Capabilities
hardwood residues and Finger Joint Wood Capabilities
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Finger Joint Wood Reduces environmental Waste and Provides Cost Savings
Finger joint wood is just one-way Quanex ensures every piece of hardwood brought into a Quanex facility is utilized in some capacity. We want to ensure QCC customers get the best quality wood products while we produce the least amount of wood scraps.
Quanex QCC converts 50 million board feet of hardwood lumber annually into kitchen and bathroom cabinet doors, components, household millwork, and window grills. Roughly 50% of the volume of the lumber processed by QCC also flows into hardwood residuals. For us, residuals include sawdust board edgings, planer savings, knots/splits/cracks, and other raw materials that do not meet our quality standards. Because sustainability is essential to Quanex 100% of these hardwood residuals are utilized in some other way.
We use our hardwood residuals in the four QCC kiln drying facilities to fuel our plant boilers. The energy produced in this process provides the heat necessary to remove moisture from the raw wood.
A significant portion of our hardwood residuals comes in the form of short wood cuttings which can be used to produce longer boards for our millwork customers through the finger joint process.
Then, any residuals left are sold to local farmers for animal bedding, wood pellet producers, erosion control for construction projects, and other industrial applications.
So, let’s dive into finger joint wood and see how this process helps Quanex ensure we use every piece of wood that comes into our facility, enabling you to offer your customers a greener solution.
By taking shorter-length wood cuttings that would otherwise be scrapped finger joint wood products allow us to maximize the recovery from every hardwood board we process. This reduces environmental waste and provides cost savings over solid hardwood.
The finger joint process is taking small pieces of hardwood joining the ends, applying some glue, and then pressing the board together to make a longer board.
Benefits of Finger Joint Wood:
- Cost savings over solid hardwood
- Environmentally friendly due to better utilization of raw materials
- Board lengths up to 24 feet
- More stable and has the appearance of solid lumber when painted
- Finger joint wood is available for window and door jambs, custom trim mouldings and other custom products
Download our finger-jointing flyer below to learn more about this process or watch the video at the bottom of the page.
To learn about the finger joint process, watch the video below. If you have any additional questions, click the button below to contact a QCC representative for more information.
