Vaagen Bros. Lumber Mill.....part 4

The last part of our tour is following the rough cut wood to one of six large kilns.

All this wood is not just from the Vaagen mill, some of the local small operators do not have drying kilns and Vaagen dries their wood.

Four of the kilns run at 200 degrees, whereas the two newer kilns are limited, for environmental reasons, to 180 degrees.

After the kiln, the lumber enters this large building for sorting, planing and packaging. 

The lumber is shot down the assembly line with these circular devices.

I took a shot of this just for my brothers who are the electrical geniuses. Me? All this means is to stay the heck away from it!

It was extremely loud in the planing room, which was behind glass for our protection, so I believe I heard Rich correctly when he said this planing blade was $700.000 or maybe it was the whole machine he was talking about.

The lumber comes out of the planing machine in varying sizes. 

The lumber is photographed and all the knots or any other damaged area's are recorded for grading. Rich had said they sell a lot of lumber to Home Depot and they are very picky about the wood they receive. Couldn't prove that by me, seems I have to dig through piles of warped wood to find one straight piece when I go to Home Depot?

Towards the end of the line all wood is processed, regardless of length. The pieces that are not your average size are strapped and sold separately.

This machine is the stacker. Those large blocks of lumber being delivered by truck to your local home center are stacked by this "bad boy".

Here, a couple of workers wrap stacks of wood with the protective Vaagen name.

Out in the yard were plenty of these "Premium" wrapped wood, ready for delivery. We were told that Home Depot requires their wood to be marked this way.

There are at least a couple of acres of wrapped wood waiting for trucks.

Some of the wood is being moved by train.

Halfway across the valley, on our way home I had to take just one more shot of the crane.

We really enjoyed our tour of the mill. We cross the "mighty Colville" river every time we go into town. This spring I plan on float fishing the Colville. While it's not deep I have been told it has a good population of German browns just waiting for my fly rod.

Till next time.