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GRACEVILLE, Fla.

Over the past two years RexLumber has been makingsignificant improvementsand upgrades to itssawmills in Graceville and

Bristol, Fla., to the tune of nearly $25million at the Graceville mill and morethan $10 million at Bristol. Part of theenhancements has involved installingmachinery from one mill into the otherbecause of a better fit for the needs ofthat respective mill.

The goal, according to co-ownerCharles McRae, is to produce 4MMBFper week on a single shift of 50-55 hoursat Rex Lumber Graceville, and up to3.5MMBF per week at Rex LumberBristol.

That’s some serious production, and toget there Rex Lumber has enhanced pro-duction technology and material han-dling. But as anyone in the southern pinelumber industry knows, Rex Lumber isno stranger to throughput and upgrade.

From about 2002-2012 the companyinvested more than $100 million, includ-ing the installation and startup of a newhigh speed sawmill and planer mill inGraceville during 2001-2002. In 2009,during the worst recession possibly inU.S. lumber industry history, Rex Lum-ber completed a major rebuild at theBristol sawmill, and purchased anotherSYP sawmill out of quasi-bankruptcy inBrookhaven, Miss. After completely re-building the sawmill and planer mill in2010, Rex Lumber Brookhaven startedup operations in 2011.

For a quick history lesson, theMcRae family’s connection to Grace -ville goes back to 1926, when W.D.McRae founded Rex Lumber Companythere. They eventually sold the mill in

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FACTORWOW

By Jay Donnell

Nobody likes im-proving its sawmillsas much as Rex Lum-ber in Florida.

Rex Lumber pulled this Comact breakdown system out of an idled mill in Canada.

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1980, and shortly thereafter foundedNorth Florida Lumber in Bristol. Thenin 2001, the family purchased back theGraceville operation as Rex Lumber.Owner Finley McRae, who was TimberProcessing’s Man of the Year in 2013,was by then renown for his aggressivemodernization projects through goodmarkets and bad. Nothing much haschanged in that regard.

A change in log size prompted mostof the recent upgrading at Graceville.Rex Lumber simply couldn’t sourceenough small logs to feed its small logmachine—a single pass ComactDDM6. The log supply had outgrownit. “A real cheap DDM sideboard ma-chine just fell into our laps and thatkind of created a tidal wave,” explainsCharles McRae.

GOOD TIMINGWhen Canfor shut down a sawmill in

Quesnel, BC, its two DDM6-SB break-down machines for medium size logs be-came available. Rex Lumber purchasedone and installed it as part of a revampedsecond line. It’s still considered the smalllog line, but the DDM6-SB has the ca-pacity to take a “larger” small log be-cause it has a four saw (quad) section formaking sideboards. The system can takeup to a 17 in. log, but Rex Lumber feedsit mostly 7-14 in. logs.

Comact assisted Rex Lumber in theupgrade of the former Canfor sawlineby upgrading mechanical componentsand also supplied a new C1-Scan logscanner and optimizer and newPLC/controls system.

Of course the installation of the newmachine meant more edger boards andsome possible downstream issues. Con-sequently Rex Lumber replaced a Co-mact double length infeed (DLI) largelog line it had installed in 2001 with anew, heavy duty, short footprint ComactOSC (optimized sharp chain) with geo-metrical and vision optimization, and aprofiling module as part of the chippingheads on the twin bandmill to give reliefto the edger. Now, aided by a new by-pass at the outfeed of the twin, more than80% of the profiled pieces go straight tothe trimmer, thus considerably removingthe edger bottleneck.

This line accepts up to a 20 in. log.Meanwhile, Rex Lumber moved the

original DDM small log system fromGraceville into the Bristol sawmill, re-placing an existing small log machine.

Rex Lumber also enhanced its trimmerline with a USNR Quad Cam board feed-er and paddle fence, preceded by a Co-

mact double unscrambler to allow a bet-ter separation of the boards before thelug loader. This modification has re-duced manual operations in the area.

Prior to all of this, Rex LumberGraceville did a sorter upgrade in the plan-er mill in 2014. A Comact sorter wasadded next to the existing one to bettermanage the Comact cut-in-two board sys-tem. The cut-in-two system allows the pro-duction line to maintain its constant speedeven though the boards are cut in two. Nomore need to separate boards over two dif-ferent lugs. All of the PLC and control ofthe sorter line has been changed to handleboth kinds of boards and distribute theminto their respective bins according to theirposition within the lug.

On the front end of the mill, Rex Lum-ber added a second debarker and buckingline, moving in an existing cutup systemfrom the Bristol mill, which installed anew one.

Today the mill flow goes like this.Log trucks come through the scalehouse and a log crane unloads trucksand moves logs into a small sort andlarge sort. A Hyundai wheel loader alsoworks the wood yard. The crane loadsboth decks with larger logs on the new“Log Line 2” side. It has a VK Kodiakdebarker with a 22 in. ring followed bya cutup station. Log Line 1 logs runthrough a Nicholson debarker and abucking system. Logs run through anMDI metal detector.

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USNR board feeder was part of improvments to the trimmer line.

Increasing log size called for adjustments in the mill.

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Chipping off the sides on the recently installed Comact DDM6-SB system


Logs that go through the DDM-SBside are scanned and go through an opti-mized log turner and through the quadcircle saw section that lays off the side-boards, which go to edger with Baxleyoptimization. The remaining cant is sawnin the DDM’s seven saw vertical arborgang section into lumber pieces, whichgo to an accumulation deck.

Logs are scanned on the OSC andrun through the chipping heads andprofiler through a Comact twin band-mill. Sideboards drop to a resaw forsplitting and come back around anddrop into the edger. The 4 or 6 in. cantcomes out of the twin and kicks over tothe Comact-optimized gang saw.

