Industry Developments

When Major League Baseball (MLB) was looking for experts to work on a project to reduce the frequency of broken baseball bats, they found two organizations in Madison, Wis. to join their team. TECO and the USDA Forest Products Laboratory joined Dr. Carl Morris, a Professor of Statistics at Harvard, and Dr. James Sherwood, a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UMass-Lowell and Director of the UMass-Lowell Baseball Research Center, on a team of experts that analyzed 2,232 bats broken last year during MLB games between July 2 and September 7. Those bats were shipped to TECO’s office in Wisconsin, where TECO and FPL staff collected a wealth of data.

In a press conference during the MLB winter meetings in December, nine recommendations of the expert team were adopted into the MLB bat supplier regulations. TECO is now working with MLB, the MLB Players Assn., and the 29 baseball bat manufacturers that are approved by MLB to implement the new regulations for the 2009 season.

A Fine Line by David Abbott

Like many wood products companies, J.V. Averitt Lumber Co. Inc., a privately owned family operation, has seen its fair share of ups and downs in its long history. Right now definitely qualifies for inclusion in the “down” category. “We seem to get more bad news daily,” says current owner Phil Averitt, who inherited the company from his father, J.V. Averitt, for whom the mill was named. “These are not the best of times.”

The mill produces grade red and white oak and poplar, but Averitt says the best movers these days are the lower grade logs for crossties, with pallet cants and flooring oak also doing relatively well. “We try to switch our cut to what items are moving, but you are limited by what mix of logs the loggers bring in,” Averitt explains. “We have tried to get more tie logs by offering a price incentive for logs that are the right size and cut to the correct length.” In years past, of course, Averitt preferred longer grade logs, but now those products aren’t selling

Pike Lumber Takes the Edge Off

Three years ago Pike Lumber Co. management started looking at upgrading its board edger at its sawmill in Akron, Ind. to an optimized system. They established the following criteria:

* The operator should be able to adjust the optimized solution, downstream of the scanner, to combine the volume yield capabilities of existing optimizers with the operator’s ability to improve edging decisions based on visual defects.

* A linear edger system was preferred due to its mechanical simplicity, low maintenance cost and reliability.

SFPA Announces Conference Lineup

Two mornings of panel discussions and presentations on Cutting Tools are included in the conference portion of the Southern Forest Products Assn. Forest Products Machinery & Equipment Exposition to be held in New Orleans in June.

The Expo machinery show, which features the world’s top sawmill machinery manufacturers, runs June 11-13 (Thursday-Saturday) at the New Orleans Morial Convention Center. The Expo University Conference will occur the mornings of June 11 and June 12 from 9-12.

Staying In Shape by Jennifer McCary

Shortly after Win Smith Jr. joined the family business in 1993, Limington Lumber Co. embarked on a program of steady, incremental process improvement resulting in an overall yield increase of roughly 15% and nearly 100% increase in production, now at 15-16MMBF annually. Production has been holding at that level for the last two to three years, which Smith notes is a volume that works well for them. <

Equipment & Supplier News

Cleereman Industries, Newald, Wis., has acquired Precision Fabricating, a material handling company, in which McDonough Manufacturing, Eau Claire, Wis., was a shareholder, and McDonough will now be a minority shareholder of Cleereman Industries as a result of the transaction.

Cleereman’s acquisition of Precision and resulting strategic alliance with McDonough will enable turnkey service for their customers. This includes design, layout and equipment manufacturing for carriages, bandmills, resaws, custom material handling equipment, optimized edgers, thin-kerf gangs, automated grading stations, drop saw trimmers and trimmer lines, and other related sawmill needs.

Hard News In The Making

Canada has been coming under fire from U.S. softwood lumber spokesmen, who say Canadian actions may be in violation of the 2006 U.S.-Canada Softwood Lumber Agreement.

The seven-year agreement dropped the collection of countervailing and dumping duties on Canada that had been ongoing for more than four years, and called for Canadian softwood lumber exporters to pay a charge when the price of lumber is below $355 (U.S.) per MBF, with the amount fluctuating depending on how far below $355 the price goes.

New Products & Technologies

Simonds International reveals an innovation in the small diameter saw line. The intention of the Simonds “Glide” process is to eliminate the burr on the edges of the bore of a spline saw. While it sounds simple enough, it results in some remarkable impacts on the saws both in the filing room and on the mill floor, according to Simonds. Veteran saw expert Bob Howe came up with the development.

In the machine center, while the saws are running, the square edges of the saw bore are in contact with the arbor and this constant pressure wears the bore of the saw slightly on every run. This wear generates burrs that dig into the machine arbor, causing grooves to develop quickly. To prevent these grooves from becoming a big problem, it’s necessary to keep shifting the arbor. These arbors are quite expensive and can only be shifted so many times before they have to be replaced.

SFPA EXPO Returns To New Orleans by Rich Donnell

Anybody with a job in the forest products industry is feeling some pain these days (that goes for editors, too). But can you imagine being responsible, in this economic climate, for selling exhibitor space to equipment companies for the upcoming Southern Forest Products Assn. Forest Products Machinery & Equipment Exposition?

My hat goes off to Eric Gee, Exposition Director for SFPA, who is performing this duty for the Expo to be held June 11-13 at the Morial Convention Center in New Orleans. This is Gee’s second Expo (the show is held every other year). Gee has been with SFPA since 1997, serving since then as marketing manager, director-government affairs and director-industrial markets, before assuming his current post in November 2005.