MAJOR ERROR -- OUR TREES ARE ROUND! 

For as long as people can remember we have seen nature and later ourselves, plant, nurture and grow round trees just the way Nature intended. Over the centuries this natural roundness of trees has resulted in waste of up to 50 percent of the wood harvested. That waste can no longer continue. The high sound levels in planing mills is also under attack. Enter the Japanese (again). They are making their trees square. Why? Because less wood is wasted. The process will make mills quieter as well.

Ever since I visited several lumber mills and dozens of lumber retail outlets in Japan during the early 1980s, I have been impressed with how they handle logs. By contrast we appear to butcher and mutilate our timber. They treasure, enhance and beautify it. I saw Japanese technicians study a log for hours before they decided how to cut it. When they did cut it, the waste material would fit in one hand. Many Japanese lumber mills cut only one log a day. They make more profit from that one log than some of our mills make working all day on hundreds of trees.

Now the Japanese are going even further. When they consider "valueadded", they really go all the way. They have decided that round logs have more value when they are turned into square logs. That way the largest amount of waste -- that lost in trimming a round log until it is square and then converting it into 2' X 4's or whatever -- is not lost at all.

Scientist Yoshinori Kabayashi of the Nara Prefectural Forest Experiment Station near Osaka is the inventor and developer of the process which "cooks" round logs until they are square. Sounds revolutionary? It probably is to those in an industry which has been investing little in research and development and yet think they have seen it all.

The Kabayashi technique is startlingly simple. In his speciallydesigned microwave "oven", log temperature is raised to 120 degrees C via micro-wave radiation, thereby making the round log so pliable it can be massaged into the desired square shape. The log is allowed to cool to room temperature while still in the press process. It is heated again to the same temperature. The process does not damage the wood fibres, and actually makes them stronger, denser and less subject to warping or splitting. The specific gravity of the square log, its hardness and resistance to abrasion all are superior to that of the raw log.

Even the pressure required to achieve the square profile is relatively minimal -- as low as 10 kilograms per square centimetre. Then the "Japanese magic" is revealed. The log retains its square shape when released from the oven and the conversion pressure!

According to Kobayashi the possibilities do not stop there. Crooked, misshapen and distorted logs which today in our forests would be discarded or relegated to the chip material pile, can be straightened and squared. During the squaring process, as the logs are compressed, a considerable amount of water is ejected, usually about five litres from a one-meter long cedar log. The resulting log is firmer and denser, so it has been bumped into a higher grade quality. After the process the quality of a cedar log approximates that of a more expensive Japanese cypress. According to my Canadian timber expert that would turn a $70 metre-long cedar log into a $210 cypress product. Certainly a substantial bit of value-adding.

The microwave oven used in the laboratory process, due to its size, has limited tests conducted to short sections of logs. Such an oven constructed to handle commercial market lengths of timber in the four-metre or 16-foot lengths is estimated to cost about US $150,000. In today's terms a relatively minor expense.

The implications of this technique could be industry-shattering. If Japan decides to supply all of its 300,000 sawmills with factoryproduced industrial models of such a development, they could increase the value of any logs acquired by a substantial margin. Other logging companies around the world would be left behind. The Japanese may agree to export their revolutionary log compressor -at their selling price -- and after they have supplied their own country -- and other friendly countries first. Not an unexpected move had we come up with this concept in the first place.

The local Nara prefectural government is currently not allowing anyone to use the patent. It appears that Nara officials wants companies in their prefecture to receive first opportunities. "After one or two years, it will probably sell licenses for the technology outside of the prefecture," says Kobayashi.

More information: Senior Scientist Yoshinori Kabayashi, Nara Prefectural Forest Experiment Station, Nara, Japan.

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