Wilson Wood Products, Elkins

We had a beautiful blue sky and
temperature in the 80's today that made it an
excellent day for our trip!

Another trip we took today was to the Frank Wilson Lumber Company in Elkins, West Virginia. The
Frank Wilson Lumber Company takes green lumber (wood that has been freshly cut or has not been dried in a kiln) and kiln dries it for further use as building materials. They also provide milling services and grading.

Lumber that is ready for shipment!

Wood planks ready to be planed and then
dried in a kiln.

       

This is a tool that is used to determine
the thickness and width of boards.

Wood is loaded into the kiln.
Wood is placed on sticks to separate
it before it goes into the kiln. This allows
air flow between the boards so they
can dry more evenly. Depending on the
species of wood the drying process can
take less than two weeks or more than
three months!

Wood samples are weighed daily from
each kiln to monitor their water loss.
They bring the amount of moisture in each
piece of lumber down to around 6%.

 Above the lumber is inspected and given
a quality grade prior to being sent for
stacking. Grade 1 and 2 lumber would
be used for furniture, flooring and
other finished products. Lumber that is
graded below these would be used in
applications such as framing and other
less noticeable uses.

Hamer Pellet Plant-Elkins

We traveled to the Hamer Lumber Companies today to see their wood pellet operations. We were shown the operation by Cabell County native Jim Dearing. Mr. Dearing began by explaining how the Hamer Company got into the wood pellet business. They began because they needed to get rid of a waste product from lumber milling, wood chips and saw dust. After paying nearly $1,000,000,000 to remove a large pile of saw dust they began to explore options to use the wood dust. Their solution was to manufacture wood pellets. That is the basis of our tour today.

Mr. Dearing

Mr. Dearing explaining the history of Hamer
wood pellets in Elkins

Hamer receives trucks of sawdust from saw mills and wood manufactures and creates a wood product they call Hamer's Hot Ones. Those pellets are then sold to retail operations such as your big box home improvement stores and others that sell to owners of wood pellet stoves. The stoves are then used to heat consumer's homes.

Sawdust that has been unloaded and is ready for the drying process.

The oven and tumbler used to remove
moisture from the sawdust so it
can be burned for fuel. Incidentally,
the ovens are fueled by sawdust!

This  machine cuts the hot pellets extruded from the drying process

Bags to be filled with the wood pellets

Pellets being extruded from holes to be cut

Pellets ready for loading onto trucks and
shipping to consumers.

Pellets exiting the cutting process and
ready for packaging

Cathedral State Park

We started our Tour de West Virginia today with a visit to Cathedral State Park in Aurora, West Virginia. Cathedral is one of only two virgin forests stands in West Virginia and is primarily made up of hemlock trees.                                                      



Cathedral State Park is in existence because Mr. Branson Haas decided to set aside a portion of his property as virgin forest for future generations to enjoy. He sold the property to the state in 1942.

When you think about a virgin forest, most people get a vision of the hundreds feet tall giant sequoias that you can drive a car through in California. That isn't what you will find at Cathedral. Hemlock's normally grow to 60-70 feet tall. Trees in this park are reported to exceed 90 feet tall. The sample trees we measured were more in the 60 foot range.



This region is in an ideal habitat for the hemlock as they thrive in elevations above 2000 feet  and this area varies from 2,460 to 2,620 feet. The thick tree canopy you can see above serves to strangle most all vegetation from the forest floor except mosses, ferns and fungus. Upon testing the soil on the forest floor using the LabQuest PH probe, we found the soil to be acidic with a PH of between 3.5 and 4.0. The hemlock likes to live in acidic soil and the tannins in its bark also add to the acidity. The hemlock is also known as Leather Bark because the tanning industry formerly used the hemlocks bark in the leather tanning process.

 

We calculated the board feet of a tree at N 39 degrees 14.593 minutes and W 079 degrees 32.213 minutes.  We did this by measuring the diameter of the tree and entering it into our tables to figure the circumference and diameter. We then used our clinometer app to figure the height of the tree. From there we were able to determine the board feet available for lumber and the estimated value of the trees lumber. We determined our tree an a value of $4,610.00.


The largest hemlock in the park, the centennial hemlock, was struck by lightning in 2004. Its 20 foot high stump remains. its diameter is in excess of five feet.

We begin.......

We began our journey today with a trip to Cathedral State Park and then to Elkins to the Hampton Inn where we are basing for a few days. You will see in my upcoming posts our journey to explore West Virginia's forests and rail history.

You will see over the next week that we are doing science and history!

Stay tuned and follow our journey of discovery.

To be continued.......

Water Quality Ritter Park-April 2012

As discussed previously, we had a wonderful outing on April 21, 2012 at Ritter Park where we identified and measured trees and sampled the water quality in Four Pole Creek. Below you will find the data we collected:

Water Quality
Test	Sample	Q-Value (from charts)	Weight	Total Q-Value
DO (actual)	5.4
Saturated DO reading from chart	10.1
DO (% of saturation)	53.46534653	45	0.32	14.4
Temperature (Celcius)	14.3	30	0.19	5.7
TDS (actual)	142.7	78	0.13	10.14
Turbidity (actual)	22.1	61	0.15	9.15
pH (acutal)	7.4	95	0.21	19.95
			Overall Quality	59.34

The overall quality was 59.34 on 4/21/12. This would be a a medium or average reading on the water quality scale. Water supplies achieving only an average rating generally have less diversity of aquatic organisms and frequently have increased algae growth. For water quality testing procedures you can click here.

Vernier LabQuest Practice

I met with Brian McNeel and a few others at the BOE today to work on blogs and to practice water quality samples with the Vernier LabQuest.


This was my second time to work with the LabQuest and had not yet used my new probes. Brian and I worked to calibrate the sensors that needed to be calibrated and we sampled water from the Ohio River. After testing the pH, turbidity, conductivity, dissolved oxygen and temperature we came to the conclusion that the water quality was sufficient to support life.

Heritage Station

I have something I have to admit.  I have driven past Heritage Station and its number 10 train for years and never stopped to check it out.  That changed recently when I visited  the number 10 and
the accompanying station.




 What I found there was some of Huntington's history that both Mr. Casto and Mr. Withers spoke about when they visited our Forest and Rail Class in April.

Heritage Station began life as the B & O Railway Station. As you can see from the picture at right, it has a new life today as an eclectic mix of artisan shops and restaurants.












The number 10 was built by the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) in 1924 at their Schenectady factory. It was originally build for the Toledo, Angola and Western Railroad. It has a 2-8-2 truck configuration.
It was later purchased by the Elk River Coal and Lumber Company.