Swedish milling, then and now

[imagineero]

From another thread started by spacemule. Found this just amazing to watch, nothing like any saw mill I've ever been in. Kind of heartbreaking to watch in a way, when you think of the lost knowledge and jobs... but hard to argue against it providing better efficiency, a higher quality product, optimum use of the material and less waste. Who thinks this stuff up? Worth a watch.

 

[Brush Ape]

I like how they calibrate the ripsaws so the tangential limits meet between the two blades, yet they are timed perfectly so the opposite teeth never interfere. It reminds me of WW1 aircraft machine guns reliance on a cam to keep the bullets from hitting the propeller.

 

[4x4American]

Great video thanks for sharing

 

[imagineero]

There's so much cleverness going on there that my head started to hurt. It's brilliant the way the whole system works - x raying logs to work out where defects are and optimise cut patterns, the way the blades change positions on the fly to cut every log in a unique way, the drying, the way the logs are graded independent of the mill or buyer, and the sheer speed of the whole thing. The twin reducers look pretty clever too, and seem to be adjustable mid log, I saw a couple logs that came out with two different diameters.

 

[Samlock]

The Scandinavian sawmills must be made efficient, because there's a huge amount of green timber around, but the local market is small. It's all heading overseas. You know, lumber is not exactly gold, so the shipping cost per volume is quite high. Not to mention that the foreign buyers are picky when it comes to quality.

Over here a local sawmill makes only joists out of spruce for the Japanese clients. Floating that stuff to the other side of the world must be stupidly expensive. But I guess they can't find lumber meeting their standards anywhere nearer.

 

[imagineero]

I was kind of surprised to hear the claim of second largest exporter in the world by volume, did some googling and couldn't find any data to back it up. Maybe of a specific kind of timber? Or maybe it's the volume thing. They didn't even rank in the top 10 in most of the admittedly older data I found.



Very old data though, and it doesn't mention whether it's production or export. Did come across some weird numbers searching, unsurprisingly china is the largest importer of illegal timber, with more than half their timber coming from countries with poor timber governance. Apparently illegal timber is worth around $30billion globally but that figure sounds low to me. I don't know jack though.

 

[Samlock]

They say Sweden is the second largest softwood lumber exporter in the world, after Canada. There's a long way from producing roundwood to selling saw products.

I found a figure of European softwood lumber exporters. It shows that the small Scandinavian countries Sweden and Finland export in total more than the world's largest country Russia.

 

[jwilly]

A few years ago I built a house in upstate NY and all the 2x6 studs were made in Lithuania.

 

[Gologit]

A few years ago I built a house in upstate NY and all the 2x6 studs were made in Lithuania.

Lithuania? Maybe it's just as cheap to ship the boards across the ocean as it is to send them by rail-car from the west coast or some of the southern states? Was it good wood?

 

[treeslayer2003]

see, this sounds so silly to me............how can it be cheaper to import a 2x4 from overseas than from a hundred miles away?
our pine price is still low. and ya can't tell me that knotty wood is better than ours. not trying to step on toes here, just can't believe the math.

 

[1270d]

When I was framing houses in Arizona some of the studs were from Russia. Usually they were excellent quality.

 

[Gologit]

see, this sounds so silly to me............how can it be cheaper to import a 2x4 from overseas than from a hundred miles away?
our pine price is still low. and ya can't tell me that knotty wood is better than ours. not trying to step on toes here, just can't believe the math.

