What Can You Tell Me About Buying and Selling Hardwood Veneer Logs
Phil Stannard cuts a cookie off the cease of a log during an inspection. The cut will provide him the only expect he'll get at the interior wood tissue, and help him decide whether the log volition brand the grade for veneer. Photograph by Robbo Holleran
Yous'd recall, in our high-tech world, there'd be some sort of sensor or detector or app that could electronically evaluate and instantly confirm that a log is truly veneer-worthy. Merely the only style to know for sure is at the veneer mill…after the log has been processed. Out in the field, it takes human being senses, a lot of experience, and a niggling luck to tell which logs are going to brand top-quality veneer.
It's Phil Stannard Jr.'south job to brand those difficult (and expensive) decisions. Stannard is a log buyer for Danzer Veneer, which owns 2 veneer mills in the U.Due south. One, which receives and produces a lot of walnut and white oak from the Midwest, is in Edinburgh, Indiana; the other, which receives maple, cherry oak, birch, and cherry from eastern states, is in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. "My primary species is maple – I'm a maple buyer," said Stannard. Most of the maple that Stannard buys ends up equally a decorative peel covering wooden wall panels, piece of furniture, and doors.
His job is to source logs from throughout New England and northern New York that will make proficient maple veneer. From his dwelling house in Off-white Haven, Vermont, Stannard puts virtually l,000 miles a yr on his Ford pickup traveling that territory. "My kids are a little older, so I don't have as many brawl games now, so it's a little easier," he said. In the winter, he's away from home a couple of nights a week. "The wintertime is my busiest time . . . that's when most of the better wood is being logged," he said. "It's but a rat race for about 3 months."
A Knack for Knowing
"I've been in the forest business organisation my whole life, either in logging or forestry," said Stannard, who graduated from Paul Smith's College. Just it may have been the business he operated when he was younger, cutting and splitting firewood, that best prepared him to become a veneer buyer. "My father claims that's why I accept a knack for knowing what'south inside a log," he said. For a decade after higher, Stannard bought and sold logs, sorting them and sending them to particular mills in order to become a premium for them. One of his customers for veneer logs was Danzer.
Once he decides to buy a log, Stannard applies a bar lawmaking that will remain with that wood all the way through the veneer production process. A daily written report lets him see how the decisions he's making in the field are turning out. Photo by Dave Mance Three
In 2008, the lumber market crashed, and Stannard began to look for new career paths. Danzer was eager to have someone with local noesis of the New England forests, then they hired him. "I know the dissimilar areas and how the forest is from each area. That'south a very important thing to know, because you can't see everything is a log, but if you lot know where it came from, y'all know the places that usually produce pretty well."
Over the years, Stannard has built up a supplier base among foresters, loggers, sawmills, and log brokers. They sort out logs they think might encounter the high standards of a veneer log and call him in to take a look. Given the big territory he covers and his exacting criteria, Stannard prefers to work with repeat sellers and tries to buy at least half a truckload at a time. "It can be hard if a logger has only five logs," he said. Specially in the summer, the logs tin can spoil quickly sitting outside, and it can exist hard and expensive to arrange trucking for only a few logs. However, for the correct logs, he'll practise it. Which leads to the other attribute of Stannard's job: he's not just in quality control and purchasing, only also logistics. He has to figure out the all-time way to get the logs he buys to Pennsylvania. Stannard works primarily with a unmarried trucker – Edmond Plante & Son in Derby, Vermont.
Stannard gets a fair number of cold calls from people convinced they have the perfect logs and wanting to sell them for veneer. "My regular suppliers, to a certain extent, know what I'm looking for. Only sometimes a logger who hasn't sold much veneer will call to tell me they have some amazing logs. Only when I get there, they're non. Still, I take to go," he said. It'south a just a fact of the chore that sometimes sellers will be disappointed that seemingly minor defects tin make a log unsuitable for veneer. "The person selling the log sometimes thinks I'g crazy, because it might exist the near beautiful looking log," he said. For logs that practise make the form, the payoff tin be big. Stannard says at that place'south no mode to quote a general cost for a veneer log, because every log is unlike, but he says that veneer logs can be worth several times more than than even loftier-grade sawlogs.
Quality is Everything
"When I become to inspect a parcel of logs, it's not like scaling a load of sawlogs, where you measure the diameter and the length and assign a grade to it," Stannard explained. "I curlicue it and look closely for external defects – knots, scars. Then I fresh-clip the end with a chainsaw so that I can look for internal defects – the kind of things that people, if they don't know what they're looking for, might not even notice."
Internal defects might include minerals in the wood tissue, which tend to make the wood darker, or worm tracks, which can be catchy to see when simply looking at an end-cut on the log.
"But I can recognize information technology," Stannard said. There are other internal characteristics that he looks for, like a consistent growth charge per unit. If the tree was growing slowly in a forest, then a patch cut allow sunlight flood in, and growth accelerated, the change will be reflected in the spacing of the growth rings. "Yous'll actually cease up with two different grains," he explains. "That doesn't mean that it's not a veneer log, but it means that the value of the veneer you're going to produce from it is lower." When it comes to the growth needed for veneer, "consistency is the most of import matter, simply slow growth that's consequent is the best," he said.
The internal test also includes a await for "tension forest." If a tree is growing at an angle, the tissue can build differently on one side versus the other to support the tree. "So, when you relieve that tension and piece the veneer sparse and dry out it, the cells are ruptured, and it buckles," Stannard explained. Like many internal defects, tension wood is difficult to see unless you have a trained middle; it might bear witness upward as just a slight difference in colour or a fuzzy appearance when he makes a cookie with his chainsaw equally the fibers tear rather than cut cleanly. "Those logs, I pass up them," he said.
Primarily, Stannard looks for logs at least xiii inches in diameter. There'due south no such thing every bit a log that's too big, but he said that logs with a diameter between 15 and 20 inches tend to produce better veneer than larger logs, mayhap because there'south less wood where defects could exist hidden.
Stannard buys between 300,000 and 400,000 anxiety of veneer logs a year. "This year, we're looking to produce more maple than we did last year, and so nosotros need to exist able to source more of information technology without sacrificing quality," he said. "That'south the cardinal rule when y'all're a veneer-log buyer: you can't sacrifice quality for quantity. You can't say, 'Oh, I'll just buy those logs there to fill out a load.' The production costs are so high after we purchase the log that if you buy a log that's going to produce poorly, you lot're non only losing the money that you lot spent ownership and trucking the log. You lot're losing all the coin it costs to put it through production."
Once his logs reach Pennsylvania, Danzer employees examine them as they come off the truck to further evaluate whether they are worth putting through production. "If they're non, I get a black marking on my report card," he said. In fact, once he buys a log, he affixes a barcode to it and enters that data into a tablet; that tracking information then stays with the wood all the style through production, even later on the veneer is made. He can access reports about the results to see how the logs he has purchased have turned out, which in turn helps to inform future decisions he makes regarding which logs to buy. "It'due south very helpful to know what your results are from a certain area or a certain form of log," he said.
Fifty-fifty with years of experience and a knack for knowing what clues to look for, there's simply so much you tin can know from a visual test of a log. In other words, non every log that a buyer purchases is going to make the form once it reaches product. "Yous're not always right, but you take to win more than you lose," he said. There'south plenty of force per unit area in the profession, given the high prices involved. "But I really savor it," Stannard said.
Source: https://northernwoodlands.org/articles/article/veneer-logs-phil-stannard
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