"When a DOC Voluntary Product Standard is made a part of a legal document, such as a sales contract or code, compliance with the standard is enforceable."
2.1 Accreditation—Procedure by which an authorita-tive
body gives formal recognition that a body or per-son
is competent to carry out specific tasks.
6.2.6]
"Producers, distributors, users, consumers, and other
interested groups contribute to the establishment of
DOC Voluntary Product Standards. These groups
initiate and participate in the development of the
standards, provide technical or other counsel as appropriate, promote the use of and support for the standards,
and assist in keeping them current with respect
to advancing technology and marketing practices."
Office of Standards Services, National Institute of
Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD 20899-
2150.
This is a link to SPIB's visually graded services web page;
http://www.spib.org/vglumber.shtml?/lumberservices.
Arky, how many sawyers could you get together for 4 days?
If they won't allow you training, TP would probably be glad to bring a program to you. Their stamp is on as much SYP as SPIB's here, they let me train there and took my money happily. I did find myself in the HD that was beside my motel while I was at the grading school. An armload of their 2x4's came into the class the next day.
I think we should be trained...so should they. Wood does just happen to be the major structural element in most construction...grading education oughta be readily available to anyone pretty easily. Small producers and inspectors should have the same training as the "big boys". If the inspector asks for a judgement call, then third party auditing by one of the grading agencies could be called to come in. If everyone is trained I kinda think its a non-issue.
All stress grading for knots is done the same in concept from what I was taught. It doesn't really matter the species or size, how you look at a piece of wood is the same, look inside the piece of wood as you grade. Find the worst defect. Almost all branches stem from the heart. You visualize the knot displacement within the cross section of the piece of wood. Looking at all 4 faces, figuring out where the pith was. Knowing where the pith was in relation to the knots you see on any face. You can see where each branch is going, how much clear straight grained wood remains around the stick of weak branch that either passes through the timber or stops at the pith within it. Based on how much good wood is displaced by the knots, their size and location, according to the grade rules for that wood, a grade for the knots in the piece can be determined. If thats the worst defect that piece of wood has, that's the grade. The old timers rule of thumb is quarter, third , half ...#1,#2,#3.
To make a span table for dimensional lumber or to calculate a single beam's load and span, you take the grade (the proportion of good wood you have) and species of wood and look up the allowable design values. Those variables account for the different strength properties of each species. If you look at the design values for the different grades in every species, those strength values drop by about 1/4, 1/3, 1/2...basically how you look into wood and grade is the same, the design values account for the differences in size or species.
Anyone can petition the board of review of ALSC to become a grading agency, FF or SSMU could petition for that, I think it costs about $100,000 by the time its all done and said from what one biased source told me. There are several agencies that are former employees of other agencies who went out on their own...so it can be done, might be worth checking into. For small mills self grading and educated inspectors is the way I'd like to see it go, this isn't rocket science.
If anyone has some kind of span tables for appalachian hardwoods, I'd sure like to have some. I'm in a real weak position there, "official" hardwood span tables, graderules anything like that would go a real long way.
