Swingman wrote:

It might well be ... seems as if I recall something about shipboard plywood
mills, in International waters, that use timber from N America and sell it
right back here.

... or maybe I only dreamed it?


--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 1/06/07

I remember that, but the only place I encountered that story was here.
I don't recall any hard proof, but that doesn't mean it wasn't/isn't
done. I am thinking of all the environmental characters that would
love to grab a headline by exposing a story like that, and I can't
imagine them not being all over it. Polluting water, stealing jobs,
selling our resources back to us... sounds like 60 minutes fodder at
least. Gotta be too much for a cub reporter to resist, and I am sure
if we know about it here, everyone else is bound to know.

Think of the logistics of running a full time mill with shipping,
receiving, loading, unloading, equipment maintenance, employee
transportation and logistics; it doesn't seem viable to me. I think it
is still cheaper to chop down the trees, load them on a truck and drive
them to the mill.

OTOH, I did run into a lumber guy a couple of years ago that told me
that he knew there was some species of oak that was in the east
somewhere that resembled our oak that would be coming our way soon.
According to him, our best large sized material for the highest end
consumer had been used, so now it made sense to charge more and ship it
in from wherever they could find it. I remember I laughed at the time
as I had never heard of "Chinese oak". He also told me there was an
oak type of wood from Chile that would be coming our way. Never saw
it.

But did buy some of the Chilean plywood later, and it was some of the
best ply I have used in the last few years. It looked like a washed
out white oak on one side with absolutely no flaws. Two minor picks it
was A/B, and it either turned out to be A/A, or A/B-, with the backside
not always being the same material. The other nit was the veneer was
super thin - clean as a whistle, but reeeealy thin. It had minor open
grain and it sanded and finshed really well. Exceptional for built ins
and production work (which was what I used it for) as it had tiny or no
voids. I paid something like $38 bucks a sheet for it. But it hasn't
been available for over a year now and according to the lumberyard, may
not be again. They bid on containers of materials, and he said they
have seen nothing in the way of wood from Chile for a while.

Robert