How 2x4s Are Made: Sawmill Tour

foreign [Music] the studs on our new house all have this stamp on them they're Douglas fir they're Kiln dried heat treated they are graded and certified as number twos and they were made by Douglas County Forest Products which is only like six miles down the road from where I live and today we get to have a tour of the mill to see how studs are made and we have a really special tour guide It's someone I've known my entire life here's a picture of us when we were small I can really vouch for them this is John Blodgett he comes from a long line of Sawyers at least back to his great grandpa Sam ball who is also my great grandpa and you might have seen him in one of our really old videos we did that was also about sawmilling so let's go check this out the original Douglas County Forest Products was started in the 1940s about 25 miles from here and the original company was called Douglas County Lumber and it was kind of like the old school version of a logging camp where everybody lived on site there was a camp cook like the the historical image that people have of vlogging eventually the company relocated to the town that we're now into Roseburg and the mill has been at this location since 1956. we manufacture studs so two by fours and two by sixes in eight nine and ten foot length and all of those products are Kiln dried to 19th percent studs are made here from ponderosa pine Lodgepole Pine Hemlock white fur and Doug Fir there's almost constantly log trucks pulling in unloading and selling their logs to the mill the price that the mill pays for the logs is contracted beforehand between the mill and the log Cellar but the volume and quality are calculated once they're on site and that's done by a third party to determine the net of dollars that are due to the seller this third party is known as a log scaler we measure the logs and that measurement is called scaling it's called log scaling and we're determining the volume the grade and the defect within the log at our facility we measure and grade every single log that comes in to ensure that we're getting the best quality the correct lengths and that the seller is being paid for exactly what they sent so basically every log is sort of appraised correct yeah so we unroll the load lay it out it's called angulating it and we have two company tapers that are going to come by with a log tape one on each end the smart end and the dumb end the smart end is the the guy reading the tape and he paints on the log the length of the log and then the third party scaler a company that we contract to measure the volume and assess the defect he's going to measure the what they call the scaling diameter which is the small end and then he's going to eyeball the log and say oh it looks good or there's an issue with it like maybe there's bugs in it maybe it's cracked maybe uh like here's a good example like I don't know what happened to this tree but there's the butt down there here's the top and there's this big kind of like a knot almost like a burl on it so that's defect in the log and he's going to deduct the soluble volume from that log based on that defect logs are stacked into decks this here is a deck and John said there's roughly a hundred loads of logs or so per deck and the decks are organized by species so for example these two decks are all Western Hemlock and these decks over here are Doug Fir each species of wood requires a different drying schedule which is why we sort the species by the log truck Doug Fir dries the quickest and Ponderosa dries the slowest we could do an entire video just on the equipment you see running around the mill here but just to touch it briefly this machine here is referred to as a Wagner and there's lots of different models but they're all absolutely massive this one here weighs a hundred and fifty thousand pounds and it can lift over a hundred thousand pounds it's as big as a house these are log loaders they sort logs more one at a time and they're also used to stack logs on top of the deck thereby creating what's called a high deck so you can store more logs on one deck the only downside is you have to then take the deck apart with a log loader also okay now let's go look at the Mill and the first thing to mention is that saw milling creates a lot of mess if you have ever worked with wood or firewood you know this you get bark you get sawdust all cut all types of other dust and just fibers that really pile and add up so in the log yard the bark is coming off and seasonally the bark comes off the log much easier than other times so when the sap is running through the tree in the spring and when that happens like you can take like a rock and throw it at a tree or just maybe like a hammer or something and tap it and the bark will just Slough off so during that time there's a lot of bark that's falling off we scoop it all up and we run it through our code generation facility which is this large block over there so it's a boiler with a generator and a turbine and it and it produces the electricity for the entire facility as well so you burn it so we burn it not only is the sawdust and bark creating the electricity that runs the mill it's also creating the steam that heats the Kiln to dry the lumber and I don't know why but this whole system completely blew my mind and sort of made me like almost proud of the industry as a whole if that's possible just thinking about all the people and all the decades that have gone into figuring out how to do this and obviously those people