Organizers of the new Timber Processing & Energy Expo report that the exhibitors’ booth space is more than half sold out as of mid-February. TP&EE will be held October 17-19 at the Portland Exposition Center in Portland, Ore.

In November, southern pine lumber producer McShan Lumber Co. finally saw to fruition something company owners had been planning for several years with the installation of a new gang saw and edger system. The upgrade project centered around a Timber Machine Technologies (TMT) 8 in. bottom arbor gang and a TMT three-saw edger with Nelson Bros. Engineering optimization.

When I started writing about the sawmill industry going on 29 years ago, there were several sawmill men whom I quickly came to admire for their knowledge and truthfulness. One of them was Vaderon (Bud) Keeney, who died January 24 in Hillsboro, Ore. at age 90.

When is it the right time to update technology? The abiding strategy for Allegheny Wood Products (AWP) is to continually build on its strength for ferreting out sound opportunities to increase efficiency. In early 2011 its Kingwood sawmill updated the optimization systems on its two headrig carriages with the combination of LASAR scanning and the MillExpert optimization platform from USNR. Concurrently, the trimmer optimizer was also modernized with MillExpert and new computer hardware while retaining its existing scanning system.

Most people enter the professions of logging and sawmilling in one of two ways. Either they follow in the longstanding footsteps of the family business, or they find themselves knee deep in the industry almost completely by surprise. Antoine Hardwoods founder Charles Ledbetter went from a military stint in Vietnam to working on a dairy farm, followed by a job selling cars. At the time he was also going to college on the GI Bill while supporting a wife and two sons, and if you’re wondering how a Vietnam veteran-turned dairy farmer/car salesman made the transition to running a sawmill, well, that’s the surprise.

Southern Forest Products Assn. (SFPA) reports that the 32nd Forest Products Machinery & Equipment Exposition will be held June 6-7, 2013 at the Georgia World Con­gress Center in Atlanta. SFPA has sponsored and conducted this event since 1950.

The Pellet Fuels Institute (PFI) and the American Lumber Standard Committee (ALSC) marked the first critical step in the roll out of the new densified biomass fuel standard for North America through the accreditation of 10 auditing agencies and two laboratories to the PFI Standards Program.