Did you ever look at a smooth, straight board and wonder how it could come from a tree? What happens to the bark and branches? How can it be so straight, when trees sometimes aren’t?

Today we’re going to see what happens from the moment a tree is harvested to the point its lumber is store-ready. This is the process that makes it possible to build homes, frame concrete, create DIY projects and do countless other tasks with wood.

Step 1: Growing the right trees the right way

For a forest products company, the first step is the most time-consuming part of our business. Growing the right trees takes decades!

Our scientists ensure we plant only the best tree families. They choose the families that grow the straightest and resist disease and insects the most. Both “parents” are accounted for in controlled pollination, a process that allows us to determine which pollen fertilizes the pinecones in our seed orchards. You can see a video of how controlled pollination works here.

Foresters known as Resource Land Managers plant the trees quite close together, which encourages them to grow tall rather than producing a lot of excess branches. That’s important because branches make knots in the wood, weakening it.

We nurture the forest, monitoring its growth and addressing any needs the trees may have for decades. Halfway through their lifecycle, we may “thin” the forest, removing unhealthy trees and trees that are too crooked to make good lumber. This gives the best trees more room to grow. Watch our video of a thinning operation to see how the spacing improves.

In the U.S. South, where we grow Southern yellow pines, trees destined to become lumber grow for about 20 to 25 years. In the Pacific Northwest, where our forests are primarily made up of  Douglas-firs and western hemlocks, our trees may grow 40 years or longer.

Step 2: Harvesting and sorting the logs

When it’s time to harvest the trees, foresters we call Timber Marketers work to find the best buyer. They want to get the best possible value out of the investment we put into the forest. Timber Marketers often work directly with nearby facilities, hiring loggers to prepare and deliver the logs to mills and exporters. They also can sell the standing timber to a dealer, who will then manage the logging and sale of the logs.

Today, we’re showing you what happens when we work directly with a customer. In this case, Timber Marketing Manager Rusty Cobb is selling a stand of loblolly pines in Kingsland, Georgia. He sells logs directly to the West Fraser sawmill in Whitehouse, Florida. The logs have to meet West Fraser’s standards for length, diameter, straightness and quality. Rusty hires Conner & Conner, a small logging company out of Hilliard, Florida, to harvest and prepare the logs.

As the heavy equipment operators begin to harvest the forest, they keep in mind where the logs will be going. In the same forest, there will be some smaller or crooked logs that will be broken down into pulp for the paper mill. Others will become export logs. In this case, West Fraser’s logs will become lumber. It is up to the equipment operators to visually judge about 1000 logs per-day and decide where they will go.

The feller buncher operator, who cuts the trees, tries to group similar products (logs of a relatively uniform size and quality) together during the cutting process. Then the skidder operator drags the logs to a landing area, where the loader operator makes the final decision where each log will go.

The loader operator processes the logs to the correct size and condition the buyer wants. First, they’re cut to the right length. Then, lifting the logs in the loader’s knuckle boom, the operator can pull the logs through a set of fixed knives, which remove large limbs and some of the bark. The logs are then loaded onto a log truck and strapped into place. You can learn more about this stage in the process by watching our video, What Happens During a Timber Harvest.

Step 3: Processing at the Sawmill

When the log truck arrives at the West Fraser mill, it drives onto a scale, where it’s weighed. The load of logs is also inspected by mill employees called scalers, who ensure the logs meet the mill’s standards.

After the logs meet the scalers’ approval, the truck moves to an unloading area, where a special machine that looks like a huge forklift unloads the logs. Once it’s time to process the logs, they’re placed in a debarker machine that removes the rough bark from their exterior. Then they enter the “cut-ups” or “bucking” process, which involves cutting the logs to the right length.

The next step is shaping the round logs into squares, a necessary step before cutting them into lumber. The canter line removes the least possible amount of wood from the logs to reshape them. But nothing goes to waste. The removed bark becomes a mulch product, while sawdust is used in making wood pellets.

The process gets really high tech with the VDA saw. Using highly-sensitive scanning equipment, the saw can cut the logs into board widths that are accurately sized within thousandths of an inch. The saw automatically optimizes each log to cut the most possible high-demand sizes of boards without wasting any wood. It also analyzes the logs for defects to ensure issues like severe knots don’t ruin the resulting cuts of lumber.

The green trim saw follows: this saw trims the boards to the right lengths, again cutting around knots and other defects whenever possible. The majority will be formed into 2×4 or 2×6 boards.

