Engineered Products

With modern processing equipment, the principal axes of the wood can be made to align with the geometric axes of the material use in manufacturing new products.

First, we will start off with an old engineered product:

Laminated Beams

As you can see, these beams are made by gluing many boards together to form a structural member bigger than the trees from which the board were sawn. Since the load is carried by the material in the top and bottom faces and the middle only has to resist shear, high quality lumber is used in the top and bottom while medium grade lumber is used in the center.

Paralam

Paralam is made similar to laminated beams with the difference being that veneer strips are used instead of lumber.

Wood I-Beams

Wood I-beams are constructed based on the engineering concept used in laminated beams. To carry the load, veneer lumber is used for the flanges and plywood or OSB is used for the web to resist shear. It is the same idea behind steel I-beams. As you can see, these beams can be made in a variety of sizes (heights and widths) to meet a variety of load conditions.

Laminated Veneer Lumber

 LVL is made by gluing sheets of veneer together. Unlike plywood, here all veneer layers are going in the same direction. Wide panels are manufactured to the thickness of the desired lumber. The panels are ripped into lumber of nominal width.

Laminated Strand Lumber

 LSL are manufactured similar to paralam. The thickness of the beam is the width of the desired lumber. The beam is laid on its side and run through a resaw that cuts lumber to the desired thickness.