Wholesalers' Resources Tour

Forty North American Wholesale Lumber Assn. wholesalers and wives attended the second North American Forest Resources Town Meeting in Tacoma, Wa., including an intensive one-day field trip in Washington's Olympic Peninsula area to view reforestation and regeneration programs.

The tour began with the Col. W.B. Greeley Forest Nursery at Nisqually. Operated by the Industrial Forestry Assn., it annually produces between seven and eight million trees for forest product companies on contract. Since IFA began in 1941, over 280 million trees have been grown and shipped for reforestation of private lands.

Second stop was Weyerhaeuser

New Plywood T&G Joint

A new tongue-and-groove joint now being produced by members of the American Plywood Assn. helps avoid ridging.

The joint design developed by APA engineers ensures that the upper plies of panel edges will be spaced to avert ridging if the panel should pick up moisture and expand. It is recommended that edges not be tightly butted. Panel ends still require spacing.

It is extremely important, however, that the new T & G joint not be used with the previous tongue-and-groove design. The two joints are not compatible because the new tongues and grooves are approximately 7132" thinner and are tapered at different angles.

Company's Rochester Regeneration facility. The wholesalers visited a seed tree orchard that produces seeds for the "super trees" of tomorrow. Not only is the orchard producing in an operational way, there are also many pilot experimental efforts being made here in search of even better ways to grow trees faster or genetically improve them.

For the seed orchard, the group moved to the containerized seedling operation which is currently growing eight-and-a-half million seedlings in containers which speed up seedling production substantially.

The distributors then moved on to Simpson Timber Co. forest-

Building materials dealers should watch for an identification flyer included in bundles of plywood from APA member mills that have the new T & G joint. This is a reminder not to mix these panels with previous T & G panels.

To further avoid confusion, some member mills are marking new joint bundles with two yellow stripes, two inches in width, one lands to view experimental forest areas, before seeing the log-sorting yard where logs are brought into a gigantic yarding operation and sorted by grade and species before traveling the last few miles to the mill.

Hirge fork lifts capable of lifting 60 tons are moving constantly around this 100-acre yard, moving logs into whatever classification that insures the best utilization in manufacture.

The group met for breakfast next day to discuss the field trip. The company foresters led a freewheeling discussion on the future of reforestation and intensive management of our renewable resource.

NAWLA's Forest Resources

Town Meetings are designed to help the wholesaler-distributor become more articulate in regard to our forest resources and the problems that industry faces to insure wood fiber for the years to come.

Iocated on the end of bundles and the other on the tongue side.

For years, APA has recommended spacing between panel ends and edges to allow for expansion if the panel is exposed to moisture during construction. If this spacing recommendation is followed, the previous T & G joint produces high quality applications equal to that of the new joint.