In the sort up bays, the boards are grouped by size. Then they are placed in the stacker, which packages them together so they can dry in the 230-degree kiln. This drying process in West Fraser’s three massive 52-foot-long “ovens” removes moisture, preventing warping in the wood.

The dry boards then get a final polish in the planer, which smooths their tops and bottoms as they whip through at a speed of 1500 feet per minute.

Finally, the boards are packaged and moved to the warehouse, where they’ll await shipment to nearby stores and businesses.

A sustainable process

With as many as a thousand trees being harvested in one day on one logging site, and so many homes and buildings continuously being built around us, it’s only natural to wonder: will we run out of trees? Sustainable forestry is designed to make sure we have a reliable wood supply that won’t run out.

As soon as a mature forest is harvested, our foresters begin making plans for the next forest that will take its place. Typically, within a year of the harvest, the next generation of trees will be planted on that same property. It will be ready just in time for the lumber needs that arise 20 years from now.

We also safeguard the wood supply by ensuring we only harvest a certain amount of trees in each area each year. The result is a mosaic of different ages of trees in our forests. That not only ensures that there will be a reliable wood supply every year, but it also creates a variety of habitats for the wildlife that lives within our forest ecosystem. Younger stands have more vegetation, like berry bushes and flowers. Older stands offer shade and shelter.

With sustainable forestry, trees do it all: they provide clean air and a home for wildlife during their lifetime. When they’re harvested, they meet countless needs as they become products like lumber and cardboard and paper goods. They’re also used to make cellulose, an ingredient in 1000s of products, including medicines, paints, foods, even touchscreens. And all the while, when trees become products, they continue to store carbon for the lifetime of the product they become. It doesn’t get any more sustainable than that!

The post How Trees Become Lumber appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

KINGSLAND, Georgia—A row of south Georgia pines appears to be on the move as an aptly-named feller buncher saws through more than a dozen trees in a row, gathering them in its claw-like grip while they’re still upright. 

Once the buncher is at capacity with a large bundle of pines, it lowers them to the ground and drags them out of the forest in one trip, careful to leave neighboring rows of trees unharmed; what remains will be growing for years to come.

This is a thinning operation, and only a portion of the trees will be harvested.

WHAT IS THINNING TREES?

Believe it or not, thinning trees is one of the healthiest activities that can be done for a growing forest. Once trees have matured to a certain age—here in this Georgia forest, they’re about a decade old—they begin to compete with each other for nutrients, water and light. Full rows of trees are removed, allowing the remaining pines to grow to their full potential over the next six to eight years. 

In addition to removing full rows, a thinning operation will pick off less desirable trees from the remaining rows.

“We remove trees that are small, forked, diseased. Any trees with defects,” explains Resource Land Manager Josh Steiger.

What remains to grow in the forest are the healthiest, strongest trees with the highest potential to become the products future generations will need, from poles for docks and utilities, to lumber for homes, to the wood used in furniture and countless other products.

“Thinning is a big part of what we do. It allows the crop trees to grow and expand into the solid wood product that we want when we clear cut that stand. We want to have a lot of really good options for whatever our customers will need,” Josh explains. (“Crop trees” refers to trees that will be managed to full maturity and then marketed for their highest and best use).

Similar to weeding a garden, the removal of trees in a thinning leaves the forest less crowded so light can reach more of the tree canopy, and nutrients and water aren’t so hard to come by. After all, there are no sprinkler systems in the forest: there’s only so much water to go around.

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE TREES THAT ARE REMOVED IN A THINNING?

After growing for about 10 to 14 years, the trees removed in a thinning have an important role to play. The majority will go to pulp mills, where they will be processed into the pulp substance that is used in thousands of everyday products, such as paper, cardboard, fabrics, bath products, rubber tires and LCD screens.

WHY NOT PLANT LESS TREES IN THE FIRST PLACE RATHER THAN THIN LATER?

Foresters plant a certain number of trees per-acre with the full knowledge that some of those trees will later be thinned from the forest. In the meantime, those trees help develop a healthy forest in a number of ways:

• First, they help stabilize the soils when seedlings are first planted in the freshly-tilled ground.
• Secondly, when trees are planted closer together, they tend to grow tall rather than wide, with less branches on their trunks. This is important for the quality of the wood of the trees that will grow to full maturity: less branches means less knots in the wood, making a stronger and more attractive product.
• Third, as mentioned above, the trees that are removed play an important role in the forestry industry, supplying much of the wood needed in pulp production.
• And, finally, the trees destined for thinning offer the same environmental benefits as all trees while they grow: sequestering carbon, filtering water, stabilizing soils, providing shade and a host of other benefits.

