More mills closing?

[jrdwyer]

This has definitely been a rough year for many in the sawmill industry due to high fuel costs and low oak lumber prices. Kimball Int. just announced that they are attempting to sell their 3 sawmills due to losses. I hope they find a buyer and don't just close shop.  They closed their new veneer plant last fall and Interforest just recently announced closure of a veneer mill in Pennsylvania.

The hardwood industry need to step up marketing to promote oak in new or varied ways. For example, instead of just 2 1/4" select, plain-sawn red oak flooring, how about random multiple widths, rift and quartered, character grades, and beuatiful finishes like Waterlox. These products are available, but the consumer has to hunt to find them.  And I never see R&Q oak in the cabinet ailes at the big box stores. Just a few ideas to make the pie bigger for everyone in this game.

[sawguy21]

Specialty cuts seem to be in big demand. There is a relatively small operation near Calgary that cannot supply enough for the U.S. market. They supply wood for custom flooring, spindles, railings etc.
 My cousin in Kenora, Ontario says the big mill is closing there. They are a major employer and will really hurt the economy.

[SwampDonkey]

The hardwood industry need to step up marketing to promote oak in new or varied ways. For example, instead of just 2 1/4" select, plain-sawn red oak flooring, how about random multiple widths, rift and quartered, character grades, and beuatiful finishes like Waterlox. These products are available, but the consumer has to hunt to find them.  And I never see R&Q oak in the cabinet ailes at the big box stores. Just a few ideas to make the pie bigger for everyone in this game.

Big box stores like Kent Home have oak, but small quantities with stickered ISBN numbers on each piece to keep from shocking you of the price.  I bought one cherry plank at a local lumber yard, it was 12 feet long, 5 inches wide, 2 inches thick, (10 bf) almost $80 bucks. All their hardwood is imported. Those people don't charge by the board foot, so I refuse to buy their wood.

[Ron Wenrich]

Open grained wood is dead.  It won't be coming back any time soon.  Diffuse porous woods have taken over the market place and won't be giving up any market position anytime soon.

This is something I've been trying to drive home for years, but was put off.  The wood marketplace runs in about 30 year cycles, but can run longer.  At the open grained peak, diffuse porous woods will be considered junk.  In about 15 years, that position will be reversed, which is where we're at right now. 

It seems to be a gnerational type of issue.  If you grew up with oak cabinets and furniture, you're probably going to chose something else when you either remodel or build.  You will tend to go more with what your grandparents had.

I remember when oak was considered junk, and I can remember when maple was considered junk.  But, when you are managing a forest, you can't manage for the marketplace.  There is no way of telling if the market will be there or if it won't.  That's why I didn't like all that oak mentality where you are managing for oak forests.  No market guarantees.

The other thing about market closings is that a good deal of furniture production has moved to China.  Do you think they are getting the lumber from the US or from Russia?

3 million unsold homes for September in US.  That ain't gonna help the markets at all.

[Tom]

3 million unsold homes for September in US.  That ain't gonna help the markets at all.

.......and 10,000 going in down the road from the house right now.  They aren't just building homes but entire communities, Stores, schools, residences,  the whole thing.   

My wife is really upset about the situation.  She told me the other day that they are putting those "cheap" homes in and this side of town doesn't stand a chance of being anything now. 

I asked "cheap, what do you mean cheap?"

She then went into a long discertation about the houses starting at $100,000.

For the life of me I don't see how $100,000 can be considered cheap, but that is how they are looked upon.

Oak, Maple?  Most of the housed now are stick built with plastic insides, concrete and carpeted floors.  More and more are framed with metal, a home building material I've never understood.

Who is buying them, I don't  know?   They can't be considered "starter" homes

Their is  a phenomenon that is taking place with the studs too.   They aren't being grown here.  They are woods that I don't recognize.  White wood?    Here we are in the middle of some of the best, hardest, strongest pine grown and a depressed market.  The mills that have been able to remain open are crying for wood.  The logging industry isn't providing it because most of the old loggers got tired of being taken advantage of by the mills and hung up their hats.  The land where the houses are being built was one of the forests. 

[sawguy21]

Is pine used for framing in your area? Building codes will not allow that here, only fir or more commonly spruce is used.

[Frank_Pender]

AS to the materials for framing are concerned.   I know a fella that has a standing order for 2 x 4 studs out of Western Red Alder.   Guess where the order is going?

