Canadian Forest Service Publications
An overview to log home manufacturing in British Columbia. 1999. Stennes, B.; Wilson, W.R. Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Pacific Forestry Centre, Victoria, BC. Working Paper WP-99.04. 13 p.
Year: 1999
Issued by: Pacific Forestry Centre
Catalog ID: 5430
Language: English
Series: Working Paper WP (PFC - Victoria)
Availability: PDF (download)
Abstract
The expansion of secondary wood manufacturing is a priority for policy makers in many jurisdictions both within Canada and abroad. Increases in the value-added and employment per unit of increasingly scarce timber resources are the key reasons that governments are interested in expanding secondary wood activities. Log home production is a wood processing activity with recent success in BC and it is an option that possesses the attractive characteristics of being very labour intensive and adding value to timber harvested. Value is added through bidding up the price of suitable logs and having a high product selling price.
Log home manufacturing can be split into two main production styles; hand-crafted and machine profiled. Hand-crafted is the traditional, high-skilled method of production and is relatively more labour intensive. Logs are generally peeled, notched and fitted together using hand tools. The shell is often erected at the manufacturing site, the logs are numbered for reconstruction, then shipped to the final destination to be assembled and finished. Machine profiled log home production is a more capital intensive process where logs are run through a profiler resulting in very consistent logs in terms of size and shape. (Westcoast CED, 1998). The final cost of machine-profiled log homes is generally lower due to savings in labour costs and the ability to use lower cost logs as raw material.