals end up as colorized mulch, hog fuel and pellet furnish products.
BASF Colorbiotics colorizer on the property. The year 2013 saw the addition of a new edger and a new warehouse; while 2014 saw the incorporation of a small log processing system Tuck purchased at an auction. The system was customized by Industrial Systems Consultants. Tuck says he has a knack for hiring good people—something that has paid off ten fold. Most of the capital project work is
done in-house, with people picked up from other lumber companies. Key personnel include Charles Chappell, a millwright with an extensive background in rigging equipment to fit specific needs, and Bryan Bass, who has managed the planer mill operations more than 15 years. Out of 49 mill employees, most have been with Gates more than seven years. Tuck says his skilled labor and supervisors have “lots and lots of experience and/or
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In-house drying has reduced costs and added flexibility.
degrees.” Key positions are held by stable, long-term employees. Nancy adds they are extremely talented, loyal and skilled.
MILL FLOW Gates purchases on scale or weight, depending on the logger’s request, but all logs are scaled once entering the woodyard. Logs are sorted by length, diameter and species and selected for sawing based
on inventory holes and special orders. Logs are broken down on one of two lines: the Fastline small log processing line includes two vertical and one horizontal saw making three-sided cants. Cants are then sent to a twin band horizontal saw. The vertical saws are Fastline and are using 1.5 in. blades, while the twin band breakdown is a Brewer and uses 1.75 in. blades. “Nothing about that system is how it was originally designed,” Tuck says with
a laugh. “We knew when we put it in that we had to have a system that could get us good production out of small logs but still have flexibility,” he explains. So he leaned on Lionel Bateman with Industrial Systems Consultants who does all computer controls at the mill. They sat down and developed a system that allows the small log line to be extremely flexible and not just cut one thing all day. “We cut the log maximizing the width based on the log size and then we incorporated a fairly sophisticated setworks utilizing Control Logix with Kinetix Linear Servos in the twin band. So I can cut a small timber out of it and yet still make grade decisions,” Tuck explains. Large logs are broken down on the traditional headrig, provided by MIT, sawn to three-sided cants. Slabs and three-sided cants are processed on a McDonough linebar resaw. A Salem edger handles all the edging requirements for the mill. All lumber goes through a Dawson Brothers drop saw trimmer. Tuck explains that the mill grades and trims in one decision, before passing through the Dawson Brothers trimmer, using a Lucidyne GradeMark grade reader. All timbers are put on a green chain for
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Experienced supervisors are key to Gates' success.
manual sorting. Lumber is dried using vintage block kilns. Noticeably missing from the mill is optimization; but that is fine by Tuck. “We haven’t gotten to the level of production where we think we can get the payback, we’re not quite there. We cut for the market demands, not for 100% yield. We are so customer driven, we have to make decisions based on knot structure,” he says. Rolling stock is a combination of Volvo and Hyundai; lifts are Taylor and USNR.
PROCUREMENT WOES Nancy handles all procurement for the mill. The mill leans heavily on a small group of loggers in a 100-mile radius.
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All lumber goes through Cornell trimmer.
Atlantic white cedar comes from everywhere, Nancy reports, saying they bring logs in from as far as New Jersey. “It’s a good filler, the log has a nice shelf life. But it’s spotty,” she says. She cites the lack of customer knowledge of the species for its up and down market, as well as the lack of an association to really put the species in front of wholesalers. “It doesn’t have a loyal customer base and good awareness in the general public’s eye. It’s an excellent species and people love it when they use it. And people will come back to it when they use it,” she explains. Gates could produce much more Atlantic white cedar than it currently does— should the market demand it. Nancy says
that the mill is one of the largest producers of Atlantic white cedar in the country, cutting 1MMBF per year.
PRODUCTION Annually, Gates Custom Milling produces 8MMBF of cypress, poplar, maple, ash, Atlantic white cedar and other hardwoods through their own production and an additional 4 MMBF in supplemented production. Nancy says that most supplemented production is on the cypress side. Gates is one of the largest producers of southern cypress in the country, and the Tucks are heavily involved in the Southern Cypress Assn. ➤ 28
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26 ➤ Gates is a custom, fully integrated mill from the log to the finished product, one of the things Nancy believes has helped Gates not only survive but also grow during the downturn. “We were able to put so many SKUs on a truck, we stayed busy when others were used to selling straight loads of a certain thing. We are small enough to be nimble and react to the demands,” she says. While Gates might not have huge production, the Tucks are in a place where they are comfortable. “We have decent production, yet we still are flexible enough
that if we have a customer that needs five or six certain size timbers, or 1MBF of a particular product, we can still do that,” Nancy says. For example, a Gates customer can pick up the phone and order rough dried lumber, a variety of different sized timbers, two units of tongue and groove and some units of S4S, and it goes on one truck. Tuck estimates that 15% of production is rough green lumber and timbers; 35% is rough dried while the bulk of production has some sort of pattern work to it, whether it be decking, S4S or tongue and groove.
Gates has a variety of grades based on the species. Cypress has two main grades, #2 and select; hardwood is a multitude; cedar select tight knot (STK) and select.
PROFIT SHARING A core principle from the beginning, Gates Custom Milling profit shares with their employees. Nancy explains, “Whatever quarterly profits are, one third goes to taxes, one third goes to reinvestment and one third we share with employees. The program is very aggressive.” Tuck says he and Nancy have worked hard to create a culture of first and foremost safety, but also productivity, efficiency and self-responsibility. He is a true believer in allowing people to do their job. “One of the greatest things you can give someone is the feeling that they contributed. With that comes self-responsibility. The profit sharing plan brings that full circle. For an employee to be able to see in his paycheck…not only does the mill itself benefit, they do to. They have a say so in their success,” he says. Nancy laughs when she says that the program has created a little peer pressure among the employees. It also pushes employees to be very aware about safety on a daily basis, not just during monthly meetings.
