But they ve come a long way

Transcription

1 The Modern Sawmill B.C. s Gorman Bros. Lumber is among a sophisticated new generation of mills characterized by increased energy efficiency, waste minimization and sustainable forestry 36 wood design & building summer 2010

2 A traditional sawmill operation once the center of many rural communities in wood-exporting regions still tends to summon images of burly men whip-sawing wood boards or loading logs into rough, mechanical saws. Opposite and above: Outdated tools and saws once used by sawmills have long been replaced. Today s large, expensive often fully automated sawmills are streamlining their uses of technology, lumber and by-products. Since its early days manufacturing fruit boxes, Gorman Bros. Lumber now produces 140 million board feet of lumber per year But they ve come a long way since then: When you think of a sawmill 40 years ago, it was a smoky old thing with mud and oil, sweaty men. Now, many of us wear white lab coats. The lots are paved. There s no billowing smoke. It s a much more humane and sophisticated manufacturing facility than sawmills of yesteryear, says Vince McGrath, Plant Engineer at B.C. s Gorman Bros. Lumber Ltd. Our environmental footprint has diminished greatly. Ergonomics and employee conditions have evolved as well dirty, grubby, sweaty lumberjacks had a hard and short life, but now there s equipment and computers in place to make operator s lives easier. Technology has changed sawmill operations significantly, increasing returns through increased energy efficiency and waste minimization as well as improving operator wellbeing. Larger and more powerful machines and computers can perform a larger variety of chores, often with a single operator, says McGrath. Residues that were once considered (and disposed of as) waste are now called by-products. Wood waste is processed into particleboard and related products like wood pellets, or used to heat wood-drying kilns. Co-generation facilities produce power for the operation and also feed superfluous energy onto the grid. Larger pieces of wood are chipped into wood chips and often provide a source of supply for paper mills. Gorman Bros. Lumber which wood design & building summer

3 Above: Gorman Bros. Lumber in Westbank, B.C. produces roughly 140 million board feet of lumber per year for markets around the world has operations in Oroville, WA, and Westbank, B.C. is among this new generation of sawmills: massive, expensive often fully automated facilities combining creative use of forest resources with a streamlined utilization of technology, lumber and by-products. Since its early beginnings as an orchard, and then a fruit box and pallet manufacturer run by two brothers in 1951, Gorman Bros. Lumber has evolved into a modern sawmill operation, producing roughly 140 million board feet of lumber per year. By contrast, in the early days, a good year would have been 10 million feet of wood, says McGrath. And up until the mid-90s, the company produced around 60 million board feet of lumber per year. Today, Gorman Bros. Lumber sells its finished product with its signature smooth and splinter-resistant edges around the world. Grades of wood include Clear Select, D & better clear, Gorman ELITE, Gorman Craftsman, and #4 Com. Clear select is the highest grade. The Technologies From the forest to the finished product, Gorman Bros. Lumber is continually investing in the latest technologies. The company s goal is to increase the amount of lumber recovered from each harvested tree: today 30 per cent more lumber is recovered from the same number of trees than was possible 15 years ago. At the outset, new techniques are being used in the forest. Instead of felling trees that may damage other ones around them when they fall, Gorman 38 wood design & building summer 2010

