Lumber sleuths

Hardwood Lumber Scanning Tests to Determine NHLA Lumber Grades

This paper concerns the scanning, and grading of kiln-dried hardwood lumber. A prototype system is described that uses laser sources and a video camera to scan boards. The system automatically detects defects and wane, grades the boards, and then searches for higher value boards within the original board. The goal is to derive maximum commercial value based on current market lumber prices. This...

U.S.-Canada softwood lumber trade disputes and lumber price volatility

In the last 20 years, U.S.-Canada trade in forest products has received a great deal of attention on both sides of the border, as well as in international organizations such as the World Trade Organization. A dispute regarding softwood lumber imported from Canada to the United States, a $7 billion business in 1999, has been the most controversial. People involved in the dispute have described i...

The Softwood Lumber

The continuous friction for more than two centuries in softwood lumber trade between Canada and the United States only keeps escalating. The reason for the prolonged battle in the softwood lumber trade is the huge economic value of the bilateral lumber trade, the size of the lumber markets in both countries, and the adverse impact of one country’s policies on the other country’s lumber market. ...

Great Lakes Lumber on the Great Plains: the Laird, Norton Lumber Company in South Dakota

Modeling the Cupping of Lumber

Wood shrinks anisotropically as it loses hygroscopic moisture. While longitudinal shrinkage (parallel to the grain) is nearly negligible in normal wood, transverse shrinkage (across the grain) is significant and characterized as tangential and radial shrinkage. The application of average tangential shrinkage values to a rectangular cross section results in errors, especially for boards cut from...