LOOKING AHEAD In the next year, Tuck plans on adding to his kiln capacity by 100MBF with a set of Wellons kilns and looking at a sawdust recovery system. Currently, Gates’ dust goes into its mulch product, in the future they would like to recover it and sell it to Enviva Biomass in Ahoskie, NC, where they already sell their shavings. For 2016, Tuck has his eye on a butt swell reducer and the remainder of the property around the mill. Right now, the mill owns 15 acres; next year, total acreage will be closer to 40. “Once we get through that process, I know we will need another warehouse,” he says, “There’s a lot of capital projects.” Nancy sees the excitement as Tuck discusses his capital projects and she is right there with him. What she likes about the mill is its diversity and the capital projects only further that, propelling the business forward. “We’re very, very diverse on both market area and products because you just never know what is going to come and bite you. If one piece of it fails, there’s enough variety going out there that it doesn’t affect TP the overall operation.” 28
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SMARTLAM
CROSSLAM By David Abbott
SmartLam is the first producer of cross laminated timber (CLT) in the U.S.
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COLUMBIA FALLS, Mont. martLam, LLC (SmartLam Technologies Group)—with a manufacturing facility in Columbia Falls and offices in nearby Whitefish—has the distinction of being the first and, for now, only U.S.-based company to pio-
neer production of cross laminated timber (CLT). There are a handful of other companies making CLT in North America, but only in Canada. One other U.S. company, glulam producer D.R. Johnson in Oregon, has announced plans to add a CLT line to its facility, but until it does, SmartLam stands alone. Developed in Germany and Austria in the mid-1990s, CLT is already in wide use in European construction, but has only in recent years begun to catch attention in the western hemisphere. Defined as a massive or mass timber product, this engineered wood is considered a viable alternative for concrete, masonry and steel in construction projects, both in commercial and residential buildings, especially multi-family and mid-rise (5-10 story) units. The advantages of this type of solid engineered wood panel are numerous. The
design of the product offers good sound, seismic and thermal insulation. Fire resistance testing by the American Wood Council has shown CLT to exceed building code requirements for heavy timber construction. Fire chars the surface layer, insulating the interior of the panel so that it burns very slowly; it also maintains structural integrity at high temperatures for longer periods than steel. Also, because the large panels are often prefabricated, including door and window openings, it involves less installation time and less waste at construction sites. A CLT panel typically consists of an odd number of layers of kiln-dried lumber oriented in alternating directions, bonded together with adhesive and pressed into a rectangular panel. The panels are cut-to-size using CNC (computer numerical controlled) routers.
SmartLam's cross laminated timber product delivers attention-grabbing strength and performance.
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SMARTLAM SmartLam President and General Manager Casey Malmquist is among the four founders of the company. It all started in December 2011 with a discussion among several friends and associates who had grown interested in the technology. Malmquist had worked as a general contractor for more than 30 years, so with that background he brought the construction perspective into the conversation. Malmquist was approached by a group promoting the use of CLT in the U.S. to integrate CLT into a construction project Malmquist had going in the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota. Malmquist didn’t think that was the right time and place for that particular project, but he became intrigued with CLT and started researching it. “I told them that if you could find a commodity use for it, it could have possibilities.” In the course of his research, Malmquist learned that one of the Canadian CLT producers had started marketing the product for use in industrial matting. “That made a lot of sense to me,” he says. The group decided that this was the path they’d choose, at least to get a solid start. Malmquist and his three investors pulled the trigger that January, and by June 2012 had started putting the production line together, having initially acquired a mix of new and used machines used in European plants. By that fall, SmartLam was producing, and by summer 2014, the venture was in the black. Malmquist came on as president and general manger from day one. Scott Nagel currently serves as the CLT manufacturing plant manager.
Construction and oil rig mats gave the plant a foothold and cash flow.
Lumber stock comes primarily from three local suppliers.
DIVERSIFICATION SmartLam’s bread-and-butter thus far has been mats for use in the oil and gas industry and heavy civil construction projects—drilling rig platforms, crane mats, structural decking work surfaces, bridges and so on. The decline of oil prices in recent months has had a somewhat negative impact, slowing production, but fortunately SmartLam had already begun to diversify its product and customer base. “Our investors have been awesome and shown a lot of confidence,” Malmquist reports. “We’ve developed six different product lines so far, and we are continuing to explore others.” Construction material components, he points out, are the most obvious, but the compa-
In-house built press is faster than the original press SmartLam started with. TIMBER PROCESSING
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Glue trolley passes over each lumber layer as panel is laid up.
ny doesn’t want to bite off too much too soon. The plan is to supply CLT for a number of smaller construction projects, or a particular part of larger projects, before tackling anything on a grand and comprehensive scale. He points out that there have already been 10-story buildings in Europe made entirely of CLT. Stateside, a four-story hotel made of CLT is under construction near Huntsville, Ala., while other projects in Fitchburg, Wis., and Portland, Ore., are using CLT in the floor decking, walls or roof. SmartLam wants to ensure that its CLT is suited for these purposes. The standard for North American construction grade CLT—the ANSI/APA PRG 320-2013—was just completed this year, and has been officially adopted by the International Building Code, Malmquist notes. This should result in wider use of CLT materials in buildings in North America. “It is all coming together,” Malmquist believes. “So we are in the process of getting our plant, our process and products certified under the PRG 320 standard.” Aside from construction grade material, SmartLam is also making products for furniture lines and has an assortment of small building designs, with door and window elements already cut into the panel. A number of other projects are currently in development. Most of SmartLam’s production is manufactured per order, but because orders do come through for large quantities of construction mats at a time, the plant always keeps an inventory of at least 1,000 mats on hand.
