We’ve discussed different printing options (psst view them here!) for all your marketing needs. We’ve also touched on the various possibilities of just paper selections alone. Paper is a simple material, it’s essentially a mat held together by the fiber’s roughness, and can be made from almost any fibrous material like wood or recycled paper. Some of you may be the type to question “Why” or “How.” We support those questions and we’re here to answer them!
Modern paper making is a high tech industry and it is always finding new ways to make improvements and refinements to the process. We are going to go through the process of paper making because everything from the type of trees harvested to the machines that roll out the end product and every point in between, will affect the end result.
Let’s start at the very beginning, forestry. Forestry isn’t just cutting down trees, it involves a whole host of forest stewardship practices including such things as silviculture (the growing of seedlings and replanting of harvested areas), environmental measures such as, stream bed protection/erosion mitigation, maintaining buffer zones of un-harvested trees around water courses, species at risk protection, and a variety of other environmental protection practices. Now, depending on where in the world the harvesting operation is and what the end product will be, the species of tree will vary considerably from fir and spruce in northern regions through pine, various hardwoods, and even eucalyptus in some southern regions. Modern tree harvesting operations have moved on from the old days of men with axes and horse teams. Highly mechanized modern harvesting employs the use of harvesters, forwarders and skidders. These machines are capable of felling, de-limbing and cutting the trees into uniform length logs which will either be loaded on trucks for removal to the wood lot of the pulp mill or in some cases the logs will be fed into a portable chipper and the subsequent chips will be blown into a transfer truck to be transported to the mill. In most modern operations, the wood arrives in uniform 8 foot length logs. Some mills are equipped to handle longer length logs.
Our next blog will feature the handling and processing of these logs at the mill site. Don’t forget to check back with us or you can sign up for our eNews to get it delivered directly to your inbox.