[Tom]

SYP has been the premier framing wood here forever.   The new carpenters don't like it because they have to hit a nail 2 or 3 times.  The imported woods allow a nail to be driven home with one hit.  I can't imagine not using pine for building.

[Furby]

Tom, "Starter" homes are running $150k around here.
Those $100k homes are for the "low income" folks!

[SwampDonkey]

Three weeks ago Norbord closed it's I-joint plant indefinately and they are closing the sawmill for 2 weeks or more because of poor markets.


I wouldn't knock down pine for construction lumber. Irving and UPM/REPAP have been sawing, thinning and planting it for years. Jack pine to be exact. It looks similar to your Virginia Pine in the south and you'd swear to yourself, who'd make lumber out of that limby crooked stuff. But, they have woke up a bit and now realize they have to grow is rather thick in it's earlier development to get straight self pruning trunks, then thin it for pulp at 40 years or so. (with markets being so poor that step might not be feasible now) I remember as a kid seeing all kinds of the stuff growing in what we called the 'North Pole' country and I thought it was a nice tree, in fact I had this craze to plant some around the yard and abandoned pasture areas on the farm. I remember planting some on the weediest sites you could imagine and I said that stuff will never take and now there is pine up higher than the hydro lines (1989). Forest companies have planted thousands of acres of it and it's a native tree. You gotta laugh though sometimes. They try to plant black spruce on burnt lands that had a mix of black spruce and Jack Pine growing there naturally. Guess which tree wins out? And wins big time by growth and density.  Another pine I really like is red pine, it's a 'perfect tree'. No amount of tree improvement efforts have improved upon mother nature's design. I don't know why it's not used for lumber, it's a hard pine, beautiful grain and nice color when finished. We had a beautiful kitchen table made locally from red pine and mom and dad still use it. It was 2" thick stock. I couldn't imagine grinding that wood for pulp or calling it junk wood. And white pine, the grand daddy of forest trees in this neck of the woods. If we didn't have such trouble with weevils and rust we'de be planting that as much as spruce.

[SteveB]

On the mill closure front:

I beleive Tembec is going to indefinitly close it's Timmins Ontario sawmill once it saws up its remaining log inventory.

Dwampdonkey,

Red pine's is harder, but not as strong as jack pine.  That's why it's not classed for construction lumber.  White and red pine are both weaker, that's why they're not included in the SPF class with lodgepole and jack pine, spruce and fir. 

White pine is prefered over red pine for fine woodworking (mouldings, etc.) because it's finer grain, and softness are more work-able, and of course its large size gives a higher percentage of clear, knot-free wood.  Because of its "workability" and large size, it's also the number one material for timber-frame (post and beam) construction.

So where does this leave red pine?  Too weak to be a prefered construciton timber, doesn't finish as well as white pine for appearance grade, and too much pitch to be a prefered pulp material...  You're right that red pine has good form, even (relatively) good form when open grown.  It's its straight form that gives it the advantage over the others for utility poles.  Where I work it's about the only product that consistently makes money for everyone along the supply chain. 

Insects and diseases:  While white pine is greatly effected by blister rust and weavils, and jack pine sustains infrequent, but potentially very severe attacks of jack pine budworm, red pine is sometimes thought of as being relatively pest free.  That's not always the case though, as severe outbreaks of root rots have broke out in red pine plantations throughout its range, killing many trees and necessitating premature clearcutting.

[Ron Wenrich]

Talked to an equipment salesman the other day.  His phone is dead.  Mills are starting to hurt for orders.

[SwampDonkey]

Actually, looking up physical data from the Wood Tech book indicates that the only advantages are in shrinkage (green), machining surface, and durability. The red pine is stiffer, more shock resistant, harder to split, holds nails better, does not tend to check and split as bad as white pine. And they do buy red pine here for pulp, mostly plantation stuff. But, there is not a wide open market for it.

[Ron Scott]

One mill that cuts a lot of wood for me told me yesterday that two of their major lumber buyers told them that they won't be buying any more lumber until after the first of the year. Not good.

[SwampDonkey]

Yes, jack pine is a bit stronger, but not by a wide margin. Every other property is similar to red pine. And of course jack pine is way more abundant than red pine also. Jack pine can also suffer from the sweet fern blister rust, although I have not heard it to be a big problem here. I've been in stands with sweet fern in the under story and the jack pine looked fine. Seem to be more damaging to seedlings and saplings. They recommend planting the trees thick on sites with sweet gale or sweet fern, both alternate hosts. I think sweet fern is a cool plant and even has an interesting fragrance when leaves are crushed. But, similar to most heaths.

