by Web Editor | Feb 26, 2016 | News
Columbia Forest Products Builds Executive Team
Columbia Forest Products, a leader in decorative hardwood plywood panels, promoted three senior-level employees to the company’s executive team, as announced by Brad Thompson, President and CEO:
Gary Gillespie has been promoted to Executive Vice President responsible for all of Columbia’s Canadian plywood operations and the company’s decorative veneer operations. Gillespie is also a member of the Board of Directors for Columbia Forest Products.
Greg Pray has been promoted to Executive Vice President responsible for all of Columbia’s plywood operations located in the U.S. In addition, Pray has been named to Columbia’s Board of Directors.
Dave Abts has been promoted to Executive Vice President with responsibility for manufacturing, which includes logistics, materials, corporate engineering, manufacturing lean systems, and innovation. Abts is also a member of the Board of Directors for Columbia Forest Products.
Thompson reports that these changes represent the “first phase of a thoughtful and controlled succession process that will keep Columbia Forest Products on its path to a vibrant future.”
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by Web Editor | Feb 24, 2016 | News
Appalachian Hardwood Manufacturers, Inc. (AHMI), promoting the advantages of formaldehyde-free real, solid wood to public, are contrasting its natural qualities with the unsafe laminate flooring that had gotten Lumber Liquidators into trouble with consumers.
“Discount flooring companies selling imported laminate floors have been providing customers with products that can carry seven to twenty times the base amount of carcinogenic formaldehyde allowed by the EPA,” says the AHMI. “At these levels, formaldehyde secretes from the flooring and into the home’s air, becoming a high-level health risk, especially for children and pets who are most susceptible to its effects. Carcinogenic formaldehyde found in artificial wood has been linked to lung and nasal cancer, nausea, asthma, and other severe respiratory issues.”
Wood industry trade groups, including furniture and cabinetry makers, have been trying to separate their goods from the products made in China that contained high levels of formaldehyde. The Kitchen Cabinet Makers Association issued a statement last week saying that there is no risk of exposure to formaldehyde in cabinets that receive its Environmental Stewardship Program seal, because its program requires that engineered wood used in it must be CARB Compliant.
Other groups have questioned the validity of testing methods used to detect formaldehyde in wood products – such as flooring sold by online retailer Wayfair – tests that deconstruct the multi-layered sandwich that makes up laminate flooring. The Hardwood Plywood and Veneer Association estimates that “finishes of paint, lacquer, sealants, laminate, plastic or other material” reduce formaldehyde emissions of the underlying raw board by 90 percent.
From Woodworking Network: https://www.woodworkingnetwork.com/wood/pricing-supply/appalachian-hardwood-manufacturers-tout-formaldehyde-free-real-solid-wood
by Web Editor | Feb 22, 2016 | News
Oregon wood researchers hope to bring a new type of engineered lumber to market after tests to make sure it meets state building codes. Oregon State University has been notified that it will receive a $447,000 grant from the federal Economic Development Administration for the testing of cross-laminated timber, or CLT.
The testing will allow the development of manufactured wood products that meet state building codes so the products can be approved for the construction of large buildings, said Geoff Huntington, director of strategic initiatives for OSU’s College of Forestry.
“Our objective is to make CLT and other innovative uses of mass timber products technically feasible, economically viable and accessible alternatives for architects and developers seeking to use Oregon products to meet growing consumer demand for healthy, sustainable buildings,” he said. Plans for Oregon’s first cross-laminated timber buildings already are on the drawing boards.
CLT is composed of large wooden panels made with hundreds of pieces of wood, typically 2-by-4s or 2-by-6s laid perpendicular and glued together, Huntington said. The wooden panels are large, ranging from 10-feet-by-20-feet to 20-feet-by-40-feet. They can be used for walls, ceilings and floors, typically in buildings several stories tall, he said.
The product has been used in multistory buildings in Europe and Canada for several years, but the engineered wood hasn’t been approved for construction purposes in the United States, Huntington said.
