Environmentally sound new redwood plant

? HE PACIFIC Lumber Co.'s just I completed manufacturing tacility at Scotia, Ca., provides better recovery of material, increasing finger-jointed redwood and Douglas fir production by 25oh without increasing existing harvest levels.

Located at the north end of the existing planing mill, the new $2.3 million plant will up total glued production of Palco-Loc products by 5 million ft. board measure to 25 million ft. bm annually, while introducing kiln dried end & edge glued products and edge-glued items.

"This new line is very similar to our existing finger-joint lines but the technology is better. It is also more automated, which will allow us to spend less time handling material and more time auditing quality," says factory superintendent Lee Green. Maintaining and improving product quality has taken priority over production volume at the new plant, he says.

Some resistance by customers to the change from finger-jointed to end & edge glued products is expected. "This industry has always been slow to change," says Keith Kersell, manager of technical services. "But they also resisted our finger-jointed products when they first came out. They soon discovered that the finger-jointed products were more dimensionally stable and more economical than solid, and that they could be custom ordered in specific lengths. The same holds true for our new products, except now there is even more flexibility in specifying widths."

Not only will addition of edge-gluing equipment provide more architectural grades of kiln dried redwood and Douglas fir, it should also remedy past shortages of Palco-Loc products in certain widths, most notably lxl0 clear all heart vertical grain and clear mixed grain redwood.

"We will begin by supplementing our existing lx2 through lxl2 clear all heart vertical grain and clear mixed grain redwood. and our C & Better vertical grain Douglas fir items," Kersell says. "We will also manufacture these same grades in l-

Story at a Glance

Pacific Lumber introduces end & edge gluing at new facility improved recovery will ease shortages ol certain poducts and provide more grades without increasing harvests.

Looking to

In addition to aiming at better recovery of material to ease environmental concerns, redwood producers are also concentrating on looking to young growth forests for certain specialty products.

New generation wood features the species' outstanding physical properties, durability, workability and ability to take and hold paint and stain. New growth is also said to have a knottier, more distinct redwood appearance.

And its high dimensional stability means siding and decking l/4" and 2" thicknesses. The bulk of the business will probably continue to be in surfaced boards and pattern in these sizes, but the equipment is actually capable of doing much more."

The equipment can glue up and surface panels l" to 2" thick and up to 48" wide and 16' long. And though it may never be practical to sell panels 48" wide by 16' long, Palco will produce combinations of 1 to 2" thick by 14 to 24" wide by 8 to l6' long. These will all be ripped out of wider panels and precision end trimmed behind the edge-gluing machine.

Redwood and Douglas fir lumber up to 12" wide will continue to be sold S4S or run to pattern, manufactured in the original part of the factory. Wider stock will be sold as S2S square edged materialwith a 100 grit sanded surface or as SISIE blanked material to remanufacturers, produced in the new facility.

Palco expects to eventually expand its product lines to include items such as core stock, 4' x 8' cabinet material and garage door panels. "There is a lot of potential with these products that our customers didn't have before," says Kersell. "We anticipate that our customers, with a little incentive and imagination, will be able to expand their redwood and Douglas fir markets into areas like cabinetry, shelving and moulding where they haven't attempted efforts before."