LEARNING CURVE Obviously, nobody at SmartLam came in knowing exactly what to do on day 34
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one. “It sounds like a simple concept, but it’s not,” Malmquist says. “It has hundreds of variables and, as in any manufacturing, you are dependent on the relationship between people and machines, so it is tricky.” Still, even though CLT is new to the U.S., it isn’t exactly new. It’s been around for close to 25 years, so Malmquist says a lot of information was available. The trick, he says, was in discovering how to adapt the European practices to the realities in North America. “These European companies are very vertically integrated, from planting the tree to harvesting and milling and then making CLT,” he explains. “We are a much more segmented market.” The fact that SmartLam has to buy its lumber from sawmills, already kiln-dried and planed, brings up one of his chief concerns. “If we buy, let’s say, 10MMBF of 2x8 lumber, the day we purchase it, we’ve already lost a percentage, because it is not 2x8, it’s 1.5x7¼. If we plane it further, and fingerjoint it, you lose fiber at every step. Of that 10MMBF the finished product can be as little as 60% of a true board foot. That is a substantial difference between us and that (European) market.” SmartLam has relationships with about a half dozen mills within a 200mile radius, but 90% of the lumber supply comes from three mills: Stoltze Lumber, Vaagen Bros. and Canfor. Fir and larch are the primary species used. Optimum dimension is 2x8, as it requires fewer boards per layout. Also, Malmquist notes, SmartLam can get good prices for 2x8 material because it is the “redheaded stepchild of the construction industry.” Feedstock is generally between 8-20 ft.—most commonly 14 ft. The original press and fingerjointing
line are composed of older pieces procured from Europe. Newer machines were later integrated into that existing line as the company grew, including a new press (fabricated in-house) and CNC machine. As such, the process at this point is still fairly labor intensive. Lumber is loaded manually into the infeed board by board. Quality control starts here, as workers inspect each board, looking for excessive wane, splits or knots. Defects are marked, and those boards are sent to a defect saw for trimming. A moisture meter (part of the Dimter fingerjoint line) scans each at the infeed station. If there is any cupping, that board is placed with the cupped side down, and every board receives a relief cut. The process really starts with a Grecon Dimter shuttle style fingerjointer. A packager grabs five boards at a time. Since they have been defected they may be different lengths, so the packager brings together the inbound edges with the back end of the previous package in the fingerjointing room. Because the fingerjointing is vertical, the board is positioned on its edge. The Dimter machine cuts the notches and applies the adhesive inside the fingerjointing room, then the package proceeds out the other side. The group of five depackages and separates into the fingerjoint press. The glued, pressed board exits to a highspeed four head Rex planer, so that all four faces are planed at once. “We want to take off as little as possible, since we are already dealing with a planed board, but we do need to make sure it is perfectly square,” Malmquist says. The finger joint adhesive reacts to the moisture and lignin in the wood, and the planing excites the lignin content, so the final layup and pressing has to take place within 24 hours of planing. “You can’t pre-plane a lot, it has to be a somewhat continuous process,” the GM adds. A cutoff saw—the final part of the Dimter line—will reduce the continuous board from the fingerjoint press into whatever length the operator programs, depending on the product desired (press capacity is 40 ft.). Pieces then move by chain to a stacker supplied by German company Minda. A three-wheeled Combi-lift, ideal for the longer pieces, can move fully loaded in one direction and then turn sideways and head that way. It moves boards from the stacker to one of the two presses. The original press, homemade in the early ’90s by pioneering Italian CLT producer Joma, is a 30-year-old machine. SmartLam and Columbia Construction, a local machinery manufac-
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Hundegger PBA panel cutter is the largest CNC machine available.
turer, built the second press, a much sturdier and faster version modeled after the first press. Both are clamshell style hydraulic presses. A typical bundle might be 6x4x40. Workers hand-load each board, with each layer oriented across the previous layer. Once one layer is down and in position, the glue trolley passes over, applying adhesive to one half of the panel first, then shifts over to hit the other half on the way back down. After the adhesive is down, the next layer is set up, usually short pieces cross-oriented over longs. The layup pattern can be adjusted according to the engineering
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values desired. So, for instance, there might be two lengthwise layers followed by one configured in the opposite direction, and so on. The process repeats until the panel is finished. Up to nine layers of 2x material can be loaded into the press at a time. SmartLam uses the only adhesive approved for construction grade CLT—a PurBond polyurethane resin made by Henkel. It reacts to the moisture and lignin in the wood, so no catalytic process is required. The glue is kitchen grade—“You can eat it, but I wouldn’t recommend it,” Malmquist quips—as it contains no formaldehyde and no VOCs
(volatile organic compounds). Pressing time is 2.5 times open time— if it takes an hour to lay up and orient the panel, it takes two and half hours to press it. As such, speed is a factor in production. “You try to do it as fast as you can and get as many layers in as you can,” Malmquist notes. The final stage in the process sees finished, pressed CLT panels moved to the CNC machine. This area features a Hundegger PBA gantry-style panel cutting machine, designed to cut large panels and beams. Malmquist says the Hundegger PBA is the largest CNC machine available. The five-axis machine features four tool heads, so it can cut a wide variety of patterns. “Some of our products need post-fabrication processing, so after it is milled at the CNC, if it requires further work we bring into a custom work area,” Malmquist explains. For instance, if it is to be a construction mat, a worker would go to this area to weld on a pick up point whereby the end user could hook the panel to a cable in order to set it in place on a job site. SmartLam touts itself as a waste-free facility. Shavings and dust are sold to a local Plum Creek MDF manufacturer.
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Trim ends and lower quality be fully automated, open time will waste goes through a West decrease from the current 45 minSalem Machinery Co. hamutes to 5 minutes, so an entire mermill and are fed to a BCS loading/ pressing cycle will go (Biomass Combustion Sysdown to about 20 minutes. “We tems, Inc.) biomass heater on will be able to press double the site, used to heat the plant in volume of wood in a fraction of the winter. In the summer the the time.” plant sells this material to If all goes well, the goal is to Plum Creek. have it up and running by sumThe plant requires a high mer 2016. “We are currently level of maintenance, from hoping to break ground on the changing lubricants to sharpbuilding in September,” ening saws. When at full proMalmquist says. He estimates it duction—two shifts—Smartwill take six to eight months to Lam dedicates four hours daily construct and assemble. to preventive maintenance. Malmquist describes the work The plant typically works two as both exciting and rewarding, shifts: two 10-hour shifts Mon- Plant Manager Scott Nagel, left, President/GM Casey and he gives a lot of credit to the day-Thursday while all of work force. “We have had a lot Malmquist every Friday is set aside for of success with our people,” he maintenance. “There’s a gazillion movthe current plant can produce 12MMBF says. “There is a tremendous work force ing parts,” Malmquist says. annually; the new plant is projected to in the forest products industry that has a turn out 48MMBF a year at full capacilong history in this area.” ty. The proposed production increase— At full capacity, SmartLam employs EXPANSION which Malmquist admits will take some 35 to 40 people on two shifts. It was SmartLam is currently in the research time to grow into—is supposed to make nominated as one of the best places to and planning stages of building a new, SmartLam the largest CLT producer in work in the Flathead Valley in 2013, and larger facility at a different location, the world. TP as business of the year in 2014. which will quadruple capacity over the The 2.5 times open time rule still apThis article also appeared in Panel World magazine, an affiliate of Timber Processing. existing plant. When at full production, plies, but because the new press line will
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NEWSFEED 10 ➤ ber exports decreased by 30%. Nationwide, 39% of outgoing logs and 29% of outgoing lumber were destined for China in the first half of 2015, compared to 48% of logs and 33% of lumber in the first half of 2014. Nationwide, U.S. log exports decreased by nearly 21% and U.S. lumber exports decreased by more than 11% in volume in the first half of 2015 compared to the first half of 2014.
