The Intermountain Station was to develop systems for harvesting western softwoods. The 

 North Central Station was to develop machinery that could convert residues to finger- 

 lings. The Forest Products Laboratory was to work out techniques for manufacturing 

 flakeboard from fingerlings. 



This report covers progress in the research and development program through the 

 Flakeboard Development and Performance phase shown in figure 1. The report describes 

 fingerling production from large and small residues, systems and costs for harvesting 

 residues, the manufacturing of structural flakeboard, and configuration and performance 

 of experimental panels. 



THE FINGERLING CONCEPT 



A fingerling is a piece of wood approximately 2 to 3 inches long, with a cross 

 section of less than 1 by 1 inch (fig. 2). Fingerling production is the first step in 

 producing flakes for structural flakeboard. The first flakes used for structural 

 flakeboard were manually split from blocks 2.5 inches long. Later experiments used 

 laboratory disk flakers to produce flakes. 



Figure 2. — Finger- 

 lings: the first 

 step in converting 

 residue to 

 flakeboard. 



2 