4 Bros. Lumber uses a harvester that holds the tree while it is cut and then carefully lays it down. According to the company, these new machines evenly spread their weight so they have less impact than the human foot. Once inside the mill, a sophisticated, automated process ensues. There is a huge level of sophistication. The process is computerized. Scanners basically look at the log in its entirety and decide what the best breakdown is to get the best lumber recovery, says McGrath. Thirty years ago, we would have had to eyeball it. We save a lot of wood now, and we also save time because the decision-making time is quicker and more efficient. Thinner and more advanced saw blades (as with the Thin Kerf Edger) reduce the loss of fibre as sawdust and thereby ensure greater recovery of lumber. Bio scanners have the ability to scan boards for grade, wane, knots and splits and then sort/rout those boards differently/accordingly. Advances in the scientific understanding of how moisture leaves wood and improvements in the equipment used to accomplish this have also made it possible to improve not only the grade of the boards, but the quality and stability as well. Now the wood is classified based on the exact characteristics people are looking for depending on the end use, says McGrath. Previously it was trees in, lumber out, and you get what you get. The technology today, he adds, uses cameras to look at the color of the wood, X-ray to look at the density of the wood and find knots that might break, for example. All this allows the end user to specify exactly what he/she wants for a specific application, he says. The natural beauty of wood is amazing and with the new technologies, the sky is the limit today as far as manufacturing, he says. In terms of aesthetics, before if you wanted a certain profile, it might have been 10 people at the end of chisels and hammers. Now, computer numerical control (CNC) routers can cut and customize wood to any shape, much like steel or plastic. The technology has advanced so much. Our environmental footprint has diminished greatly. Ergonomics and employee conditions have evolved as well dirty, grubby, sweaty lumberjacks had a hard and short life, but now there s equipment and computers in place to make operator s lives easier. Waste Not The global pressure on utilizing green resources of energy as opposed to coal or nuclear sources has opened up the market for by-products, says McGrath, though he adds it is still a fairly new trend, having evolved over the last 15 years. Wood by-products are either used to supply our own energy or to supply someone else s energy, he says. Increasingly, more and more sawmills are becoming self-sufficient for heat and even for electricity or selling electricity back to the grid. We use it all we essentially have no waste. Once logs arrive at the Gorman mill, they are put through a debarker the bark is subsequently cut into much smaller pieces and sent to a facility that burns it for energy. This facility sells the energy back to BC Hydro, says McGrath. The remaining portion of the logs are then squared, with the sides becoming chips that are sent to a pulp mill for making paper products. The boards are cut at this stage, with the sawdust being sold to pellet mills. Gorman Bros. Lumber has also produced the energy for its kilns for 25 years shavings and sawdust are used to heat the oil that dries the wood. Our main products then the boards go into our kilns, which dry them. The drying heat is generated from us burning our own shavings shavings are created when we plane the lumber after it has been dried (puts the smooth finish on it). Those shavings go to our burner to heat the kilns or they go and get bundled for animal bedding (hamster), he says. Environmental Footprint One of the biggest factors for sawmills today, says McGrath, is ensuring and maintaining harvesting and reforestation standards. Growing global pressure and green building certification systems are driving this, he adds. Increasingly, certain customers are coming to see our facility, the logs and products, and they often want to see the forest where the wood came from and make sure they are not associated with a product that was manufactured in poor conditions. There are some big players, like IKEA, that insist on knowing the sources of all their fibre, he says. At Gorman Bros. Lumber, the emphasis on quality begins in the Spruce, Pine and Fir forests of the southern Okanagan Valley of British Columbia. McGrath says the company recognizes its future depends upon the long-term health and productivity of the resource it manages. Gorman Bros. goes beyond meeting wood design & building summer

5 There is a huge level of sophistication. The process is computerized. Scanners basically look at the log in its entirety and decide what the best breakdown is to get the best lumber recovery. the stringent harvesting and reforestation standards it uses various site sensitive harvesting methods to minimize its impact in the forest and ensures that all harvested areas are reforested. Intensive reforestation practices restock each site with environmentally suited species of trees in order to ensure sound forest stands. Timber harvested from public land provides approximately 95% of the company s log requirements. Logs purchased from private land owners round out this volume. The adoption of green building certification systems has actually helped us we had our own [harvesting] stipulations before they became established in the consumer market, he says. So when people started asking questions, we were ahead of it. Fibre supply is a challenge right now as the pine beetle epidemic in BC wreaks havoc on the forest industry. McGrath says the solution may lie in looking at different species, different log supplies, as well as at how to harvest beetle kill before the fibre is useless or too far gone. 40 wood design & building summer 2010