GP WILL MARKET LAMCO PRODUCTS Georgia-Pacific announced a sales and distribution agreement with Quebecbased Lamco Forest Products, a manufacturer of laminated fingerjointed lumber (LFL) products. Lamco will manufacture several LFL products and sell them under the Georgia-Pacific brand.
“We’re looking forward to adding Lamco LFL product to our portfolio,” says Paul Watterson, general manager for Georgia-Pacific’s engineered lumber business. “It complements our line of I-joist, LVL, rim board and glulam products, as well as adds a product that helps meet fire-related codes being adopted in some of the geographies in which we sell.” Lamco’s LFL products are made using a patented process combining double tongue and groove and fingerjoints to create a dimensional beam that is said to resist twisting, cracking and warping. “We are proud to work with GeorgiaPacific because of their history of providing high-quality engineered wood products to the construction industry,” says Andrew Dingman, vice president of sales and market development for Lamco.
NEW P’BOARD MILL ANNOUNCED Arauco North America announced plans to build a new particleboard mill in Grayling, Mich. to produce 424MMSF (750,000m3)/year of panels, along with full lamination capabilities to support the Prism TFL decorative surfacing program. This $325 million investment will include the single largest continuous particleboard press in North America, and one of the highest capacity presses in the world. Groundbreaking is estimated for late 2016, with the rollout of the first panel during the latter part of 2018. The project will generate 250 permanent jobs, and is expected to yield important economic and community development benefits to the Crawford County region. “The addition of panel capacity to this geographical area will improve customer access to a stable, cost-efficient supply of high quality particleboard and decorative panel products,” according to an Arauco statement. “The location of this plant will also complement the supply of MDF from our neighboring mill in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.” Together with the Arauco North American Executive Management Team, Kelly Shotbolt remarks, “There is no better way to signal the commitment we have to the renewal and modernization of the North American composite panel industry. Our objective with this investment is to improve the logistics of our entire manufacturing footprint, and support the growth of our customers.” 40
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ASHLAND
COME BACK By Andrew Snook
The whine of saws is heard once again thanks to Irving’s major investment.
U
ASHLAND, Maine nderstanding the needs, footprint and budget are the three key factors for the construction of a new sawmill. When officials at Irving understood the reality of each of those three factors, they knew that something completely different would be necessary. When company officials began contacting suppliers to discuss design and equipment solutions for the new mill, one particular solution stood out. “Comact proposed this innovative idea to process the dry and dressed lumber with rough, green lumber,” says Jerome Pelletier, general manager of J.D. Irving Limited’s sawmill division. “Therefore, we only need one trim line, fully optimized, which reduced the capital cost. That’s how we got to the design that we have today.” For Comact, the idea of creating a mill that included both dry, dressed lumber and green lumber on the same line was years in the making. “We talked about this idea of doing a combination sawmill and planer mill in the same building, the same process,” says Eric Michaud, senior vice-president of business development for Comact. “We came up with this idea of using a GradExpert to optimize the trim in the sawmill and, at the same time, scanning the dressed and dry wood from the planer and grade all of the boards on the same line.” The idea had originally been investigated in the mid-2000s, with a couple of potential buyers in Western Canada in42
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Single line at Ashland mill provides speed and accuracy to meet annual 100MMBF production target.
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terested in the hybrid mill design. But Michaud explained that shortly afterwards the recession hit, the ability to invest was gone, so the idea was shelved for the time being. When Irving Forest Products Inc. (IFP) contacted them about ideas for Ashland, the hybrid design was the perfect solution. The result, for Comact, is the first installation of this kind in the company’s history. Complementing the cost-saving measure presented by Comact was an opportunity to incorporate assets in the region located at mills that were no longer in operation.
ASHLAND HISTORY Three years ago, the IFP sawmill site in the forests north of Ashland stood silent. The site, purchased from Bowater in 1999, had been shuttered since 2008 as a lack of big wood and challenging market conditions meant the mill was no longer financially viable. But Irving Woodlands in Maine accounts for 70% of the trees planted in the state. This combined with the sustainable forest management of the Woodlands team has resulted in continued growth of wood fiber. And combined with increasing demand for spruce lumber made it more and more evident that the shuttered old mill could see a renewed future and buzz with the sound of lumber production once again. “We knew that the inventory of trees was growing, and we knew that there would be enough volume available to justify another sawline in the region,” says Pelletier. “We had a good industrial site and several good customers for lumber in the U.S. and Canada. We had a customer for our chips and we wanted to grow our business. So we thought that Ashland was our best option.” The original sawmill was equipped to handle big wood, primarily stems ranging from 6 in. to 34 in. in diameter. But Maine had been hit hard in the 1970s and 1980s by the spruce beetle, and the trees available for the mill by the time Irving purchased it were not the same diameter that the mill had originally been built for. So when the team at IFP decided that the market conditions and fiber availability were favorable for restarting operations, they understood that the new mill would have to look much different than its predecessor. To begin the process, the company had to establish the real fiber availability in the region based on the development of trees on the lands the company owns and the sustainability of the annual cut.
Comact's GradExpert system processes both green and finished lumber on the same line.
The Ashland mill is the only one of Irving’s six spruce mills to produce 12 ft. lumber.
“We knew that we were limited in the size of the mill that we could build in terms of volume,” says Pelletier. “The forest is growing, but we don’t want to overcut the forest. We know that there is about 100 million board feet of fiber available (annually) in the area, so we started with that.” IFP officials began exacting a plan for a mill that could saw, dry and dress 100MMBF on an annual basis. They knew that the log size would primarily be 5 to 6 in. diameter, and they wanted a one-pass machine that was efficient, fully automated, featuring up-to-date optimization equipment and a simplistic design to reduce labor and maintenance costs. “We were also limited in the capital that we wanted to invest,” says Pelletier.
“To start with an old site, we had to remove all of the old equipment that we had there. We had to add kilns because the kilns on site were not good anymore. We had to also relocate two boilers to generate enough steam to look after our energy requirements.”
