National Hardwood Magazine - July 2011

PENN-YORK MEETING -
Continued from page 34
consumption in 2010, according to the American
Hardwood Export Council. Leading markets are
China, Europe and Southeast Asia.
There are a few positives in the marketplace.
More wood furniture manufacturing is returning
to the United States with the production planned
by Lincolnton Furniture, Linwood Furniture,
Thomasville Furniture and Hooker.
Another potential gain for American
Hardwoods is the recent announcement by
McDonald’s Corp. to renovate 14,000 U.S. restaurants.
The chain plans to remove metal seating and
fiberglass tables and replace with wood as it
“greens” the dining experience.
AHMI is a regional trade association of
Hardwood lumber producers, distributors, secondary
manufacturers and foresters from throughout
the Appalachian region and world. The mission
of the group is to promote the logs, lumber
and other wood products from the region and the
Verified Sustainability of the resource. For more
information,
visit
www.appalachianhardwood.org.
The host of the meeting, Babcock Lumber Co.
of Champion, Pa., has offered a complete line of
Appalachian Hardwood species, shipped both
domestically and internationally for more than
120 years. The company’s growing concentration
yards produce in excess of 12 million board feet of
quality, kiln dried lumber annually.
The next Penn-York meeting is set for June 20 in
Bolivar, N.Y., and will be hosted by RAM Forest
Products.
•
COLLINS - Continued from page 21
During a tour of the sawmill, Smith said Nelson
BrothersEngineering, using JoeScan scan heads,
programs most of the optimization centers at the
mill. These consist ofa Log Merchandiser, Board
Edger, Curve Gang Saw, and Board Trimmer.
“The only exception is the primary breakdown,
which is a Comact dual band mill, Optimized Log
Infeed, or OLI. Everything is in-line,” he said.
“Theblock gets scanned as it is moving through
the machine, which is able to rotate and offset the
blockfor cutting as it approaches the canters and
bandsaws. In fact,in the whole mill only the trimmer
features a transverse scanner. Every other
machine center uses lineal scanning to
optimizethe piece on the way to thesaws, which
allows for very high through-put.”
Operating currently with 70 employees with a
capacity for 100 on two shifts, Jimerson said the
operation includes two sorting systems, “one for
the timber side, cutting 3x4’s, 4x6’s and 3x7’s,
and another for our boards, cutting 4/4 and 5/4.”
Jimerson also said the green chain consists of
sixteen slanted sort bins, allowing them to sort by
thickness and length. From the sort bins, the lumber
heads down the green chain to the MoCo
stickering stacker, which makes 8’ wide by almost
6’ high units.
The mill also utilizes five dry kilns manufactured
by SII Dry Kilns located in Lexington, N.C.
“The kilns are SII side loading cross flow dry
kilns with five chambers, each holding 125,000
board feet per charge on a 4/4 basis,” Jimerson
explained. “SII kilns are fantastic. However, you
don’t see many SII kilns on the West Coast. They
give you very even air flow through the units, better
than most other kilns, in part, because the lumber
is stacked in 8 foot wide units and are only
stacked two units deep in the kilns.”
“In the beginning the green lumber weighs in at
about five pounds a board foot,” Jimerson continued.
“When it dries, it’s about 1.6 pounds per
board foot.”
The kilns and planer facility are located nine
miles from the sawmill at the Port of Morrow, due
to the pre-existing steam from the PGE Coyote
Springs Electrical Co-Gen facility. The steam is a
by-product of the co-gen operation, thereby eliminating
the necessity of installing a boiler.
Transportation doesn’t get much easier for a
sawmill. “We have a Union Pacific rail siding at
the planer, and we are less than a mile away from
the Port of Morrow dock where the containers are
loaded on a barge that goes down the Columbia
River to the Port of Portland for export,” Jimerson
25,000,000 BF of Quality Bandsawn Pennsylvania Hardwoods
1,000,000 BF Kiln Capacity
Export Packaging & Container Loading
SPECIALIZING IN ASH, RED OAK, HARD MAPLE, SOFT MAPLE and CHERRY,
“We welcome your inquiries and look forward to serving your needs.”
Contact:
Mike Tarbell, Sales Manager
Rus Gustin
(814) 697-7185
FAX (814) 697-7190
Mailing Address
1716 Honeoye Road
Shinglehouse
PA 16748
E-mail: ramsales@frontiernet.net
We sell both green and kiln dried lumber.
36 Hardwoods...A Renewable Resource