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In November, The Northern Logger spent a day touring western Maine and Canadian border sawmills with Allan Ryder, the President of Timber Resource Group, a timber procurement division of Stratton Lumber. We toured Stratton

Lumber before heading up into Canada, where we visited the town of Lac-Megantic, home to the Tafisa particleboard plant and a Masonite veneer mill that produces door skins for the industrial door market. We also visited Bois Lambert, a small hardwood sawmill in the area. The day was a snowy, cold early November day, and we encountered a lot of mud but – luckily – no moose on the road (always a hazard when you’re driving through that part of Maine)! Our day started off on top of a mountain in Kingfield, ME, with a good view of Western Maine’s beautiful topography. The mountain, known as Ira Mountain, was the lifelong project of Adrian Brochu, a founder of Stratton Lumber and, later, of Pleasant River Lumber. Brochu, who passed away from cancer in the fall of 2019, made Ira Mountain his passion for many years. Starting in the 1990s, Brochu began construction on a stone amphitheater on top of the mountain, moving rocks and dirt to build a place where the public could come, picnic, and enjoy the scenery. With an elevation of 1,950 ft., the mountain provides a 200° view of the surrounding mountaintops, including Mt. Abraham, Sugarloaf, the Canadian Mountains, Big and small Bigelow range, Poplar and Claybrook mountains. The Northern Logger visited just before the end of the season. The climb up to the top of Ira mountain is a steep one, more suited for summertime Maine than the winter or fall. Nevertheless, the mountain was a good place to start our tour and take in a view of many miles of the timber resource that forms so much of the economy of western Maine. Our next stop on the tour was Stratton Lumber. Stratton Lumber is a spruce and fir mill that produces construction grade structural lumber for use in home building, industrial and remanufacturing markets all over the Eastern United States.

A Tour of Western Maine and Canadian Sawmills along the Border BY EILEEN TOWNSEND

Ira Mountain amphitheater, a lifelong project of Adrian Brochu, founder of Pleasant River Lumber in Maine.

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The mill employs 70 people and saws spruce and Balsam fir. Built in the early 1980s, Stratton saws about 150 truckloads of logs per week.The mill is always involved in capital investment projects, the most recent of which is to install a CPG (Canter, Profiler, Gangsaw) in 2020, which should streamline the flow of the mill and also minimize many of the most ergonomically demanding tasks at the mill. One of the distinct things about the mill is their continuous kiln, which they run alongside two batch kilns. The continuous kiln works like this: Lumber moves through the kiln, headed in opposite directions, on two tracks. As green wet lumber enters the continuous kiln it travels to an initial “energy recovery” section where it is preheated by hot moist vapor from a central, “main drying” section and the adjacent hot dry lumber. The lumber then moves through the main drying section and is effectively dried. The dried lumber then moves through to a second “energy recovery” section where it is equalized, conditioned, and cooled by an adjacent cold wet stack and overhead fans prior. The lumber on the other track travels in the opposite direction, so there is always a mix of dry and wet lumber in all zones interacting together. In 1998, Ryder began work for Timber Resource Group, a wood procurement division of Stratton Lumber. Ryder, a licensed Forester started as a Log Buyer in northern NH/VT, moved up to Regional Manager, and is now President of the company. The company sources logs from around 500 suppliers (from a small part-time logger that brings in a small load once per year, to large landowners and land management companies delivering every week), and has six yards spread out through the Northeast, between Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. After touring Stratton Lumber, Ryder and I drove across the US/Canada border to the town of Lac-Megantic. Lac-Megantic is perhaps best known for a terrible rail accident that occurred there in 2007, when a train carrying crude oil derailed in the town’s downtown district, killing dozens of people, and setting off explosions that decimated the town’s entire business district. In the decade following the explosion, the town – whose economy is largely based in the forest products industry – has rebuilt. When we visited, the only sign of the disaster was a memorial and a few blocks of vacant lots near the railroad, where the former business district once stood. Now the most striking thing about the town of Lac-Megantic is the large Tafisa particle board plant,

Clockwise from top left:

Spruce logs are weighed coming into Stratton Lumber.

Stratton Lumber employs around 70 people who fill a variety of roles, from forklift operators to foresters.

The continuous kiln at Stratton Lumber, one of the mill’s unique features.

Masonite uses veneer hardwood to create their door skins.

Debarking birch logs at Masonite.

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Clockwise from top left:

The Masonite plant recently expanded.

Lac-Megantic is best known as the site of a terrible rail disaster, but is also a successful mill town.

A rail start brings in fiberboard from Montana to Quebec.

Fireproofing tests for industrial doors.

currently North America’s largest particleboard facility. We were not in town to visit Tafisa, but to visit a veneer mill owned by Masonite that produces door skins for industrial use. The door skins are made out of veneer hardwood, mostly veneer birch. Masonite produces 6,000 door skins a day at their Lac-Megantic facility, which are stained and applied to MDF or HDF board. We sat down with Daniel Hamman, the plant manager, who told us about a major investment and expansion that the plant made in 2017. They now produce 1.7 million board feet of veneer door skins per year and are the area’s largest employer. They also have developed some unique products – including special fireproofing – that have expanded the market for wooden industrial doors. In addition to producing veneer door skins, the plant also makes some specialty guitars and other high-end hardwood products. At the mill, the logs are cut to length, debarked, and then peeled into extremely thin sheets. From there, they are cut and glued together (such that their grain is matched), examined for defects, dried, and stained. Later, they will be pressed onto MDF or HDF boards that the company buys out of Montana from Weyerhauser. One unique feature of the facility is a rail start that carries MDF and runs directly into the factory. Our final stop on the tour was Bois Lambert, a small sawmill owned by a very personable Quebecois man named Pierre Lambert. Pierre started off in the sawmill business in 1988 when he bought a portable sawmill and set it up in Frontenac, Quebec. He and a partner purchased a softwood sawmill in Woburn, Quebec in 1993 and converted it into a hardwood sawmill, Multibois F.L. Inc. He ran this successful business until 2019, when he sold it to another company. Bois Lambert sawmill was started in 2004 in Lac-Megantic. The sawmill equipment was purchased and moved from Whitefield, NH. Logs are debarked by a HMC Rosserhead debarker and then fed into a HMC headrig saw which cuts normally one inch boards off the log until a tie (7”x9”) or cant (4”x6”) is reached. The boards then go to a 42” Hosmer Machine Co. edger and an HMC double-end trim saw. The finished products (boards, cants, or ties) are moved to the interior green chain where they are sorted into packs and prepared for shipping. The Northern Logger enjoyed our day touring around western Maine and Canada, though there was certainly more to see in the area. But that will just have to wait for another trip! NL