[Corley5]

Sugar maple is still in demand up here but the price of lumber has fallen by a couple hundred a thousand according to the owner of the mill I've been selling to.  He's buying my basswood too but only because I've got maple and I don't have a whole bunch of it either.  Other mills I contacted about getting rid of basswood logs said they weren't taking any of it.  Basswood sawbolts and pulp are better left to rot in the woods.  Other hardwood logs like ash and beech are worth more as firewood than sawlogs.  I don't have any oak and very little cherry on this job so I didn't even ask about them.   

[TexasTimbers]

"You want white or yellow?" is a common question here if you go in and order a framing package. Alot of the old timers stick with yellow because that's what they grew up using. I switched to white except for certain members such as 2 x 12 headers for doors windows etc.
Not because the nails drive easier though but because the white is considerably less likely to warp. The yellow we get is so waney and crooked it's outrageous. the white just doesn't move as much.
I am a big fan of SYP but the stuff they throw at you at the lumber yards and call #2 is what we called "culls" 15 - 20 years ago.

[SteveB]

Sounds like the situation's prety similar all over, and on both sides of the boarder.  

I've had an SPF sawmill shut down on us, but luckily we found another home for the spruce sawlogs.  Everyone looses money on softwood pulp, but it has to be utilized when cutting softwood sawlogs to meet the government's utilization standards.  Hardwood pulp keeps people busy, but no one really makes any money on it.  Luckily it's been prety stable although there are always rumors of further pulpmill shutdowns.  Poplar's hard to sell, as the big osb company has shut down one of it's mills, and is diverting it's log supply to its other mill that's still running, eliminating its need to truck poplar from any great distance (that eliminates us).  They are also finding ways to incorporate more softwood into OSB these days.  It's kind of ironic that OSB producers are now substituting softwood fibre for poplar to lower their wood costs!  With the way hardwood sawmilling is these days with mills scaling back production they can afford to be a lot more picky about what logs they accept.  One of the area veneer mills has also laid off people and scaled back production, so things are crappy accross the board here.  At least everyone around here is still in business... sort of ... so far today.  

White pine is our bread and butter here, but even since the stain season has passed, the white pine mills delayed taking any logs becuase they have so much finished inventory they can't move.  As soon as they all started taking pine, their yards all filled right up with logs.  Everyone's just waiting to get cut off.  We also had two significant wind storms this summer that caused lots of blowdown.  Understandably, there's all sorts of salvage wood flooding the market from private land, on top of the usual crown wood, which is being cut a bit heavier than normal because of the blowdown.  On the crown land side of things its lots of extra work as your government approved plans all need to be amended to include harvesting, road building and water crossings in all sorts of previously unplanned areas.  You have to go through a whole process, inform the public, and get government approval before you can deviate from your original plan that was presented to the public and approved for the year.  It's difficult to tell the loggers that we have to wait and watch all of that nice pine on the ground stain while we get approval before we can pick it up.  To their credit, the government guys recognize the urgency and work fairly quickly, but they have a process to follow...     On the positive side, the pine on the ground is really nice in many situations as it was the biggest, most defect-free trees that had been marked for retention in previous shelterwood cuts.

It feels like the little guys at the end of the chain are getting squeezed the hardest, but when you look at the earnings of most of the big forest products companies, the best are only earning 2, 3, and 4 % returns, with many consistently loosing money.  If you look at what other industries are earning these days you'd wonder why everyone hasn't pulled the plug.

I guess we can only hope that enough people keep their chips in this game in north america so we still have some jobs and can hopefully weather the storm.

[WDH]

SteveB,

You are right about the big forest product companies and their financial performance.  I work for one of the largest, and the returns on the huge investments in land, mills, timber, etc. are very poor.  The whole Industry is in bad shape.  I work on the logging side, and we are working hard to support the loggers any way we can.  There has been a good bit of mill downtime with more to come in the 1st Qtr. of 2007, so the mills, the people working there, and the loggers all take it on the chin.  Sure hope we can weather the storm.........

[customsawyer]

I don't know how much is being sent but I see containers being loaded with red oak on a regular basis, that is being sent to china and about all I can think of is those poor people over there that have to unload those containers cause it is all loaded end to end.
I don't know if any other types of wood is being sent over there or not.