SAWMILL UPGRADES The desire to incorporate a key element of the original mill posed the first challenge during the construction of the new mill. The existing site had a hot pond in place that needed to be part of the new design for two reasons: the cold temperatures in Ashland, and the need for minimal bark on the processed wood. The chips produced during lumber TIMBER PROCESSING
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production at Ashland built Ashland with the are sent to Irving Paper capacity to remedy that in Saint John, N.B. “In issue. order to produce a highComact provided the quality paper, you need a bulk of the sawline and very low percentage of planer line equipment, bark in the chips,” exstarting with four sorting plains Pelletier. “A hot bins and wave feeders pond becomes very key for three lengths of to reduce your percentwood. The DDM line age of bark.” with PLC controls is also The elevation of the from Comact, with an pond posed a challenge Access Communications for making sure that the camera system providing step feeder, infeed sysvisuals of the line’s 240 tem and debarkers were logs/minute perforat a height that would mance. maximize efficiency on The trimmer line and Sorting and stacking line's tagging system marks green lumber for a particthe front end of the mill. ular customer. sorter line are Comact “It took us a while to equipment, with modififigure out how we were going to build it kilns. Log sorting is a ScanMeg scanning cations made to some of the existing and, even after we installed all of the application developed internally by the decks also incorporated. The original equipment, we had to tweak certain areas engineering team. decks were built for 16 ft. lengths, in order to be productive.” One of the first things you notice as which were reduced to 12 ft. lengths A Liebherr 944 material handler feeds the logs drop into one of the four bins is during the installation. a log mix of 50% spruce and 50% fir to the presence of mainly 12 ft. lengths. There are no real optical differences to the hot ponds. A Novilco feeder moves The Ashland mill is the only one of Irvthe bulk of the Comact line, as the Gradthe logs through to the debarker, which ing’s six spruce mills to produce 12 ft. Expert provides the necessary capability was overhauled and upgraded by DK lumber. Prior to construction, the compa- for sorting both green and dried lumber. Spec for the new operation. The bark is ny recognized its own shortage of 12 ft. The boards are sorted into the Comact 75 used as fuel for both the boilers and the lumber available to its customers, and bin sorter. The line has two stackers and
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one sorter, with a pair of Carbotech stackers. Species sorting for rough green lumber is done with a Saptek (Autolog) located at the lumber sorter infeed. There is also a Samuel labeling system attached to the line, which marks the dried boards specifically designated for a particular customer. At the end of the Comact’s compactdesign mill is the planer mill, housed in its own structure inside the confines of the line. The planer infeed was also specifically chosen based on the size, design and demand of the mill. The Yates planer installed keeps throughput at a
high rate, matching the 230MBF per shift demand that Ashland originally commanded, pushed up to 250,000 for the summer months.
LOGGING DEMANDS Keeping up with production demands at Ashland means ensuring that Irving has enough harvesting operations in place. There is no shortage of wood for the company, as they represent Maine’s largest landowner with over 1 million acres under its ownership in the state.
The company is constantly working to recruit operators for harvesters in the region, a challenge for sawmill companies coast to coast. But the team at Irving is doing things differently in a concentrated effort to build long-term relationships with harvesting operations throughout the state. The company offers a co-sign system, a system where young equipment operators who show strong learning and leadership skills can receive private training, as well as the chance to have the company cosign on the purchase of a harvester or hauling truck. That has been the model that has been successful for IFP in recruiting young professionals into its workforce. It is a very risky proposition, cosigning purchases of equipment worth hundreds of thousand of dollars. But the program has been very rewarding thus far, with success stories throughout Maine, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Ashland itself is a testament to the work IFP has done in recruiting young workers. Of the 70 staff at the mill operations, over 50% are under the age of 40. Many of the millwrights and electricians are even younger, with most being under the age of 25. “We’re putting young people to work in a traditional business,” says Pelletier. “The new technology makes it attractive to the younger people.” This next generation of workers will be the driving force behind the mill meeting its annual production targets as spruce demand continues to strengthen as the market recovers. Currently the company ships spruce from its six spruce mills as far west as Ontario and straight down the East Coast all the way to Florida.
NEXT STEPS Beyond working toward a shift goal of 250MBF per 10-hour shift, mill officials see a need to improve consistency in order to optimize operations at Ashland. Two years ago, no one was on the Ashland site. Many of the staff, including skilled trades and maintenance crew, had never seen the inside of a sawmill. As the new team becomes comfortable with the demands of the mill, efficiency and consistency can be improved as expertise grows. With a strong fiber supply through intelligent forest management, a young skilled workforce and growing markets for its products, Irving’s newest sawmill will soon be one of the strongest and safest in its entire operation. TP This article appeared in Canadian Forest Industries magazine, and appears here with permission. 46
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PRODUCTSCANNER KONECRANES EVOLVES Konecranes, whose portal crane design has been a proven performer for nearly 40 years, continues to develop this workhorse crane for demanding applications and environments in the steel, forest products, intermodal, biomass/ pellet and concrete industries.
Konecranes’ open lattice design is cost-effective compared to box-girder structures and allows easy inspection of critical welds throughout the life of the crane. Compared to a conventional gantry, portal cranes operate on easy-toinstall and maintain tie and ballast runways. Available in straight track and rotating configurations, these portal cranes are designed for maximum flexibility, which reduces load deflection damage and associated structural and track maintenance to a minimum. This design is so rugged and reliable that the first Konecranes log-handling portal crane, built in 1977, is still in operation. But while the basic design endures, the portal cranes that Konecranes is building now have evolved. They are now designed to create a smarter, safer, more productive workplace. Today’s Konecranes portal cranes feature the latest ideas in crane management technology and are designed not only to improve safety, but also speed up work. TRUCONNECT, Konecranes’ advanced Remote Monitoring technology, automatically monitors and captures data on the operation of the crane, which is transmitted in real-time to 48
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Konecranes where it is compiled into reports for customers. It reveals when the crane is operating and when it is idle. As part of a wide scope of available data about crane operations, it provides details of overloading and sideloading incidents, indicating when further operator training may be needed. Other available smart features range
from GPS collision avoidance systems and diagnostic PLC systems to emergency egress descent devices with full body harness. The advanced ergonomic operator cabs available on current portal cranes include comfort considerations that were undreamed of when the first Konecranes portal crane was built. According to Gary Otto, product manager, Portal Cranes for Konecranes, many of the newest Smart Features can be also retrofitted to older portal cranes. “By adding today’s technology to your existing equipment, you can jump-start productivity and significantly improve safety,” Otto says. “Of course if you need a completely new crane, one of our new generation portal cranes can realistically be expected to do more and last even longer than they did before.” Visit konecranes.com.
