CHAPTER 24 



Structural Flakeboards 

 and Composites 



Production of particleboard products from comminuted wood and a binder, 

 and of composites utilizing such products, has increased rapidly in the United 

 States since World War II (fig. 29-13). The furniture plants of the East and South 

 utilize much hardwood plant residue for particleboard and fiberboard; most 

 particleboard made in the United States, however, is softwood. 



The manufacture of fiberboards — one type of particleboard well suited for use 

 of hardwoods — is discussed in chapter 23 . 



The manufacture of interior-grade non-structural particleboards, typically 

 made in the United States from softwood planer shavings and plywood trim, is 

 exhaustively described in a number of readily available texts and proceedings, 

 some of which are listed as follows: 



Mitlin (1968) Moslem! (1974ab) Maloney (1977) 



FAO (1975) Deppe and Ernst (1977) Miller (1977) 



European Particleboard Manufacturers Trade Association (1979) 



An additional source of continuously updated information is the Particleboard 

 Symposium Proceedings edited by T. M. Maloney, and published annually 

 (beginning in 1967) by Washington State University, Pullman. Also, FORIN- 

 TEK Canada Corp., Ottawa, Canada, periodically publishes proceedings of 

 symposia on particleboard and structural flakeboard. 



This chapter is concerned with a segment of the particleboard industry — the 

 manufacture of structural flakeboard — which is incompletely described in the 

 literature and which appears to have the most promise for greatly increasing 

 utilization of small hardwoods of low quality. During the 1970's, manufacture 

 of structural panels from flakes of aspen {Populus tremuloides Michx.) emerged 

 as a major industry in Canada; by mid 1981 several companies in the northern 

 tier of Midwest and Eastern States of the United States were also producing — or 

 had announced intention to produce — structural flakeboard from aspen (table 

 24-1 and fig. 24-1). Also in 1981, one plant in New Brunswick, Canada and 

 another in New Hampshire in the United States were using some Betula and Acer 

 species in mixture with less dense softwoods and aspen. Not listed in table 24-1 

 or figure 24-1 is the Georgia Pacific Corp. waferboard plant in Woodland, 

 Maine; with annual capacity of 166 million sq ft, 3/8-inch basis, it uses 

 softwoods only. 



At the end of 1980, there were no plants producing structural flakeboard from 

 the mixtures of more-or-less dense hardwoods that typically grow on southern 

 pine sites, but the potential for such production is very large. In 1981 the Martin 

 group of companies of Alexandria, La., began construction of such a plant in 

 Lemoyen, La.; and began operating in 1983, with planned production capacity 



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