Everything accumulates back togetherinto one trimmer line, which has the newmodifications, with lumber runningthrough the optimized ASM trimmer.The mill is installing a Gillingham-Beststacker to sit adjacent an existing Co-mact stacker. Once it’s all worked out,they think they can produce 80,000 feetan hour in the mill.

The mill is installing a Deltech contin-uous dry kiln (CDK) this year. It will bethe mill’s third CDK—the other two areUSNR. The company also runs twoCDKs at Bristol and two in Brookhaven.

“The CDKs generally produce 50%more production using the same heat andcreate a much better product as far asgrade out goes,” McRae notes. “We willnot have any batch kilns running afterthis year.”

In the planer mill Rex Lumber added aDennis Miller A&M tensioning systemand infeed to the planer to gain speed.They put an unscrambler in front of theplaner infeed, meaning the tilt hoistnever stops running since they can deeppile in front of that unscrambler. Theyalso put an unscrambler in front of theboard feeder that feeds a Comact Grad-Expert optimized grader to allow theplaner to continue running even if thesorter stops. The planer is a Coastal 24knife machine. The slow down systemafter the planer is newly upgraded fromComact.

The planer mill trimmer will cut a 16ft. into two 8 footers. The addition of asecond Comact sorter running parallelwith the existing sorter instantly boostedproduction as one of the 8 ft. cuts goes tothe original sorter and the other cut tip-ples over to the new sorter.

After the two sorters, lumber goes toone of two stackers with three banders.

The Graceville mill saws primarily2x4s and 2x6s, whereas the Bristol facili-ty also produces some 2x8s.

The addition of the DDM sideboard

Front row, left to right: Jim Confer, Maintenance Planner; Sacher Dickson, Planer MillQuality Control/Lead Man; Michelle Schaefer, HR Manager; Randy Cummings, GeneralManager. Back Row, left to right: Ricky Wade, Sawmill Supervisor; Chris Bauldree, SafetyManager; Jared Banta, Project Manager; Rod Peters, Operations Manager; TommyRoland, Quality Control Supervisor

The Greenville mill operates two debarker and cutup lines.

Outfeed of Comact twin/OSC larger log breakdown


machine enticed Rex Lumber to buy agrinder to handles all of the guides forthe DDM and for the gang saw. Threefilers work in the band shop and four inthe circle saw shop. The carbide shopinclude Vollmer face grinders, sidegrinder and top grinder; an Armstrongpress roller for tensioning; Williams andWhite Dish-O-Matic for leveling roundsaws, IMW guide machines and a YGEguide mill for the DDM. The band sawshop operates an Armstrong #4 grinder,a Simonds auto bench RSMO, an Arm-strong roll and chill face anvil and aWright KKG-1 knife grinder.

BRISTOLThe movement of the faster DDM6

from Graceville into the Bristol mill toreplace a small log linehas gained about 50%more throughput.

Rex Lumber Bristolalso installed a new gen-eration Comact opti-mized log merchandiser(the old one going toGraceville’s new line)that allows cutting stemsin an optimal way by tak-ing into consideration theanticipated value of thepieces as well as yield.The company chose to gowith a transversal buck-ing system featuring 4“L” scanners equippedwith 3D Pro laser headsfor the quick, efficientoptimization of logs oncethey are on the V-beltconveyor.

The system enhancessaw sequence, as sawsposition themselveswhile the stem movestoward them. The stemis pushed into the sawswithout stopping to be

cut, thus reducing required sawingtime. A camera detects stem presenceduring positioning.

A second Comact sorter was added tothe planer mill to enhance cut-in-two han-dling and a second stacker was added.

OPERATIONSIn 2010 Rex Lumber bought an old

rail site in Dothan, Ala. to enhanceshipping. About a third of Gracevilleand Bristol production is moved out ofDothan to Pennsylvania, New York,Massachusetts, Ohio and Indiana.“We’ve never been able to touch theseareas before,” McRae explains. “Thatopened up a lot for us.” The move waspredicated by a significant hit to theirFlorida markets due to the recession.

Rex Lumber has 500 employeescompany wide, 147 at the Gracevillemill. Finding new employees can be anissue because of the lack of familiaritywith any industry from the youngergeneration.

In 2015, Rex Lumber established theRobert and Kathryn McRae scholarshipfund, in honor of Finley’s parents, tohelp students (and employees) wantingto pursue an Associate of Science degreein Engineering Technology at ChipolaCollege. The company sponsors fivescholarships out of the Graceville milland five out of the Bristol mill. “We’veestablished scholarships in order to tryand get younger kids involved in this in-dustry,” McRae says. “It’s basically askilled labor program and you come outof it with an associate’s degree.”

The Florida-based com-pany has been approachedby Canadian companiesabout the possibility of sell-ing out, but the McRaeshaven’t been interested.“They’d buy us if we want-ed to sell,” Finley McRaesays. “They’re out therelooking for any decent oper-ation, but I don’t think thereare many left.”

Charles adds: “Peopleand long-term families thatoperate as independents,like we do, want to be inthe lumber business.”

Meanwhile Finley be-lieves the housing marketwill continue its positive ad-vancement, especially oncethe millennials stop rentingapartments and start build-ing houses. “We’ve had agood housing market in thelast two to three years,” hesays. “When the millennialsbust loose into the housingmarket, that’s going to besomething.” TP

18 ■ APRIL 2016 ■ TIMBER PROCESSING

YGE guide millContinuous kilns drying is the norm throughoutRex Lumber sawmills.

Family matters—left to right: sister Roby Bethke, brother Charles McRae, sis-ter Caroline Dauzat


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