such as domes or silos. Transporting the pellets from the production facility to the storage facility and then from the storage facility to load-out onto trucks or ships is where Laidig’s technology and experience is a huge asset. One of the systems designed by Laidig that is specific to the storage and reclaim of biomass materials is the Model 2010 CleanSweep Reclaimer. The CleanSweep Reclaimer automates the final clean-out process of biomass reclaim in the storage facility, and eliminates the need to manually unload the material, which is more time consuming, requires additional labor, and the expense associated with purchasing heavy machinery. Designed specifically for free-flowing materials like biomass, the CleanSweep allows for more frequent inventory turnover, eliminating dead zones and minimizing waste. High-volume material discharge is achieved by combining freeflow through draw-downs with consistent, high delivery from the reclaim auger. The CleanSweep’s automatic, push-button clean-out operation helps to reduce labor costs while increasing net profits. Safety is also a high priority for companies storing materials in silos and domes, and one of the challenges is to ensure that plant personnel have safe and easy access into the structure. The Laidig CleanSweep provides the highest level of operator safety. Its zero-entry clean-out operation eliminates employee exposure to dust, chemicals and the risk of material engulfment. The CleanSweep is confined-space friendly, with minimal maintenance required, and with serviceable components in easily accessible locations. Visit laidig.com.
LAIDIG CLEANSWEEP
Laidig Systems, Inc. has engineered and developed fully automated storage and reclaim systems for companies that produce and transport biomass material. For example, during the wood pellet production process, the pellets are transported and stored in storage facilities
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MACHINERYROW
STAYING AHEAD OF THE GAME Wood-Mizer focuses on automation in new thin-kerf sawmill. In 2011, Wood-Mizer set out to create an industrial sawmill that appealed to existing or new sawing operations growing their businesses and new ones about to launch. The sawmill needed to be heavy duty and highly productive but affordable for sawyers of any size, from pallet makers to graded wood flooring manufacturers. Building upon the basic design of the company’s existing WM3500 sawmill, the WM4000 thin-kerf sawmill was designed to have more automated features that would speed the sawing process and simplify controls for the operator. The WM4000 now commands the flagship status as Wood-Mizer’s most productive thin-kerf sawmill on the market. To enhance functionality and productivity while keeping costs low, WoodMizer turned to Schneider Electric for Modicon M258 logic controllers, Magelis XBT GT advanced touch-screen
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HMIs, Lexium 32i servo drives, Altivar 312 variable speed drives, and remote I/O modular systems. The Modicon M258 controller and Magelis HMI feature onboard USB technology and Ethernet connectivity for easy upgrades. “We really like the USB ports, so as we find software issues or make improvements, it’s very easy to upgrade software and keep everyone up to date,” says John Frost, senior electrical engineer at Wood-Mizer. Wood-Mizer chose the 7.5-in. Magelis XBT touch-screen HMI for the WM4000 sawmill because it displays more information and eliminates pushbuttons. Competitive sawmills have small displays that provide limited text information. The HMI on the WM4000, which is mounted on a moveable arm for operator comfort, displays board and cant sizes, current head height, feed position, and
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MACHINERYROW blade power. An integrated joystick allows the operator to be more productive by providing all sawing and log-handling functions at one’s fingertips.
TROUBLESHOOTING The Schneider Electric components communicate through SoMachine, a unique single software suite that provides seamless communication within the system. Technicians checking on a WM4000 can plug into the network and have access to information on all components, which simplifies troubleshooting. SoMachine connects the system so that if an application is updated on one component, it will load to the other components as well, providing one software for a single point of connection. With past machines, Wood-Mizer sent technicians to customer sites to fix problems or make updates. With the comprehensive information provided on the Magelis HMI, customers can easily identify where a fault is located and get instruction on a repair without waiting for a technician to arrive, saving on downtime for the customer and warranty costs for Wood-Mizer. The diagnostics on the Magelis HMI allow a technician to see what is going wrong with the entire system. Communication with CANopen to all the drives allows all drive faults to show up on the screen. “In the past, if a drive faulted there would be a general fault message. Then a technician would need to physically go into a dangerous high-voltage panel to see what was wrong,” Frost says. “The information provided on the HMI helps get the machine back up and running faster because it points to the problem sooner. In some cases, customers can do their own diagnostics.” The Magelis HMI and Modicon 258 controller feature remote access capabilities, so a technician can gain access to a customer’s network and modify applications or make other changes without leaving the office. Alternatively, application updates can be loaded onto a USB drive and sent to the customer for quick uploading through the USB port on the Magelis HMI. “Previously technicians went into the field to make modifications and changes,” Frost says. “Now we can overnight a thumb drive to make that happen. It saves us a lot of time and money.” The Modicon controller features 64 MB of memory onboard, 128 MB of flash memory, and onboard USB technology to provide the ability to log data and track productivity. All logged data can be retrieved by plugging in the USB to the controller or the Magelis HMI. This technology is unique to Schneider Electric.
PRODUCTION The Schneider Electric components in the WM4000 communicate faster due to the networking and same SoMachine software, so the controller works faster, allowing the sawmill to function faster.
