WWPA gradestamp assures lumber quality

strategically throughout the Western woods producing region.

WWPA's system requires that each mill be checked at least once each month by a WWPA inspector, a practice maintained wen during the "lumber depression" of the past three years.

In a typical mill check, the inspector takes random samples of work of the mill's graders.Thismeans looking at enough stock from inventory, in various grades and items, to indicate the mill's graders are holding to grade tolerances.

"Bear in mind," Spannaus notes, "we're working with human beings and human judgment. Every raailer realizes the extent of variations that can occur in wood, and can appreciate the fine expertise graders must develop. But where a WWPA inspector detects a grader's line has begun to waiver, he immediately ceases being a monitor and becomes a teacher-working with that grader until things are right again."

The inspection disciplines go still another layer deeper- for special inspectors employed by the American Lumber Standards Committee make periodic rounds of mills and shipment destinations to make certain inspection agencies such as WWPA are doing their job. And associations like WWPA pay ALSC to provide this extra oversight. "It is one more backup to assure the integrityof the system," Spannaus says.

But with 12 billion board feet being produced across a third of the conti-

Story at a Glance

WWPA oversoes quality control for Weslern lumber. writes rules...checks mills provides for reinspection.

nent, how does WWPA assure uniformity in grades of all that lrrmber? In several ways, according to Chief Inspector Spannaus:

(1) Periodicdly, dl WWPA inspectors gather for an intensive course. Concentrating on the "gray areas" where adjacent gradelines come together. "Just about anyone can learn to grade the middlc part of a given grade in a hurry," Spannaus reports. "Inspectors must be rcadily able to daermine where one gtrade stops and the ncxt begins- and do so correctly errery time. And, as 8 tcrm, to do so the same whether they arc working mills in New Mexico, Montana, Washington or California. Or on a reinspection in Kansas City or New England. So it takes collective fine-tuning by the entire inspection team-everyone has to be on the identical wave length."

(2) Spannaus, Deputy Chief Bill J. Hill and two regionally located assistant chiefs spend considerable timein company of inspectors traveling mills on their regular schedules. "We check the checken, so to speak," Spannaus says.

(3) The at-the-mill grader coaching sessions, which are conducted by insp€clors when circumstances dictate and may occur during regular inspections, are supplemented annually with WWPA "Group Grade Meetings." Each year, some 3G-4O such gatherings are conducted. At each, graders from surrounding mills come to one "host mill" for the educational program conducted by WWPA senior inspoctors and highlighted by agrading competition participated in by as many as 75 or l0 persons. Winners in each meeting are awarded a special "championship" belt buckle, and their photographs