July 2001 Volume 7, Number 7
July 2001 Volume 7, Number 7
By Jack Petree
Contributing Editor
HUNTLAND, Tenn. — Thompson Appalachian Hardwoods has been in operation for less than 10 years, yet already it is becoming known throughout the hardwood world as a pace setter in meeting the present and future needs of its customers through a high tech approach to lumber production.
The firm produces in excess of 30 million board feet of green and kiln dried hardwood lumber each year in a plant that is being consciously upgraded each year with the goal of creating a mill that will be state-of-the-art in the near future.
Thompson Appalachian Hardwoods significantly improved accuracy of opening face with investment in INOVEC technology.
"I believe in good stewardship of all that we’ve been blessed with,"said owner and president Nordeck Thompson. "State of the art technology allows us to profitably get more high quality product out of a given amount of fiber, and that is good stewardship of the resource."
Thompson Appalachian’s most recent upgrade was the installation of an INOVEC StereoScan 3D head rig carriage scanning system. It has brought dramatic improvements in both the mill’s grade recovery and production speed, according to Nordeck.
Huntland, Tennessee is located about 100 miles south of Nashville, just a few miles from the Alabama border. Located on 15 acres near the town, Thompson Appalachian Hardwoods mills a wide variety of the region’s hardwoods, especially red and white oak, cherry, ash, walnut, poplar, maple and cypress in a variety of thicknesses up to 16/4. Timber is acquired both by buying wood from independent loggers and purchasing standing timber from landowners. Timber is harvested by logging contractors with which the firm has established relationships. Wood can come from as far away as 200 miles but generally is harvested within a radius of 80 or so miles from the mill. Logs generally are purchased according to the Doyle scale although sometimes according to weight. In either case, maintaining a good relationship with the area’s loggers is important to Nordeck. "We work hard at giving good scale, price, and grade," he said.
|
Logs are brought into the mill by the harvesting companies and unloaded using one of two Caterpillar loaders. The stems are then merchandised by grade, species, and size. Proper sorting is vital in realizing the greatest value from each log, Nordeck said.
The milling process begins when the logs are debarked with a Fulghum Rosser head debarker. Logs are then forwarded to a Salem linear positioning carriage; the carriage formerly was equipped with INOVEC’s YieldMaster scanning system but has been upgraded to an INOVEC StereoScan 3-D Log Scanner. The entire system is fed using a Tyrone hydraulic shotgun feed. The head rig is a 7-foot double cut system updated by Denis Comac beginning with an old C-Tech rig once used in a mill in Arizona and purchased by Thompson Appalachian some years ago. Cants are reduced using a Sherman thin-kerf gang saw. Newman technology is used in the edging and trimming process then the lumber is graded, marked, packaged, and tallied. On request, lumber can be prepped for export, end waxed, covered with paper, marked with logos, or otherwise prepared to meet specific requirements.
While his firm is relatively new to the business, Nordeck is not. His father, Bill, owned and operated a sawmill company, so Nordeck spent much of his youth working in and around the mill, especially during summer vacations. In 1980 Nordeck’s father needed him in the mill, so Nordeck left college to work as night shift foreman in the family’s plant in Forsyth, Georgia, one of two mills his father owned. Nordeck eventually became foreman of the mill until it was sold. He then moved to the family’s second mill in Hazlehurst, Georgia and continued to work with his father until 1991.
 |
Nordeck ventured out on his own in 1993, purchasing the Huntland mill from the Ray M. Johnson Company. When he bought the mill, the systems were old and outdated. Nordeck has been upgrading with the goal of moving to the front of the optimization curve ever since. He is currently working on optimizing the trimming and edging operation. When those improvements are complete, "All of the original equipment in the mill will have been replaced or rebuilt, and we will be a fully optimized operation."
Nordeck is not dedicated to optimizing his mill because he likes to play with the newest toys. He has worked with INOVEC since about 1994, when Thompson Appalachian Hardwoods installed a Salem carriage equipped with INOVEC’s YieldMaster Scanning system. The dramatic improvements in production, yield, and value increases that resulted convinced Nordeck that he was on the right track.
Nordeck’s perception is that when it comes to the dollar value of a mill’s lumber out the door, a mill owner is paying for optimization — whether optimization has been installed or not. If the equipment is installed, he commented, a balance sheet can be run, the improvements the mill experiences can be measured, and a payback can be calculated. "It’s surprising how quickly that payback can come," he said.
"On the StereoScan upgrade, we haven’t quite seen enough calculations to be fully confident of a final number, but it appears we’re looking at as little as a one year payback. That’s extraordinary."
the story continues...
Inovec Home | Inovec Success Stories | Page 2 of this story
(c) Copyright 2001, Industrial Reporting, Inc., reproduced here by permission. This article may not be reproduced without written consent of Industrial Reporting, Inc. 10244 Timber Ridge Rd. Ashland, VA 23005 Phone: (804) 550-0323 or FAX (804) 740-2826.