Mike Cloutier is passionate about most things he undertakes in life. But when it comes to his saw business, Cut Technologies, the exuberant company president goes even further, displaying a contagious enthusiasm for quality, innovation and customer service. For the 48-year-old Cloutier, the success of Cut Technologies has been a lifetime in the making.

Sidney L. Lunden, who invented the Lunden sticker system, died suddenly of an aneurism on October 23 in Boise, Id. He was 86. Lunden’s sticker system placed the stickers under the lumber as the stacker cycled, unlike conventional methods of the time of dropping stickers on top.

Keeping up with an ever-expanding production rate while maintaining quality and accuracy is the goal of the filing room staff at Gulf States’ large sawmill facility here in western Alabama. The filing room staff, led by Ralph Weber, filing room supervisor, now tends to three sawmill lines that need fresh saws regularly, thanks to a new timbers mill two years ago that’s greatly exceeded planned production.

Ask most people what they know about cryogenics and the reply usually involves an unkind joke about the frozen head of baseball great Ted Williams. Ask a growing number of saw filers and maintenance supervisors what they know about cryogenics and you’re likely to get a much different answer.

Balfour Lumber Co. has staked a steadfast claim in the Southern lumber industry for 75 years. Thirty miles to the northeast, Beadles Lumber Co. shares a similar claim, though it’s 25 years younger. The two companies entered into a strategic alliance in 2001 when Beadles purchased the Balfour sawmill, located here, a few months after the mill had shut down due to market conditions.

As of July 2005, the mainstream of the softwood lumber industry in the U.S. and Canada consisted of about 1,067 sawmills. These sawmills had a combined capacity of 189 million m3 (80 billion BF), employed about 99,000, produced about 172 million m3 (nominal, 73 billion BF) of lumber, and in the process consumed about 280 million m3 of wood.

The JM-4000 Multipass Dual Side Grinder, from Jacobsen Mfg. is a totally enclosed CNC motion controlled side grinder capable of any variation of multiple passes. The color screen allows the operator to easily interface with the motion selections while showing clearly where each head is located all through the grinding cycle.