Day Two of our Forest and Rail Trip

Monday morning,  cloudy but not raining.  We start the day at the Hamer Lumber Company Pellet Fuel Plant in Elkins WV ( look at your map and locate Elkins or locate on google earth).  This company, started by the Hamer Family in Knova WV( find on map or google earth), takes a once waste by-product of producing lumber (saw-dust)  and turns it into a valuable product (fuel-pellets) for the company.  They entered the fuel pellet producing business after having to spend over 1 million dollars to clean up a saw-dust pile at one of their lumber producing sites.  Piled saw-dust is an environmental hazard and must be now disposed of properly.  Wood pellets also burn efficiently leaving little waste.

The mill brings in saw-dust from as far as 5 hours away by truck.  The green saw-dust has to be dried in giant drum driers powered by a 55 million BTU furnace.  The driers are fueled by:  what do you think?  Moisture content is brought down to 8 to 10 %.    Loads of saw-dust are sorted by type (hardwood, softwood etc.) so that the correct mixture of saw-dust can be put into the pellet making process.

Above is a picture of the furnace and drum dryer at the Hamer Pellet Fuel Plant.

Dried saw-dust is fed into a giant pellet making machine.  The dry saw-dust is mixed with water and vegetable oil.  The new machine makes about 6 tons of pellets an hour.

Above is a picture of one of the pellet making machines.

It is bagged by machine into 40 lb. bags, tested for quality.


And then loaded onto pallets by a robot


It is then sheathed in plastic and moved outdoors to be shipped to the customer.

The whole system is run and monitored by computer.  (see below)

What careers are associated with this production process do you think?  make a list. 

How much do you think their electric bill is per month?

Tree Identification at Riverbend Park In Elkins

Visit the page at the top of this blog on tree Identification.  On the page you will see pictures and text on different tree species found in Cabell County.  Today we also worked on tree identification in this park.

Below Oak trees at Riverbend Park.

Why would the ability to identify species of trees be important to those in the timber industry?
List some reasons.

After lunch at the park, we went to Frank Wilson Lumber and Mill works also in Elkins.  The Elkins location started out as a railroad siding or load site for Wilson mills from the surrounding area.

What could we compare this to from something we know about today?

In 1961 a boiler and dry kiln for lumber was added to the site.  Through the rest of the 60's and 70's kilns were built and added to the boiler system until it reached capacity in 1985.

A new system was added in 1985 that used wood shavings (again a waste by-product at one time) as fuel.
Today there are 7 kilns with a 250,000 board foot capacity.The site kiln dries Ash, Cherry, Maple, Hickory, Oak species and Poplar brought in as rough sawn lumber.  On some orders prepared for customers, they may plane the surface and rip a straight edge. 

The kilns take the green lumber(still with natural moisture content) form 17% moisture to 6% moisture.  Soft species take days to dry while hardwood species take weeks to dry.  A 12 ton load of saw-dust to fire the kilns last about 3 days average.

Why is softwood easier to dry that hardwood?   
list your best guess if you don't know.

Which species from those mentioned above do you think would take longest to dry?  Why do you think this?

Workers tally and grade boards as they enter the building and sort them to a conveyor.  This information is entered on a handheld computer. 

For lumber to maintain the best condition it has to be dried slowly. 

What problems do you think drying it too fast might create?

The boards are stacked with sticks of wood positioned crosswise between each layer of boards.  For most board stacks they use hickory sticks(a stick is 8ft. by 1-1/2 by 3/4).  For maple they use a wood that comes from Africa (Apatoou)? 

Why do you think they use a special African wood to stack maple?

Customers for the lumber from Wilson are furniture makers, cabinet makers, trim and molding makers etc.  Customers range from small to large.  Most are from the Eastern U.S.  But they have sent Red Oak to
Austria.

In 2004 they went from the system that they had always used to a new system that is mechanized and controlled by computers.  Lumber is graded by species of tree and by quality. The best grade is first and seconds, the next grade is common.  New graders take a class in Pennsylvania for one week and are trained by veteran Wilson employees who pass on their expertise.  Computer scanners measure length and width of the boards which is a giant chain driven conveyor.  Grades are based on the number of knots, splits, birdpecks etc.  Knots being the biggest determinant.

Big building right side top grade left side common grade (add pics)

Wilson's business is closely linked to the housing market:
2005-  Wilson sells 5.3 million board feet of lumber.

2009-  Wilson sells 2.2 million board feet of lumber.

2011-  Wilson sells 3.3 million board feet of lumber.

2012 -  Wilson is on target to sell 3.5 million board feet of lumber.

Why is this the case?  What do you think happened in 2009 that caused this dramatic drop in Wilson's business?

Wilson Mill Works

Wilson Mill Works is a sister business to the lumber company.  They take boards from the lumber company and turn it into finished products like molding trim cabinet pieces, flooring and paneling.  Using computer drawings and a CNC machine they can create custom knives and shoes that allow them to custom cut molding to customer specifications.  They can also re-create pieces based on a old piece brought to the mill works by the customer.  They have had orders for their product from as far away as Texas and Alabama.  They buy wood from across the U.S. as far away as the west coast.  But 70-75% of their wood comes from Wilson Lumber. 

Shop stations and equipment:

1.  Planer

2.  chop saw

3.  New chop saw (computer operated) and ripper

4.  glue wheel

5.  molders

6.  sander

7.  2 side precision cutter

8.  Sander

9.  rosette machine

10.  paneling tongue and groove cutter

11.  paint and stain booth

Who do you think are the customers for this business?  

The day finishes with a talk form Rob Wetzel National Forest Historian

Mr Wetzel explained that the forest were always effected by man.  Native Americans burned areas to make clearings for various reasons.  European settlers began to clear the forest for farming and animal grazing.  Settlers utilized whole logs for homes and other structures because they had no means to saw lumber.  Lumber then began to be sawed by hand using the pit or scaffold method.

Above is a picture of a pioneer log house restored and today located in Beverly WV.

Water power began to be utilized, it was slow but better than the hand powered method.  Then at the beginning of the 1880's steam powered engines were introduced to the process and the business took off.  As cities grew along the east coast need for lumber exploded and the technology of the steam engine allowed previously unreachable tracts of timber to be used.  People like H.G. Davis and S.B. Elkins brought the railroad lines to the timber areas.  The advent of geared steam engines that could climb grades ,  with the development of circular steam powered saw mills along with giant band saw mills, allowed massive amounts of timber to be processed and removed from the state.  From 1880 to 1920 most of the West Virginia forests were removed. 
Erosion, siltation, fires and flooding were all that were left to contend with.  Most of the money, resource and workers-citizens left the state.   The conservation movement of the time along with the natural healing processes of nature helped bring the forest back to West Virginia.  Today West Virginia once again utilizes its forest as a resource.

How is the use of the forest today different that it was in the early 20th century?  list some ways.