Setting up a resaw operation can be relatively straightforward, or it can be complex. Ultimately, however, experts interviewed for this article all agree that you can expect to get out of your resaw what you put into it in terms of research, integration, and investment. As such, it is crucial to do your homework before making your purchase. Below, they discuss the key things you should think about in anticipation of your purchase.
What is a resaw, and why get one?
To start with the basics, resawing is a secondary process for breaking down timber after it has left the head rig. In the case of pallet plants, resaws are typically used to cut deck boards and stringers from hardwood cants as well as 2" softwood dimension material. Simply put, explained Stacy Thompson, a 34-year veteran at Wood-Mizer and industrial sales professional, a resaw is a piece of machinery that you can use to rework a piece that’s already been sawn. Resaws can be outfitted with either band or circular (gang) saws. Many vendors offer a range of products to help meet a vast array of use cases presented by secondary wood products manufacturers, including those of pallet companies.
When a pallet plant decides to put in its own cut-up operation, including a resaw, it could be doing so for one of several reasons. In the past, the goal might have been to reduce costs through vertically integrating its supply chain. However, risk management is now an increasingly important part of the conversation. Having a resaw can help reduce a pallet company’s reliance on cut stock and thereby provide it with greater flexibility in securing material in times of tight lumber supply conditions, such as those that have been weathered by pallet companies since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Begin with an open mind
Clay Hedrick, senior sales consultant at Baker Products, emphasized that prospective buyers should begin by fully understanding their needs before becoming locked in on a particular solution. “We start by trying to determine customer needs,” he said. “Everybody’s different, so it’s not a one size fits all approach.” Baker Products will look at variables such as the available space, the material they are processing, and what they are hoping to achieve in the end, including future growth. Ultimately, no two solutions are exactly the same.
“Our approach is just to try to identify what’s going to fit them the best,” Hedrick said. And sometimes, the best solution isn’t necessarily a higher production saw.
Many times, he noted, customers are focused on “speed, speed, speed,” but that can result in problems such as an inability to keep the saw full and inefficient bottlenecks downstream, not to mention shorter band saw life. It is best to have a steady flow and consistently keep the machine running full rather than have gaps between the pieces being fed. “Customers can look at you like you’re crazy when you tell them that if you slow down, your production will go up.” It is about finding that sweet spot that maximizes output while keeping the saw full and avoiding bottlenecks.
Space and layout considerations
When it comes to optimizing productivity, plant layout is crucial.
“What I see a lot of is very, very inefficient mill layouts,” said Bill Hendrix, VP at Brewco Inc. A Brewco veteran with over twenty years of service at the company, he encounters operations that require too much manual handling, or as he calls it, ‘too many fingerprints.’
“There are a lot of times you’ll see a mill, they’ll bring in a bundle of cants,” Hendrix explained. “They’ll manually load them onto a deck, and then they’ll manually stack the trimmed cants. Then, the forklift operator takes trimmed cants over to the resaw, which are manually fed through the resaw. Cut boards are then hand stacked at the end.” What they really need to be doing is tying the lines together. When lines are integrated with conveyors, and adequate material buffers exist between each saw center, then a lot fewer fingerprints are required, and much greater output is possible, he noted.
“You are going to get out of your resaw line, what you put into it,” offered Kevin Wieser of GoFast. “So if you don’t have a lot of room to work with, and you just put a single head resaw down in the middle of a room, and you’ve got a guy feeding it off a pallet, and it’s going onto a roundtable or whatever it may be, it’s not going to be a very efficient line. If you can put the greenchain between the chop saw and the resaw line and allow for some staging area, then you can keep that resaw full and cruising the whole time. You get a lot more out of your line, but it’s going to take up more room. We get calls all the time from companies looking to fit a line in a particular area. And it just might not be possible.”
A key consideration is the footprint that is needed for the line, including infeed, outfeed as well as ancillary machinery. Typically, gang resaws have a much smaller footprint than band resaws. Because band resaws provide a thinner kerf that produces a greater yield, however, there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution. Even among band resaws, some have a more compact footprint than others. Once again, it comes down to doing the research.
One key requirement for the new resaw will be a sawdust collection system. “You’re going to be using a vacuum system to vacuum that sawdust away from the cutting heads,” said Thompson. “Or depending upon how it is set up, the sawdust could flow straight down into some sort of vibratory conveyor or into some sort of paddle system.”
One easy mistake that companies make is simply getting the voltage requirements wrong for the machine they order, Wieser remarked.
