A22-Lancaster Farming, Saturday, July 1, 2000
(Continued from Pag* A 1)
Agriculture. According to Lys
kava, the forest production in
dustry employs 90,000-100,000
individuals in the entire state in
three different sectors.
The first sector, lumber, in
cludes logging, sawmills, panels,
floorings, log and mobile homes,
and moldings. About 1,700 woo
d-related firms make their home
in Pennsylvania and employ
36,000 employees. The second
sector, furniture, includes
household and furniture plus
fixtures. About 17,000 workers
are employed in this sector in
500 firms. The paper and paper
products sector includes pulp
and paper, paperboard, and
container boxes. About 400
firms employ 36,000 Pennsylva
nians, obviously a very import
ant economic driving force over
the entire state. Lancaster hosts
the highest number of wood
related establishments in the
state, with 176 establishments
employing more than 5,000 resi
dents. York, with the Spring
Grove paper factory, employs
more than 6,000 residents. The
top hardwood producer in
America, Pennsylvania compa
nies produce 1.1 billion board
feet of lumber annually.
If currrent trends in the
timber industry continue, the
future is bright for wood-related
businesses. With increased con
cern and emphasis on utilization
and sustainability, logging com
panies are assuring themseles of
future supply. “Logs need to be
available not only today but
years down the road,” explained
Lyskava.
Pennsylvania forest products
actually come from predomi
nantly small, family-run compa
nies harvesting locally-grown
trees. “Their ties are not to Wall
Street but to Main Street,’ said
Lyskava. “There’s a misconcep
tion that it’s a giant, corporate
enterprise instead of a business
harvesting locally-grown prod
uct with strong ties to the com
munity they serve.”
Tom Buzby, Weaber’s direc
tor of governmental affairs, gave
a summary on the Sustainable
Forestry Initiative of Pennsylva
nia (SFI). The organization, a
voluntary, effort to preserve
trees, is a program of forestry
and conservation practices. SFI
accomplishes its goals through
The company’s short board program includes finger
and- edge-jointed boards less than 18 inches long to
gether. These boards are actually stronger and more
stable and 40 percent cheaper than traditional boards.
From Forest To Flooring
Tour Of Weaber Mill Reveals Importance
Of Timber To Pennsylvania Economy
educating landowners, training
loggers, and providing the
public with information on for
ests.
Through the SFI program
landowners receive the latest in
formation on methods for man
aging forests. To promote
sustainable forestry practices,
loggers learn skills and proper
environmental practices.
In educating the public SFI
works to “assure them (the
public) that we’ve got a great
forest system managed by
skilled people,” said Buzby.
Bill Robie, from the Hard
wood Lumber Manufacturers
Association of Pennsylvania
(HLMA), explained how the or
ganization’s outreach and edu
cation projects. “Project
Learning Tree,” for example, a
national environmental educa
tion program, will be distributed
to every public school in the
state this summer. The program
includes a poster, video, and in
teractive CD ROM along with
other materials to help teach
schoolchildren about the indus
try. In addition, HLMA
partnered with Penn State to
outfit the interior of the univer
sity’s nearby airport terminal in
hardwood, an opportunity to
expose people to hardwood
products.
The Mill
Matt Weaber, vice president
of Weaber and grandson of
founder Walter Weaber, led the
group on a tour through the
mill. The company produces 200
truckloads, or 900,000 square
feet of lumber per week of pre
dominantly oak and poplar, spe
cies common to the area. The
company produces approxi
mately 20,000 board feet per
hour.
Weaber gathers the bulk of
their wood from a 70-mile
radius, a circle which sometimes
stretches 150 miles away. This
radius reaches into five other
states. Since much of this area is
agricultural, the company uses a
highly-sensitive metal detector
to locate the insulators or wire
before the log goes in to be
sawed.
