Article by Rich Donnell, Editor-in-Chief, Panel World May 2021

RoyOMartin supplied a short article in this issue on its 25th anniversary celebration since the startup of its softwood plywood mill in Chopin, La. The mill produced its first press load in March 1996 and yours truly visited the mill and wrote the cover story that appeared in the November 1996 issue of Panel World. Jonathan Martin, who passed away in September 2019, walked me through the plant that day.

I remember that Martin was jovial as he showed off the new mill, and why not? Greenfield softwood plywood plants were rare indeed (and still are) and the newness of everything there made it a can’t miss opportunity for the two Nikon cameras and Sunpak flashes that dangled around my neck. Why two? One for the black & white film, one for the color film. Indeed the photos and article turned out well, in looking back at that November issue. But what also struck me was all that was going on in the pages of our magazine 25 years ago.

The Martco story carried the cover, but inside the same issue was an article a staffer had written on the new Weyerhaeuser OSB mill in Heaters, W. Va., which had started up that August, processing mostly low grade hardwoods. The mill ran a 12×24 ft. Washington Iron Works press.

That issue of Panel World also had a story on the new OSB mill built by Norbord Industries at La Sarre, Quebec, this one with a Siempelkamp multi-opening press.

Here are some other developments that showed up in the issue. If you’re at least 50 years old today, they may jog your memory:

• APA held its 60th annual meeting in Orlando, Fla., with a lot of discussion about the path to quality.
• Forest Service agents raided a blockade put up by preservationists in the Willamette National Forest.
• Temple-Inland announced it would build a cement fiberboard plant near Dallas/Fort Worth.
• Plum Creek announced the purchase of 538,000 acres, a sawmill and a plywood mill at Joyce, La. from Riverwood International.
• Sunpine Forest Products and Dieffenbacher announced they would construct a continuous microwave LVL press line.
• Eagle Forest Products in Miramichi, New Brunswick, Can. produced its first OSB panel.
• Kenneth Ford, founder of Roseburg Forest Products, at age 88 received the Harry A. Merlo Award administered by the World Forestry Center in Portland, Ore. The presenter was Harry himself.

Some of the advertisers in that issue, such as Durand- Raute, Electronic Wood Systems, Con-Vey and Texpan, are advertising in the issue in your hands.

And, 10 people listed in our magazine staff box are still working hard for us today.

So maybe 25 years ago isn’t really that long.

P.S. The headline for this column is a quote of author Harvey MacKay.

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Article by Rich Donnell, Editor-In-Chief, Panel World March 2021

Every now and then a wood product comes along that causes us editors to pause— not necessarily over its innovativeness, but rather over which magazine we should write about it in. It’s kind of a fun exercise actually.

We have several magazines that cover various sectors of the wood products industry, the Panel World in your hands being one of them. Another one is Timber Processing, which has a similar format as Panel World, only it focuses on lumber manufacturing as compared to panel manufacturing; or how can I put this most succinctly—solid 2x4s compared to composite 4x8s.

And then a product such as “mass timber” comes along, two versions of it in fact. One is the traditional CLT composed of 2×6 and 2×8 pieces, many of them fingerjointed, and stacked crosswise on top of each other in several layers, creating this monster piece of building material. The other is veneer-based mass timber (veneer as in what traditionally has gone into plywood), which can also be built to mammoth depths and sizes. Both of these are engineered wood products, each with a fairly similar mass timber production and handling process.

But since one is composed of lumber, does that mean we should only cover it in our sawmill magazine? Since the other is composed of veneer, should its placement only occur in Panel World? The simple answers would be “yes.” But as Lee Corso always says, “Not so fast my friends.”

Sometimes you just have to put it in one of the magazines and see how it “feels.” Take Vaagen Timbers for instance. The story on its new CLT operation in Spokane, Wash. begins on page 24. For those of you who receive both Panel World and Timber Processing, you might be experiencing déjà vu. That’s because the Vaagen Timbers article appeared in Timber Processing a couple of months ago. How could it not? The owner grew up in a sawmill family operation before venturing into CLT. His dad is a former Timber Processing Person of the Year winner.

Okay, so why now put the Vaagen article (which has been updated) in this issue of Panel World? Frankly, because it feels like the thing to do. How could we hide this engineered wood product story from our Panel World readers? After all, the product crosses into enduses once reserved for panels. The production technology therein is supplied by many companies who also supply the panel industry.

Another example is Freres Lumber and its new Mass Plywood Panel mass timber facility. We ran the article last year in Panel World, and then ran it again in Timber Processing. The veneer- based makeup of MPP has Panel World all over it, but again its end uses mesh into traditional lumber applications. Heck, Freres Lumber started out as a sawmill company, and still runs one, in addition to its panel and MPP operations. Our Timber Processing readers needed to read about the Freres venture into MPP.

Really, engineered wood products of almost all kinds deserve coverage in both periodicals. Sure, Panel World remains a panel magazine, and Timber Processing stays as a lumber magazine, but when it comes to mass timber, we went both ways at the fork in the road.