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MACHINERYROW In addition, the switch to servo drives has improved speed. “By adding the Lexium 32 servo drive, the WM4000 processes lumber twice as fast as we’ve ever done before,” Frost says. “The head positioning is quicker so we can hit our marks much faster and more accurately.” An Auto-cut feature on the WM4000, which remembers the location of the start and end of the log, prevents the
sawyer from overshooting either end of the log. The system tells the saw head how far to cut and where to return so the machine spends more time sawing. “By integrating more automatic functions, we speed up the saw as much as possible and reduce manual handling by the operator,” Frost adds. To reduce time to build the WM4000, the unit uses Schneider Electric remote I/O modules on a CANopen network that
connects to the Modicon 258 controller. This replaces 40 cables that would have otherwise been connecting I/O to the controller, which saves approximately 20% in commissioning time per machine. “The remote access has significantly shortened my time to develop the controls,” Frost says. “The WM4000 is faster to build because I’m not running discrete wires for direction controls to variable frequency drives. Now I run a single CAN bus cable and I’m done.” By using more reliable components, Wood-Mizer saves on warranty issues and has a better overall reputation as a machine that will last without many service issues. “We rely on Schneider Electric because it has a robust and proven track record for its products,” Frost says. “We need a partner that will support us worldwide, whether at our headquarters in the United States or in our office in Poland. Our customers are all over the world, and so is Schneider Electric.” Article supplied by Schneider Electric. Visit schneider-electric.com/us
Steve Dalby Joins BID Group BID Group of Companies has appointed Steve Dalby as Vice President - Business Development. Graduated in Business Operations Management at the British Columbia Institute of Technology, Dalby has extensive experience in the sawmill industry, having worked as the sales regional manager for Canada with USNR for more than 18 years. “The strong experience of Mr. Dalby in our industry as well as his high-level knowledge of the markets places him in an ideal position to lead the BID Group’s business development and to promote BID’s products, systems and abilities to deliver turnkey projects,” according to a BID Group statement. Dalby is based in Kelowna, BC, and will look after business development in Western Canada and the U.S., as well as Australia and New Zealand.
Burton Saw Acquires Cut Technologies Pfingsten Partners, L.L.C. announces that its portfolio company, Burton Saw and Supply Holdings, has acquired Cut Technologies, Inc. of Penticton, British Columbia and Bellingham, Wash., a manufacturer of rounds saws, band saws 56
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MACHINERYROW and saw tips and a distributor of filing room and grinding equipment to sawmills and wood product manufacturers throughout North America. Cut Technologies will continue to operate under the Cut Technologies and Cougar brand names and will combine forces with Burton Saw to bring a more comprehensive product and service offering. “Partnering with Burton Saw
will broaden our geographical presence and allow us to be a one-stop shop to sawmills throughout North America,” says Cut Technologies owner Mike Cloutier. “We are extremely impressed with Burton Saw’s service offering and distribution capabilities and believe this strategic partnership will help take our company to the next level.” “The addition of Cut Technologies to
the Burton Saw organization deepens our reach with expanded manufacturing, sales, marketing, product and service capabilities,” adds Duncan McLean, CEO at Burton Saw. “Cut Technologies’ leading brand name, consistent growth rate, diverse customer base and broad geographic presence made the company an ideal addition to our business.” In January, Pfingsten Partners acquired Burton Saw and Supply, a manufacturer and distributor of consumable products and equipment to sawmills and wood product manufacturers. Headquartered in Eugene, Ore., with several other locations in lumber producing regions in North America, Burton Saw provides saws, saw tips, abrasives and replacement machine parts to sawmill filing rooms.
IES SonicAire Adds Ryan Covington Integrated Environmental Solutions, Inc., manufacturer of SonicAire fans, has named Ryan Covington as Engineering Manager, responsible for directing the product development team. “Covington will manage the certification process for our SonicAire products compliance to North American and international standards,” comments Brad Carr, president of IES. “His ability to listen closely to our clients, making sure they receive the most suitable product and documentation for their needs, will be an invaluable asset.” Covington brings a wealth of experience to IES and the further development and application of the SonicAire fans. He worked for Underwriters Laboratories, LLC from 2006 to 2014.
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WOOD PRODUCTS marketplace NORTH AMERICA ■ United States
■ Kentucky HAROLD WHITE LUMBER, INC. MANUFACTURER OF FINE APPALACHIAN HARDWOODS
(606) 784-7573 • Fax: (606) 784-2624 www.haroldwhitelumber.com
■ Florida CRACKER SAWMILL
CYPRESS AND SYP Sawmill, Drying and MillIng facility Custom Cut to Order Lumber, Cants, Specialty Beams to 44’ We will Mill Log Home logs S4S 6”x6” thru 8”x12” T&G Your wood or ours WE DO WHAT OTHERS CANNOT 20253 N.E. 20th Street Williston, Fl 32690 www.Crackersawmill.com Info@Crackersawmill.com
Ray White
Domestic & Export Sales rwhite@haroldwhitelumber.com
Green & Kiln Dried, On-Site Export Prep & Loading Complete millworks facility, molding, milling & fingerjoint line
■ Minnesota
Buyers & Wholesalers We produce quality 4/4 - 8/4 Appalachian hardwoods • Red Oak, White Oak, Poplar •
Green Lumber: Air Dried, Kiln Dried Timbers & Crossties • Hickory, Sycamore, Beech, Gum & Elm • Custom Cut Timbers: Long lengths and wide widths
Sales/Service: 336-746-5419
336-746-6177 (Fax) • www.kepleyfrank.com
WANT TO GET YOUR AD IN OUR NEXT MARKETPLACE? Call or email Melissa McKenzie 334-834-1170 melissa@hattonbrown.com
(352) 529-2070
■ Tennessee
■ Georgia
STACKING STICKS
Beasley Forest Products, Inc.
FOR SALE
P.O. Box 788 Hazlehurst, GA 31539
AIR-O-FLOW profiled & FLAT sticks available Imported & Domestic
beasleyforestproducts.com Manufactures Kiln-Dried 4/4 Red and White Oak, Poplar, Ash and Cypress Contact: Linwood Truitt Phone (912) 253-9000 / Fax: (912) 375-9541 linwood.truitt@beasleyforestproducts.com
Pallet components, X-ties, Timbers and Crane Mats Contact: Ray Turner Phone (912) 253-9001 / Fax: (912) 375-9541 ray.turner@beasleyforestproducts.com
■ North Carolina
DHM Company - Troy, TN 38260 731-538-2722 Fax: 707-982-7689 email: kelvin@kilnsticks.com www.KILNSTICKS.com
Cook Brothers Lumber Co., Inc.