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO A FOREST IF THE TREES WEREN’T THINNED?

“We know that any given acre of land can only grow a certain amount of fiber,” Josh says. “If we do not thin, when that stand reaches its capacity, something that’s very common is what we call ‘self-thinning.’ The trees that are less vigorous will start to die.”

When the forest self-thins, it can be more vulnerable to disease and insect infestations, which can “absolutely devastate” a stand of trees, he says.

How does thinning trees impact wildlife and plant life in the forest?

Thinning a forest can have a significantly positive impact on wildlife and plant life in the forest. When a stand of pines needs to be thinned, the thick cover of treetops—known as the overstory—blocks almost all sunlight from reaching the forest floor. That prevents most plants—or, understory—from growing on the forest floor. After a thinning, shrubs and bushes that foraging animals seek for shelter and food become more readily available.

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE FOREST AFTER A THINNING?

Once a forest is thinned, the remaining trees will often be fertilized to give them a boost as they now have space to grow. But, for the most part, with more light reaching their leaves, more water reaching their roots, and more nutrients to go around, nature will take its course and the trees will naturally grow into a more robust, mature forest.

FOR FURTHER READING ON THINNING TREES:

Tree Thinning 101, by the American Forest Foundation

Thinning my Forest, Partnership for Forestry Education

The post What is Thinning Trees, and Why Do Foresters Do It? appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

LUFKIN, Texas—Did you ever look at a towering, perfectly-straight utility pole and wonder what tree could have made such a large pole?

Some of them come from New England Forestry land!

The most valuable trees on our land in the U.S. South, “pole” trees can become utility poles for telephone and power lines or piles for docks and piers.

“It Starts with Genetics”

Pine trees in a natural forest typically do not provide a large number of poles, explains New England Forestry’s Lufkin-based senior timber marketing manager, Jeremy Flood. But our in-house genetic research team has worked to develop seed families that produce tall, straight trees with smaller branches.

“It starts with genetics,” Jeremy says, “followed by decades of management with proper thinning and fertilization. The result is mature plantations with high quality grade timber.”

Finding the Right Trees for Poles

Even though the trees in a stand of timber are the same age and species, they still mature to a variety of shapes and sizes. A forest manager ensures each tree reaches its highest potential use. Trees worthy of becoming poles are the rarest—and, consequently, the most valuable—because of the very specific requirements that must be met in order to qualify.

Without careful planning and attention to detail, one could overlook these valuable trees, selling them as sawtimber, a significantly less valuable product. Jeremy’s team created a plan to ensure as many trees as possible became poles.

“It Would Be a Waste Not to Capture Their Full Potential”

“These stands have been nurtured and grown for more than 25 years. It would be a waste to not capture their full potential,” says timber marketing manager Shane Bergman, who spearheaded the project.

To locate potential poles before a harvest, a forest technician takes an inventory, statistically measuring the stand of trees to locate those that meet the size specifications needed for poles. Our foresters work closely with a logging contractor, who cuts them down, separates them from the other trees, and places them to the side for the next step.

Strict Specifications for a Log to Become a Pole

Once the poles are laying side-by-side in a giant row, a forester inspects them one-by-one. He measures them to ensure they’re straight, with an even thickness and free of defects like scars and knots that could penetrate the wood. They also have to be the right diameter for the customer’s needs.

“Poles have very tight specifications required by the customer and consumer,” Jeremy explains.  “It’s not all cosmetic, much of the specs are required for engineering purposes, to ensure strength and longevity.”

They reject, or “cull,” logs that don’t meet the rigorous standards and use them for sawtimber. Using a chainsaw, they manually cut those that meet the standards to the exact size specifications of the buyer.

The logger delivers the logs to a pole mill to be processed into the final product.

Shane couldn’t be happier with the way the project worked out.

“It’s exciting to scale poles because of the relationships you build,” he says. “As you work with the contractors you get to learn about them and see that they have the same values as New England Forestry when it comes to being a good steward of the forest. We truly get to work with some great individuals.”

The post Where Do Utility Poles Come From? appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.