From The Register-Guard: https://registerguard.com/rg/news/local/34077270-75/oregon-researchers-tout-potential-of-new-manufactured-wood-in-building-industry.html.csp
by Web Editor | Feb 19, 2016 | News
Roseburg says its RigidCore plywood has entered the market for use in industrial applications for CNC machining of furniture, cabinetry and other products.
Most plywood used in the industrial market is machined into smaller pieces on CNC machines, says Roseburg. Product consistency and yield are critical factors in using plywood. Core gaps, open knots, warping and variations in thickness are a big concern for industrial customers, according to the company.
Roseburg developed RigidCore features 100 percent Douglas fir veneers with balanced layup for flatter panels with exceptional dimensional stability, 1/8-inch maximum core gaps, and proprietary C+ grade core veneers.
From Woodworking Network: https://www.woodworkingnetwork.com/wood/panel-supply/roseburg-introduces-rigidcore-industrial-plywood
by Web Editor | Feb 17, 2016 | News
A new kind of engineered lumber is being tested at the University of Maine. This new “plywood on steroids” could compete with other construction materials like concrete and steel, and this new industry may help add value back into Maine’s forests.
“It would be a new market, it would be a new factory, sort of like making furniture, except it’s really big pieces,” said Steve Shaler, director of the School of Forest Resources at UMaine.
The new market would be for cross laminated timber, an engineered plywood created and tested at the University of Maine. CLT is made with different types of wood from Maine’s forests. It’s then pressed into a strong construction material, ready to use at construction sites.
“They come out as large panels, solid panels with windows and door openings pre-cut, maybe utility locations pre-cut, and they’re swung into place and connected together and they go up very very quickly with very little cutting on site, very little waste on site,” said Bill Davids, professor and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
“This is for taller structures, four stories, 10, there are buildings now that are made out of wood that are 10 stories tall,” said Shaler. The blocks of spruce, pine and fir were stress tested and broken under 10,000 pounds of force, which is stronger than normal lumber, but lighter than other building materials like steel and concrete.
From WCSH 6 News: https://www.wcsh6.com/news/plywood-on-steroids-changes-lumber-industry/41656511
by Web Editor | Feb 10, 2016 | News
Last month we saw cross-laminated timbers installed at the Albina Yard project in Portland. It was the first use of U.S.-produced CLT in a building-wide structural system.
The first level of CLT (4,000 square feet) on Albina Yard went up in fewer than four hours. Last week, the second level was installed by a crew of seven in under two hours. Pretty remarkable, considering the contractor says it would have taken at least twice as many people two days or more to frame the same amount of floor space using traditional methods. Albina Yard is a four-story, 16,000-square-foot creative office project in north Portland. Besides its snazzy design by LEVER Architecture, the project is most notable for being tangible evidence that the U.S. CLT industry is officially off the ground.
There’s been a lot of buzz around CLT and mass timber in general over the past several months in Oregon and around the country — and rightly so. Besides drastically improved speed of construction (and the savings that go with that), mass timber offers significant environmental benefits. This includes tremendous carbon-storing capacity. Half the dry weight of wood is carbon. It got there when the trees were growing and absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. That carbon remains locked up for as long as the wood remains in use (a nine-story wood structure in China is now 959 years old—nearly a millennium). The new trees planted to replace those that were harvested start the carbon cycle all over again.
According to a quick, back-of-the-napkin calculation, Albina Yard, which is small by commercial construction standards, stores about 80.5 metric tons of carbon. That’s equivalent to offsetting 295 metric tons of CO2 emissions.
A larger Portland mass timber building, Clay Creative (60,000 square feet), stores more than 1 million pounds of carbon. Its total of 457.5 metric tons offsets 1,678 metric tons of CO2 emissions. “An additional 3,574 metric tons of CO2 emissions were avoided by using wood rather than concrete and steel,” says Dr. Jim Bowyer, an expert on the subject at Dovetail Partners, Inc.
From the Oregon Forest Resources Institute: https://oregonforests.org/blog/mass-timber-rising