■ Virginia
■ Indiana
Producing Quality Southern Yellow Pine Since 1939
Manufacturer of Appalachian Hardwood Lumber LEONARD COOK, Sales (828) 524-4857 • cell: (828) 342-0997 residential: (828) 369-7740 P.O. Box 699 • Frankin, NC 28744 NATIONAL HARDWOOD LUMBER ASSOCIATION
P.O. BOX 25 • 628 Jeb Stuart Highway Red Oak, VA 23964 Tel: 434-735-8151 • Fax: 434-735-8152 E-mail Sales: john@morganlumber.com Website: www.morganlumber.com Product Mix: ALL KD, HT STAMPED
Next closing: Jan. 5, 2016
1x4 D&BETTER, 1x6 D&BETTER, 1x4 #2, 1x6 #2, 1x4 #3/#4, 1x6 #3/#4, 5/4x6 PREMIUM, 5/4x6 STANDARD, 5/4x6 #2/#3/#4,
08/15
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Call Toll-Free: 1-800-669-5613
GREENWOOD KILN STICKS Importers and Distributors of Tropical Hardwood Kiln Sticks GW Industries www.gwi.us.com
Dennis Krueger 866-771-5040
Jackie Paolo 866-504-9095
d.krueger11@frontier.net
jackie@gwi.us.com
SEARCH NORTH AMERICA, INC. IT'S YOUR MOVE...
FOREST PRODUCTS RECRUITING SINCE 1978
The Jobs You Want — The People You Need WWW.SEARCHNA.COM
TECHNICAL SALES REPRESENTATIVE: SOUTHEASTERN USA
CONTACT CARL JANSEN AT 541-593-2777 OR Carlj@SearchNA.com
Specializing in confidential career opportunities in the Forest Products industry 2200
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“The lowest cost per cycle”
EMPLOYMENTOPPORTUNITIES 1615
LUMBERWORKS
Management Recruiters of Houston Northeast
Gates Copeland 281-359-7940 • fax 866-253-7032
gcopeland@mrihouston.com • www.mrihouston.com
PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
Recruiting Services Executive – Managerial – Technical - Sales
JOHN GANDEE
Interested applicants can submit their resume in confidence to: mvallance@portereng.com 2232
& ASSOCIATES, INC Contingency or Retainer Depending on Circumstances / Needs
“Your Success Is Our Business”
1248
Porter Engineering is an industry leader in Scanning, Optimization and Process Control Systems for Primary and Secondary Log Breakdown. At the present time we are looking to add an individual to our Southeastern USA Sales Team. We are looking for a candidate that has a good technical background in both Sawmill Optimization and Process Automation. The successful candidate needs to be able to work collectively with a team of professional engineers to provide presentations and proposals of our product to our extensive client base in the South. Travel to our customers sawmill facilities throughout the South is a key part of this job.
Serving the Wood Products and Building Materials Industries For more than 21 years.
Michael Strickland & Associates, LLC Executive Recruiters Wood Products/Building Materials Industries Mike Strickland mike@woodproductjobs.com 601-529-2157 • www.woodproductjobs.com Fees paid by employer
Top Wood Jobs
Toll Free 1-800-536-3884 www.johngandee.com Austin, Texas
8187
Recruiting and Staffing George Meek geo@TopWoodJobs.com www.TopWoodJobs.com (541) 954-8456
3220
3779
13148
PROFESSIONALSERVICES WORN OR MISALIGNED CARRIAGE RAILS? A Proven Process
Contact Us Office 541.760.5086 Cell 541.760.7173 Fax 971.216.4994 www.acculine-rails.com george@acculine-rails.com
• Rails straightened & ground in-place at a fraction of the cost of rail replacement • No down time for the mill • Restores carriage rails to optimum sawing efficiency •Precision Laser Alignment • Machining and Grinding • Carriage and Bandmill Alignment 489
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MAINEVENTS OCTOBER
MAY 2016
2-4—Ohio Forestry Assn. Paul Bunyan Show, Guernsey Co. Fairgrounds, Cambridge, Ohio. Visit ohioforest.org.
13-14—Expo Richmond 2014, Richmond Raceway Complex??, Richmond, Va. Call 804-737-5625; visit exporichmond.com.
7-9—North Carolina Forestry Assn. annual meeting, Marriot Resort Spa at Grande Dunes, Myrtle Beach, SC. Call 919-8343943; visit ncforestry.org. 7-9—Southern Forest Products Assn. annual meeting, Marriott Grande Dunes Resort & Spa, Myrtle Beach, SC. Call 504-4434464; visit sfpa.org.
12-13—27th Annual WMI Workshop on Design, Operation and Maintenance of Saws and Knives, Holiday Inn, Portland Airport, Portland, Ore. Call 925-943-5240; visit woodmachining.com. 27-29—SPIB Grading Training Course, Hilton Pensacola Beach, Pensacola Beach, Fla. Call 850-434-2611; visit spib.org.
NOVEMBER 3-5—97th Annual Railway Tie Assn. Symposium and Technical Conference, Marriott Starr Pass Resort and Spa Tucson, Ariz. Call 770-460-5553; visit rta.org. 5-6—Mid America Lumbermens Assn. annual meeting, Hilton Promenade at Branson Landing, Branson, Mo. Call 800-7476529; visit themla.com. 6-8—Arkansas Forestry Assn. annual meeting, Arlington Hotel, Hot Springs, Ark. Call 501-374-2441; visit arkforests.org. 10-11—SPIB Quality Control Training Course, Hilton Pensacola Beach, Pensacola Beach, Fla. Call 850-434-2611; visit spib.org. 11-13—South Carolina Forestry Assn. annual meeting, Marriot Resort at Grande Dunes, Myrtle Beach, SC. Call 803-798-4170; visit scforestry.org. 24-27—Woodex, 14th International Exhibition of Machines, Equipment and Technologies for Logging, Woodworking and Furniture Production, Crocus Expo, Moscow, Russia. Visit woodexpo.ru.
APRIL 2016 5-6—Bioenergy Fuels & Products Conference & Expo, Omni Hotel at CNN Center, Atlanta, Ga. Call 334-834-1170; e-mail dianne@hattonbrown.com; visit bioenergyshow.com. 7-8—Panel & Engineered Lumber International Conference & Expo (PELICE), Omni Hotel at CNN Center, Atlanta, Ga. Call 800-669-5613; visit pelice-expo.com. 62
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24-27—International Woodworking Fair 2016, Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta, Ga. Call 404-693-8333; visit iwfatlanta.com. Listings are submitted months in advance. Always verify dates and locations with contacts prior to making plans to attend.
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7-9—National Hardwood Lumber Assn. Annual Convention & Exhibit Showcase, Omni Hotel, Nashville, Tenn. Call 901-3771818; visit nhla.com.
AUGUST 2016
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7-8—SPIB Dry Kiln Operator Training Course, Hilton Pensacola Beach, Pensacola Beach, Fla. Call 850-434-2611; visit spib.org.
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