today who are still maintaining it it's just unbelievably tidy and I'm not sure if I if you I explained it right but here it is one more time it's not that the system is creating extra Steam for the Kiln here it's the same steam they're burning the bark and sawdust to boil water the boiling water creates steam the steam gets moved over to heat the Kiln and then it leaves the Kiln and on its way out out it runs by a turbine to generate electricity and then the water condenses back down from Steam into water and is recycled again how about that the industry's been sawmilling for a long time and so there's a lot of years of technological advances where and if you're manufacturing and you're making residuals every day like it's a problem you've got to figure out something to do with it it used to be they just burned everything they didn't generate electricity what's called The Wigwam burner like looks like a wigwam and they just burned it thank you thank you now we're really going into the mill here and the first step for the logs is debarking and bucking they load the logs with the small end first and then they hit a cut off saw which is a circular saw and it's cutting the logs into multiples of either 8 9 or 10. [Music] from now on the logs are referred to as blocks and before they hit the next saw they go through this little hole where they get scanned and measured by a bunch of lasers if you look under this screen right here this is the predicted cut based on the scan so it's it's predicting the cuts that are going to be made so two by four by nine two by six by nine so it can predict the Wayne and the lumber based on that curvature so it knows that these pieces will more likely be economy these will be number twos all of the cuts are based on the optimization from the scan it's just computer thing about what's the most efficient way right and it's it's looking at these how it's going to be broken down and it knows the downstream sequence of the resaw the edger so it knows it those are programmed back into it as well this part of the mill was my favorite by far first you come down this little flight of stairs and all of a sudden you're on a wood floor and maybe you have to be there to understand but it really gave it a neat feeling it just felt proper somehow plus the wood is kind of all moving around this area in a semi-circle here are the two big band saws that are breaking down the blocks everywhere you look there's Motors and hydraulics and chains and belts it's just so impressive now the piece is referred to as a cant and they get scanned again before running through the final saw and getting cut into the actual boards and I couldn't get the camera up tight on the actual saw is kind of deep inside of a shroud but it's called an edger and it's actually several smaller circular saws kind of all in a row that move and adjust to hit the camp at all the right spots according to what the computer predetermined well here's our boards now and they're going up this conveyor they get scanned and then they get sorted and dropped into bins with other of the same matching product this is called the stacker and this is stocking the unit preparing it for the dry Kilns and in between each layer is the sticker the sticker allows the steam to travel through the unit even driest uniformly this Lumber right here is rough lumber that's been sawn but not planed and not dried so it's come through the sawmill it's on these little railroad tracks no eased edge or anything and this isn't trimmed flush yet um and the exterior is not planed yet and it's still 100 wet so it's oversized to accommodate the planing and the drying well we got really lucky and the Kiln happened to be open right when we were walking by so we got to peek inside these are the pipes that move the steam through and create the Heat and if you remember back this steam is generated by burning the sawdust and bark from the mill how hot does it get and how long does it stay in here so it depends on time of the year and about 180 to 200 degrees around there [Music] planer and you can see the boards just launching out of it so rapidly they hit this conveyor where they get inspected and graded any boards with defects are marked and set aside but big picture you can see we got two by fours now and they are ready to package and ship [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] huge thanks to John and everyone at Douglas County forest products for letting us come through the mill if you want to see these products put to work I'm filming the contractors who are building our house they are using these exact studs from this Mill so take a look at that if you want to see these things put to good use thanks for watching everyone keep up the good work we'll catch you next time white fur 2x4 92 and 5 8 that's the length number two hundred ninety four pieces so this is the board feet so if you were to take the board footage divided by the number of pieces you get your support foot per board and that's how many one inch by one is like 12 inches or feet are in this pocket [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you

Channel: Essential Craftsman

Views: 420,900

Keywords: anvil, forge, blacksmith, forging, craftsman, mentor, trades, tradesman, career, smith, carpetner, builder, wisdom, workbench, fabricate, tools, tool, tips, trick, hacks, protip, lumber, sawmill, stud mill, 2 X4 mill, lumber sawing, sawing logs, boards

Id: PRvaDNc4Xus

Length: 15min 33sec (933 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 03 2023