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California
Hardwoods: About the Sustainable Hardwoods Network Sustainable Hardwoods Business Directory
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Sustainable
Hardwoods: Walking our talk
Since the early nineties ISF’s hardwood development program, a direct outgrowth of Jan Iris’s Wild Iris Wholistic Forestry business, worked towards creating a viable local hardwood industry based on sustainable forest management practices. Working in cooperation with local businesses and the UC Forest Products Laboratory ISF’s hardwood research and development mill, Wild Iris Forest Products, located at the Coombs mill site in Piercy successfully developed milling techniques and hardwood kiln drying schedules specific to tanoak. ISF hardwood milling, grading and drying workshops disseminated this information broadly throughout the North Coast. Tanoak and madrone milled and dried on-site provided raw material for local businesses producing flooring, molding, cabinets and furniture. Who is the Sustainable Hardwoods Network? The Sustainable Hardwood Network evolved out ISF continuing efforts to promote sustainable hardwood development. The Network is an informal association of local businesses using local hardwoods species that includes resource managers, portable sawmills, kiln operators, wood product manufacturers, flooring and building contractors, cabinet makers, furniture makers, and retailers. Business in the network share a commitment to ecologically and economically sustainable practices that contribute to the well-being of our forests and our community. The Sustainable Hardwoods Network addresses some of the difficulties in financing small-scale hardwoods businesses. The importance of sharing limited avaliable resources and opening new pathways of cooperation among local wood products manufacturers is increasingly important in the context of today’s changing economic climate and our troubled regional timber industry. This flexible manufacturing scenario offers a strong platform for ISF and the Sustainable Hardwood Network to continue hardwood development under current conditions. A New Path Through the Woods: The network’s spirit of cooperation is apparent as the processing capacity developed at the Wild Iris Forest Products mill is incorporated into other businesses within the sustainable hardwood network: most notably Whitethorn Construction’s Hardwood Division, Whitethorn Hardwoods and Eric Almquist’s ERA Forest Products in Arcata. Both businesses are “chain-of-custody” certified by the Forest Stewardship Council and SmartWood and offer local hardwood products sourced from certfied forest management on the north coast. The Network identified Whitethorn Hardwoods as the appropriate location for a much needed high-speed moulder, a specialized piece of wood processing equipment, that improves both the quality and quantity of the secondary products of being produced locally. This equipment has the capacity to process large quantites of raw lumber into high-quality finished products such as hardwood flooring, casings, crown, wainscotting, baseboard and more. But it was impractical for any single local business to take on the full cost of this state-of-the-art piece of processing equipment. Eric Almquist, well known to local contractors and wood products businesses as the proprietor of Almquist Lumber in Blue Lake, stepped forward in the last month to purchase ISF’s hardwood milling equipment from the ISF mill site in Piercy. Eric’s purchase when coupled with his ability to access markets for local hardwoods and his long involvement with certified products represents an important continuing commitment to development of sustainable local hardwood lumber inventories on the north coast.
Working with ISF’s Community Economic Development program funded in part by a generous grant from the The Weyhauser Family Foundation and specific equipment funding through a Rural Business Enterprise Grant from the USDA Rural Development program, Whitethorn Construction’s Hardwood Division completed installation of the Weinig Profimat 26S molder at the Whitethorn Hardwood Division facility in August. Whitethorn has signed a lease with ISF for the molder with a specific commitment to make molding capacity available to local businesses and individuals in the local community network. This efficient high-quality processing service makes financing small and moderate volumes of local hardwood financially feasible for the smaller local businesses. Whitethorn Construction is currently manufacturing and retailing certified and non-certified local hardwood lumber, flooring, molding, and wainscoting at their Whitethorn facility. Whitethorn has the capacity (planer, straightline ripsaw, crosscut, bundling and dry storage) to effectively utilize additional molder capacity, develop additional profiles and make these resources available to local customers and businesses. In addition Whitethorn is increasing available onsite covered space to allow for storage of increased air-drying inventory. Whitethorn has already taken on several molding jobs for local businesses within the first week of molder operations. Sustainablehardwoods.net Another recent ISF project uses the internet to establish new linkages and facilitate communications between individuals and businesses involved in sustainable local hardwood production. Our website disbursing information about hardwood management and processing with links to SHNetwork partners and their web pages is now online. The website features a bulletin board style clearing house where posts can be made for those interested in buying or selling hardwood logs, lumber, services and/or equipment. This bulletin board is also of great value to small landowners who, for example, have a few valuable logs but require services to reasonably process these trees. By connecting the cabinetmaker and sawyer looking for a few Madrone logs to the landowner with a few blow-downs this project promotes fuller utilization of our hardwood resources. The Sustainable Hardwood Network is committed to finding a new path through
the woods, moving beyond the traditional timber economy and towards developing
resilient locally-owned businesses. For more information check out our
website: http://sustainablehardwoods.net |
Updates: ISF
Hardwood Utilization Techniques Woody Biomass Forum presentations Wild Iris mill update: Weinig molder installed at Whitethorn Hardwoods and Wild Iris primary mill moves to ERA Forest Products in Arcata. UCFPL Tanoak Yield Study Progress Reports now available
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PO Box 1580 For more information send us an email, or visit ISF's website... |
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