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The Manufacturing Process
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Squaring the Wood
After the rough lumber has gone through the processes in the lumber yard and kilns,
it arrives on the "tracks". This is the receiving end of the production room, where piles of kiln-dried lumber
are moving on tracks toward the first processing machine.
The Chop Saw cuts out the very obvious waste pieces from the rough lumber, which then moves on to the Double Sided Planer. This machine planes a board on both its top and bottom sides.
The planed board is then moved to the Gang Rip Saw.
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The Gang Rip Saw rips the board lengthwise into square edged strips of specified width,
depending on the width of the product we are producing at the time.
Now we have perfectly dimensioned square stock ready to sort for final products.
The board is now marked with a pen to indicate cut lines for the next machine: our strongly computerized Optimizing Saw. Here the board is cut into shorter, perfect
pieces, and low quality waste pieces are cut out. Coming out of the Optimizing Saw, the boards are now grade selected, sorted, and stacked.
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Profiling the Square Wood
The stack of boards is at this stage moved down the production room, and and individual boards are loaded into the Moulder,
which is shown in the photograph on the left.
The Moulder can be flexibly programmed to produce a diversity of moulding profiles on the 4 long sides of the board. This comes in handy, when we do mouldings
and custom work such as nosings, baseboards and door trim.
Exiting the Moulder, any remaining knots, bows, and other defects in the profiled board are cut out with the Chop Saw.
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Inspecting / Endmatching
Throughout the moulding process sample flooring boards are inspected for fit and quality. Our trained and skilled staff have developed a discerning eye for quality.
Although this quality control does not happen solely at this moment, it is an important step towards securing and maintaining our reputation for high quality milling and matching.
The 4 sided board now enters the Liniar Endmatcher, which profiles the board at the 2 remaining ends, producing a tongue and a groove
in our 4-sides Tongue & Groove flooring.
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Bundling the Profiled Flooring
Now that the board has been turned into a final piece of flooring, it is graded by our experienced grader.
For example, the grader makes the ultimate decision
if a piece of Yellow Birch flooring ends up as a Select & Better, #1 Common, or Cherry Birch Grade.
Flooring going on to the prefinishing plant is microbeveled and sanded.
Graded flooring boards are now nested together, bundled with plastic strap and piled onto standard sized pallets.
Wide plank flooring is wrapped with plastic in the Orbital Wrapper, as shown in the photo on the left.
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Storing the Flooring
The palletized flooring is stored in our 4000 sqft climate-controlled storage facility, and held there until we ship it, or the customer picks it up.
We have a loading bay for long-haul trucks, so that they can easily be loaded with our forklift. Pick-up customers get help from our employees to hand-load their vehicle.
The Manufacturing Process is now completed. Rough pieces of lumber have been turned into 4-sided
Tongue & Groove hardwood flooring, dimension stock, or mouldings.
More: Tour our Plant
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