The government of Canada is retaliating against the U.S. in light of the alleged U.S. failure to comply with a World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling on the Byrd Amendment. Canada is imposing a 15% surtax on U.S. live swine, cigarettes, oysters and certain specialty fish effective immediately.

All it took was persistence of vision to keep Rick Wilson’s dream of owning a sawmill alive. Add the right investment group, a first-rate engineering team and a mill with great potential—and the dream became a reality.

Chaleur Sawmills stands apart as one that has not just survived, but has continually re-invested to place it among the most technologically advanced mills anywhere. Not bad for a mill that just celebrated its 10th anniversary, and was founded by four guys that knew almost nothing about sawmilling at the time.

Everything sells in seven years, says Gene Dandliker, as he states his underlying philosophy regarding the used sawmill machinery market. Dandliker, President of Jem Machine in Grangeville, Id., and a major player in the used sawmill iron business, says working with used machinery is “damn interesting: There is always a supplier out there, and having the right machinery at the right time is what it’s all about.”

The committee we have that arranges for our programs and speakers took the easy way out. They wanted a CEO from the industry—I was in the room urging all of the Board members to participate in FRA work, and I was an easy mark. So here I am.

Tectron Engineering, Laguna Hills, Calif., and S+S GmbH of Schoenberg, Germany have formed a joint company, Tectron Metal Detection, Inc. The new company will manufacture, sell and service metal detectors based on pulsed eddy current decay from Tectron Engineering and the new digital pulsed technology.

JoeScan has upgraded the versatile JS-20 profiling scanner. The upgrade increases the maximum scan rate from 120 to 200 scans per seconds, providing better scan density for today’s high-speed infeeds. JS-20 scanners are used throughout sawmills to provide robust shape data for maximum recovery.