Inside the mill, the trees are
debarked and processed through
a headsaw, which slices the logs
into a rough, four-sided “cant”
that is 8-16 feet long. The bigger
pieces recirculate for a recut.
The cut of the cants are dictated
by computer but an operator
carefully positions the logs
before cutting. By keeping an
eye on the computer screen and
operating the various buttons
and pedals, the operator sends
the log into the twin bandsaw.
The cuts are sorted by species,
length, and width, and graded
according to value. Next the
planks are dropped into bins
along with cuts of similar value.
The boards are run through a
planer, regraded, and sent
through a kiln drying process.
Although drying time depends
on the thickness and type of
wood drying, most wood is dried
for about a week to the desired
six- to- eight- percent moisture
content. Three million board
feet are in some form of drying
at all times in the six kilns and
two pre-drying kilns. The boards
move to the warehouse, where
they are shrink-wrapped for
handling efficiency and protec
tion and stacked like vanilla
wafers in cellophane along the
warehouse wall.
The Trends
“We get 25 percent more out
of a log than we did 20 years
ago,” said Weaber. Part of this
efficiency can be attributed to
“optimization,” where a com
puter scans the logs to deter
mine the optimum solution for
most effective cutting. In addi
tion, the company uses the thin
nest blade possible to create less
sawdust. The green sawdust that
is produced goes to the boilers in
the wood-drying kilns on the
property and the dry sawdust
becomes bedding for area live
stock.
The six truckloads of sawdust
produced every week is a
number that grows smaller
every year, thanks to increased
efficiency. Bark, another by
product of the process, is used
by area landscapers. The com
pany’s short board program uti
lizes the smaller pieces normally
sent to the chopsaw.
To ensure a quality end prod
uct, the knots are cut out of the
planks. The boards with knots
that are two feet or longer move
into the short board program,
where they are marketed to the
do-it-yourself home centers. The
lower grade boards go to chop
saws while the boards 18 inches
or shorter go to the “finger
jointer.” To finger-joint a board,
grooves are cut into of the board
and the boards are puzzled
pieced together, then glued with
a regular wood glue. Next the
rough edges are taken off to
yield a more paintable product.
“Years ago these boards
would have been sawdust, but
now we’re recovering more
wood out of the same log,” said
Weaber. The finger joint boards
are actually stronger and more
stable, as they lock each other in
place, and the joints allow for
greater surface area for glue,”
said Weaber. Also the boards are
typically 40 percent cheaper
than other boards of the same
size. “For us, it’s a value-added
product, because it’s got more
value than sawdust,” Weaber
said. When the long finger
jointed boards are joined to
other finger-joined boards, they
become “edge-jointed,” with a
hardwood floor appearance.
These boards are used for stair
skirts or column wraps in home
construction.
Bob Stamey positions the four-sided “cants” according
to the computer scanning results for the operating saw.
Closely watcing the computer screen, Stamey dictates the
movement of the cant by operating appropriate buttons
and pedals.
The boards are sorted by species, length, and and then
graded according to value. They will be dropped into bins
with cuts of similar value before they head to the planer,
are regarded, and sent to the kiln to dry for about a week.
Another value-added process one example of the technology
Weaber utilizes is the veneer which is changing the face of the
profiler, which includes a piece timber industry. Workers use
of veneer glued on top of the hand-held computers in the
jointed board underneath. This warehouse, where the computer
yields an oak veneer face or, screens show what cut of wood is
more simply, a thin slice of oak needed to fill an order, then de
over an oak substrate floor. A ducts the board from inventory,
pelleted glue is heated and This, of course, has drastically
pressed to hold the veneer finish cut down the time needed to fill
onto the wood beneath. the smaller orders the company
Small personal computers are (Turn to Pago A 24)
Matt Waabar, vica preaidant of Waabar Inc., shows a
board which has a thin slice of oak over a finger- and adge-
Jointad board. A pelleted glue is heated and pressed to
hold the veneer face to the board underneath.