It doesn't make sense to me either. I know that a lot of specialty woods, hardwoods and exotics used for trim and decoration, come from overseas. It's rare wood and it's expensive and I can understand that.
Structural lumber is dirt cheap by comparison and it's almost always shipping costs that determine how far away from the mill the lumber can be sold at a reasonable profit.
Structural lumber is a high volume commodity, too. You have to sell a lot of lumber...and keep selling it... to realize any return on your dollar.
I don't mean to sound like some kind of expert here. I'm not. I don't know much about sawmills and I sure don't know much about all the economics involved. But I've been listening to sawmill people all my life. The ones who did well were the ones who understood how to sell at a profit after figuring in all the costs. LOL...I've always been part of the costs and they don't let me forget it either.
Maybe those guys in Lithuania got their timber cheap. Maybe they work cheap. Maybe the ship hauled the lumber on a back-haul rate to get it over here to pick up a better paying cargo. Maybe the homeowner was Lithuanian and had a hankering for homegrown wood. Dunno.
I'd like to know more about all this.
In the meantime I'll check the lumber aisles on my next trip to Home Depot or Lowes. We raised a hell of a stink when they started carrying Canadian lumber and they quit offering it. Never thought to look for Lithuanian labels.

 

[treeslayer2003]

well it used to be that our large yellow pine brought good money for treated lumber, but new treatment laws seem to have hurt some what. thing is i have used our domestic pine lumber.......its nice.....straight grained and harder than baught out lumber.

 

[rwoods]

Lumber seems to be a funny business. When I built my house about 12 years ago, here everything was either "white" wood (no further designation) or yellow pine. Yellow pine is strong but is prone to twist so it isn't normally used for studs. The white wood 2x4 studs were junk - some only had three or so growth rings and traces of bark. 2x6s weren't much better. I ended up using 2x8s. I ordered a bunch of T&G pine "bead" board for porch ceilings and to wall the garage (turned the bead in for the wall) - it all came from Romania or some other east European country. I was stunned. "White" wood seems to be a better quality now, but I don't know where it originates. Ron

 

[treeslayer2003]

really Ron? here trusses must be yellow pine..........i never seen um twist no worse than anything else. unless the board came out of a twisted log, then it should have been rejected. now treated will turn into skis if left in the sun.
white wood i bet is canadian lumber.

 

[Brush Ape]

SPF is for upright. SYP is the best for trusses, but in less than 2x6" dimension it is special order. That is a crock. All my structural lumber is imported from the Rhineland though.

 

[Samlock]

Lithuanian currency liti took a dive in 2002 - for a moment their products were crazy cheap to buy with dollars. I guess they made boards and studs out of smuggled Belorussian wood as much as they could. International trade takes sometimes weird paths.

Here the forest companies are not too happy about trading lumber either. Cooking pulp and diesel and other chemicals out of softwood is what makes the money right now. Yet lumber is one piece of the big picture, it cannot be ruled out.

A pile of good grade pine saw logs I cut went to pulp mill this summer. They paid for saw timber, but into the chipper it went. I ask no questions, just shaking my head.

 

[rwoods]

really Ron? here trusses must be yellow pine..........i never seen um twist no worse than anything else. unless the board came out of a twisted log, then it should have been rejected. now treated will turn into skis if left in the sun.
white wood i bet is canadian lumber.

That is just what I was told when I asked for untreated yellow pine for floor joists. For short spans here they use white pine, spruce or fir; longer spans are the wood i-beams. The wood I-beams I have seen use white wood caps or laminated caps. Not saying that they don't use yellow pine but I have never seen any. I know first hand that if yellow pine flooring gets wet it can buckle something fierce in just minutes.

As to trusses, they do manufacture roof trusses here using southern yellow pine but attics are usually dry. If you leave the them exposed to the weather they can twist completely out of shape.

My 2 by 8s came from Canada and are simply marked SPF for spruce, pine or fir.

Ron

 

[rwoods]

Just read Brush Ape's comments. The roof trusses over my garage are SYP; some of the pieces are marked #1 and some marked #2. My dad would have culled 95% of them if he had been in charge. Ron

 

[Brush Ape]

It's true, Ron. #1 SYP is nearly clear stock with four corners and slight characteristic which is permitted to have small/medium knots but they aren't supposed to fall out. And no bark.

Anything less and my Dad would have sent the truck back to the yard and so will I. The problem with lumber quality isn't the sticks, it is the fact that people have poor communication skills and they don't have any balls.