Glued laminated timber, better known as glulam, is one of the oldest engineered wood products still manufactured at scale. It is made by bonding layers of dimension lumber with structural adhesives so a finished beam can span distances that solid sawn lumber of the same cross section cannot. Demand for the product has climbed steadily […]
Cross-laminated timber (CLT) stacks layers of lumber at right angles and bonds them into panels that are light enough to crane into place and strong enough to carry multi-story loads. The panels deliver acoustic separation, fire resistance, seismic performance, and thermal insulation in a single product, and they install fast with little on-site waste. That
The wood treating process is a long chain of handoffs. Fresh-cut lumber arrives by truck, moves through sorting, drying, and treatment, and leaves as finished product on a delivery schedule that customers count on. Every step generates data: which bundle is in which retort, when the treatment cycle finished, which load is ready to ship.
Wood products carry published design values that engineers rely on before the first wall is framed. Those numbers come from somewhere: thousands of hours of laboratory testing. The most demanding programs skip small samples entirely and test full assemblies, whole wall sections, and even entire houses. The Engineered Wood Association’s research center in Tacoma, Washington,
Engineered wood products have moved from specialty orders to standard fare on residential and light commercial jobsites. Laminated veneer lumber, or LVL, and wood I-joists carry floor and roof loads that solid sawn lumber once handled alone, and manufacturers keep adding capacity to keep pace with demand. When one company purchases another firm’s engineered wood
Pressure-treated lumber is not one product. It is a family of products engineered for different levels of exposure, and buying the wrong designation costs twice: once at the register and again when the deck or fence fails early. Treated-lumber brands have moved to clearer end-use labels so contractors and homeowners can match the board to
Hardwood travels from forest to workshop through a chain of sawmills, wholesalers, and specialty dealers, and every link shapes the quality of the boards you buy. When a lumber supplier opens a larger warehouse, adds milling capacity, and launches online fulfillment, delivery times shorten and service options multiply. The same logic runs through the wider
When a single deal moves two plywood plants and roughly 750 jobs between owners for $512 million, the industry takes notice. Behind the headline is a manufacturing story most buyers never see: how logs become veneer, how veneer becomes panels, and how those panels hold up everything from marine construction to suburban tract homes. Understanding
Hardwood lumber has been traded the same way for decades: phone calls, faxed price lists, and yards that sell what they happen to stock. A new generation of automated marketplaces handles the entire transaction online, from sourcing and quoting to order placement, payment processing, and shipping. Sellers must hold physical inventory at a real location,
Breaking ground on a large industrial facility starts with the same discipline as any building project: accurate layout of the footprint before the first excavator moves. The survey team that sets out a building plan on the ground transfers column lines, setback lines, and grade elevations from drawings to real coordinates, and a small error
