Touring Yoder Lumber

[Ron Selzer]

Woodworkers of Central Ohio setup a tour of Yoder Lumber on 10-17-23 for members to go on. We met up there at 9:30 am and were taken on a tour of the sorting building first. They sort green lumber fresh off the sawmill and stick it getting it ready for the kiln. 800,000bdft at 80degf first, then on to the smaller kilns for drying. Once finally dry they are brought back in for desticking and sorting. This sorter has 45 bins and still not enough when running popular. One person sorts it and presses a key on the computer which determines which bin it goes into. We went on into the molding building next and were shown the custom knife grinding machine. They 3d scan a piece of molding and then cnc cut a thin strip of plastic that is used as a template for the knife grinding machine. Once the knives have been ground, they are loaded in a hydrolock head and ready for use in the molding machines. The stock for the molding machines is prepped by running thru a machine that automatically determines what widths to cut it to by shining laser lines on the board an operator moves the line for best yield and then the board goes into the saw that cuts it to different widths that were marked. There was one machine that sticks were fed into and it determined where defects were and automatically cut them out, watched one board come out in pieces less than 2', all went to scrap bin. Went to the sawmill next, one big bandsaw cut every log coming in, most went to square logs and sent onto the resaw bandsaw for finish thicknessing. Some were cut down to boards, not certain why.
Very interesting tour, glad I went.
Ron

They have a small showroom with lumber for sale and had about 20-30 slabs there. Said they have 1500 slabs at all times in various stages, up to 5' wide. Kiln dried when put up for sale.
Cut 45,000 bdft of popular a day to 25,000 bdft of walnut, hickory a day.
Change blades on the bandsaw twice a day and sharpen on site.
Willing to sell one board of any species they stock and one eight foot piece of custom molding at a time.

[Brian Tymchak]

I was there! Wish we would have met Ron. I didn't know you were in WOCO. Will you be at the November meeting?

You must have been in the first group. I was in the 2nd and we didn't go to the molding building. Impressive facility. I was shocked at how close we were able to get to the equipment as the lumber was moved/cut/sorted. I guess I was most impressed with the bf they have in pre-kiln and kiln. Unbelievable amount of lumber being processed there. Unfortunately no free samples for tour members... ;)