Aacer is one of A-Max Hardwood’s featured mills. Mills differ on their milling tolerances and Aacer really takes their tolerances to heart. They always produce a great product that is dry, milled correctly and seem to generally care about what they are producing. Our tour of the mill showed us each step of the process the wood goes through.
Step #1: Kiln Drying – This process is done by a boiler sending steam into heaters and it dries out the wood. Depending on the wood depends on the amount of drying it takes. Some wood takes a few days and other species take a few weeks.
Step #2: Sorting the rough cut wood. and stacking it.
Step #3 : Planing the wood with gigantic plainers.
Step #4: Cutting out defects and then end and side cutting the joints.
Step #5: Sorting wood based on grade. This machine is stocked with boards by a human but moves it and straps it with the machine.
Step #6: Inspecting the wood to make sure that the grading is done correctly. 1 in 100 bundles are inspected or so.
Step #7: Wood is stacked and ready for the truck to take it to the distributors.
(there were a few more steps to the process not pictured here)