Square trees?

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

A bit of an update on the idea of wasted wood. I live near the largest softwood mill in the USA and believe me, nothing gets thrown away. Here’s how it works:

Log gets debarked -> produces: landscaping bark, large, medium and fine, plus bark dust soil amendment.

Slabs are cut off squaring the log -> slabs are cut down for pallets, stakes, and specialty products.

Leftovers get flaked for OSB (Oriented Strand Board)

Boards are cut

Sawdust goes to the pellet factory.

Pulp trees are an entirely different product, that have been breed for low lignin and ease of processing to pulp. This makes them much weaker than a log tree and useless for construction.

David

2

Obligatory link to the original column:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3018/whatever-happened-to-that-plan-to-grow-square-trees

3

They probably take boards with defects and put them in a machine which cuts out the defects and reforms the remainder into finger-jointed boards. They may also use scrap and sawdust to heat their drying kilns.

4

This reminds me of the Japanese square watermelons, made that way so that they are easily transported, fit nicely in small Japanese refrigerators, and don’t roll when you try to cut them.

See the article here: BBC News | ASIA-PACIFIC | Square fruit stuns Japanese shoppers