Clay Hedrick of Baker Products also cautioned prospective buyers to check their power supply. “They have to ensure that they have the right kind of power, which is typically three-phase. But do they have enough?” he asked. “Are they going to have to bring in more power?”
Another mistake Thompson sees is plants trying to squeeze a line into too tight of a space, leaving too little room around it and, as a result, constricting traffic flow.
As for Hendrix, he urges his customers to plan for future needs when selecting a resaw system. “I always tell people to not so narrowly design their sawmill or their sawing operation such that it only fits what you’re doing today and your today’s customers, but not meet needs for five or ten years down the road,” he said.
“If you paint yourself into that corner pretty soon you’re locked into it,” he continued. “And now you need to expand two years later, and you basically have to start all over again. So it’s really easier and better to spend more of that money up front creating the ability to be able to expand in the future.”
What type of material and what kind of volume?
When you reach out to resaw vendors, they will typically be looking to understand what type of material you run, whether it is predominantly 2-inch dimension softwood, for example, or if it is 4-inch hardwood cants. It can also be important to understand the desired final thickness of resawed material. All of these factors will influence the recommendations made by vendors.
If you are looking to break down cants predominantly, a multi-head resaw is a popular choice for maximizing recovery and minimizing labor. “Years ago, guys would just buy a single lead and run it hard,” explained Wieser of GoFast Manufacturing. When labor supply was not a challenge, you could just run the single head resaw for multiple shifts.
The current tight labor supply is now weighing more heavily on machinery selection decisions. “With manpower being what it is, a lot of guys are spending a little bit more money on the machines, so that they don’t have to run them as much,” Wieser elaborated. “Someone might buy a two or three head, instead of a single head, so that he only has to run it one or two days a week to get caught up on his cut stock.”
For a pallet plant relying on softwood, however, a one or two-head resaw would still be the recommended size.
Gang or band resaw?
Band resaws have become increasingly popular due to thin-kerf technology. A thin kerf resaw can allow you to recover an extra deck board or two from a cant, which is a huge consideration with high material prices.
“People are breaking down the doors to get whatever cut stock they can, and so every board you gain adds up really quickly,” said Wieser.
Hendrix believes that the tipping point is around 5/8” board thickness or thinner. Any thinner than that, and you will start to lose a board or two out of each cant with a gang that you would recover with a bandsaw.
However, gang saws have the advantage of having a smaller footprint, as mentioned above. Other benefits include the potential for higher throughput and easier maintenance, in addition to the generation of less fine sawdust. Hendrix sees gang resaws starting to make a comeback “in a big way,” predominantly because of the current labor issues facing the industry.
While thin kerf resaws tend to generate more fine sawdust, it may or may not be an issue, depending upon customer requirements. Some customers are more sensitive than others. Various vendors offer dedusters to brush off sawdust or direct air pressure to the saw guides to try to remove it.
For companies that cut boards and then nail pallets, however, that activity may shake loose sawdust and negate the problem. Wieser noted that sawdust freezing to boards can be more of a problem in the northern states and is not necessarily an issue in warmer parts of the country.
Single or multi-head?
As noted previously, a single or double head resaw is most popular for softwood, which is typically purchased in nominal 2-inch thickness. Single head machines are typically more flexible. For hardwood, where pallet companies typically rely on cants, a multi-head resaw is a popular choice.
Multi-head machines will reduce labor versus a single-head machine, which Wieser noted is a top-of-mind concern for customers. Thompson also finds that a 3 or 4-head resaw is most popular for cants when used in conjunction with a return or ‘merry-go-round’ system to bring the remainder of the cant to run through a second time.
Wieser encourages resaw buyers to buy blade sharpening equipment. “A lot of guys will run the bands until they break with the one-inch bands and especially inch and a quarter.,” he said. “You can get one, two or sometimes three sharpens out of a band. And so that initial extra investment in a bandsaw sharpener and tooth setter is well worth it if you are getting into the resaw game.”
A little maintenance can go a long way. Hedrick says that he visits some plants where the saw is crawling, and the bands don’t last. The solution can be as simple as a 2-minute guide adjustment.
Ultimately, machinery selection and optimization come down to doing your homework, including reading (search the article archive at www.palletenterprise.com) and making site visits. Vendors stress to potential buyers the importance of checking out the equipment in action at other pallet companies, and typically, they are happy to help make the arrangements. No matter how trustworthy and accurate the sales information is, there is no substitute for talking to the people running the machinery you are considering and getting first-hand feedback from that operator.
