The Manufacturing Process Continued

Log Merchandising As wood has become more valuable large-scale investment in equipment designed to use each part of each tree in the best and most profitable way has been stimulated.
Here, logs are being examined and cut to various lengths in what is called a log merchandising operation.

The largest log sections are conveyed to the plywood mill or sawmill. Smaller and lower quality pieces are chipped and sent to mills that produce paper or other wood fiber products.

Basic Steps in Manufacturing Compared to other basic raw material processing operations, a mill designed to produce green lumber is relatively simple. Machinery needed includes that used to remove bark (debarker), a saw which can be used for break-down of round logs (head saw), a system for handling logs during the sawing process (carriage or conveyor), a means of trimming boards to produce smooth, parallel edges (edger), and a means of cutting boards to square and precise lengths (trimmer).

(Image: Haygreen, J.G. and Bowyer, J.L., Forest Products and Wood Science - An Introduction, 3rd ed., 1996. Iowa State University Press.)

Debarking High Pressure Water Jet Debarkers The first step is to move the logs to machines that remove the bark. One of several methods for removing bark can be employed. One technique involves blasting bark from logs by high-pressure water jets.

This technique obviously wouldn't work very well in a cold-climate region such as Minnesota, where icicles would coat the equipment for many months in the winter...

...but in areas where freezing temperatures are infrequent, such debarkers function quite effectively.

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