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Company type | Private |
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Industry | Manufacturing, Basic Materials |
Founded | 2003 [1] |
Headquarters | South Shore, KY |
Key people | David Graf, President |
Products | Hardwood Flooring and Lumber |
Owner | David Graf; Greg Graf |
Number of employees | 275 [1] |
Website | www.grafbro.com [2] |
Graf Brothers Flooring and Lumber specializes in, and is the world's largest manufacturer of, rift and quarter sawn oak products. [3] Rift & Quartered lumber results from a unique way of sawing that maximizes the yield of lumber with vertical grain. Vertical grain is preferred because of its excellent technical properties. Lumber that has been sawed using this method expands evenly and vertically. Vertical grain also increases the structural integrity of the wood. [4]
Graf Bros produces 125,000 board feet (290 m3) of lumber and 35,000 square feet (3,300 m2) of flooring per day. [1] The company maintains 2.5 million board foot (5,900 m3 ) of logs, 5 million board foot (12,000 m3) of lumber and 750,000 square feet (70,000 m2) of flooring in inventory, including stocks at four West Coast warehouses. Graf Brothers sells approximately half of its lumber to distribution yards and flooring and millwork manufacturers, and the other half goes into its own flooring production. [2] Graf Bros maintains lumber inventory at four different warehouses on the West Coast. The company's flooring is shipped to distributors in Europe, Japan, and Asia, as well as 260 flooring distributors in North America. [3] Graf Brothers also has a sales office in Brussels, Belgium. [2]
Graf Brothers' headquarters and main sales office is a site of 70 acres (30 ha) in South Shore, Kentucky. This area houses a log yard of 5 acres (2 ha) that can hold up to 3 million board foot (7,100 m3) of logs under water, an ultra high-tech band mill, 18 kilns capable of drying 2 million board foot (4,700 m3) of lumber per month, a Walnut steamer, several warehouses, and two state-of-the-art computerized rip lines for manufacturing ripped-to-width lumber and flooring blanks. All of these facilities have been built since the site was acquired in 2003. Graf Brothers also operates satellite log yards in Vanceburg, Kentucky, and Prichard, West Virginia. In addition to its own mill, Graf Brothers is supplied by two dedicated contract sawmills, Brown Brothers Lumber in Otway, Ohio, and Redoutey Lumber in Henley, Ohio. The flooring is molded exclusively by Graf Brothers at its South Shore, Kentucky plant. [2]
Graf Bros partakes in two practices that are unique to the lumber and flooring industries. The first is the production of "Monster Boards", which are boards with width offerings ranging from 9 to 32 inches (23 to 81 cm). [2] The second unique practice is offering sorted or fixed widths in rift and quarter sawn lumber in almost any width the customer wants. [1]
On December 30, 2017, a fire broke out in its main lumber storage facility. The 75,000 sq ft (6,968 m2) building was deemed a total loss. [5]
Lumber is wood that has been processed into uniform and useful sizes, including beams and planks or boards. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing. Lumber has many uses beyond home building. Lumber is referred to as timber in the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, while in other parts of the world the term timber refers specifically to unprocessed wood fiber, such as cut logs or standing trees that have yet to be cut.
Plywood is a composite material manufactured from thin layers, or "plies", of wood veneer that are glued together with adjacent layers, having both glued with each other at right angle. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured boards, which include plywood, medium-density fibreboard (MDF), oriented strand board (OSB), and particle board.
South Shore is a home rule-class city in Greenup County, Kentucky, United States. The population was 1,122 at the 2010 census, down from 1,226 in 2000. It is located along the Ohio River across from Portsmouth, Ohio, at the mouth of Tygarts Creek. South Shore is a part of the Huntington-Ashland, WV-KY-OH, Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA).
The board foot or board-foot is a unit of measurement for the volume of lumber in the United States and Canada. It equals the volume of a board that is one-foot (305 mm) in length, one-foot (305 mm) in width, and one-inch (25.4 mm) in thickness.
Engineered wood, also called mass timber, composite wood, human-made wood, or manufactured board, includes a range of derivative wood products which are manufactured by binding or fixing the strands, particles, fibres, or veneers or boards of wood, together with adhesives, or other methods of fixation to form composite material. The panels vary in size but can range upwards of 64 by 8 feet and in the case of cross-laminated timber (CLT) can be of any thickness from a few inches to 16 inches (410 mm) or more. These products are engineered to precise design specifications, which are tested to meet national or international standards and provide uniformity and predictability in their structural performance. Engineered wood products are used in a variety of applications, from home construction to commercial buildings to industrial products. The products can be used for joists and beams that replace steel in many building projects. The term mass timber describes a group of building materials that can replace concrete assemblies.
In woodworking, a rip-cut is a type of cut that severs or divides a piece of wood parallel to the grain. The other typical type of cut is a cross-cut, a cut perpendicular to the grain. Unlike cross-cutting, which shears the wood fibers, a rip saw works more like a series of chisels, lifting off small splinters of wood. The nature of the wood grain requires the shape of the saw teeth to be different, thus the need for both rip saws and crosscut saws; however, some circular saw blades are combination blades and can make both types of cuts. A rip cut is the fundamental type of cut made at a sawmill.
The Babcock Lumber Company was founded in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1887 and conducted logging operations in the eastern United States. In 1951 the company diversified into building material distribution. Today the company has two main divisions: hardwood lumber manufacturing and wholesale building material distribution.
Quarter sawing or quartersawing is a woodworking process that produces quarter-sawn or quarter-cut boards in the rip cutting of logs into lumber. The resulting lumber can also be called radially-sawn or simply quartered. There is widespread confusion between the terms rift sawn and quarter sawn with the terms defined both with opposite meanings and as synonyms.
This glossary of woodworking lists a number of specialized terms and concepts used in woodworking, carpentry, and related disciplines.
Wood flooring is any product manufactured from timber that is designed for use as flooring, either structural or aesthetic. Wood is a common choice as a flooring material and can come in various styles, colors, cuts, and species. Bamboo flooring is often considered a form of wood flooring, although it is made from bamboo rather than timber.
The Meadow River Lumber Company, which operated in Rainelle, West Virginia from 1906 to 1975, was the largest hardwood sawmill in the world. It had three 9 feet (2.7 m) bandsaws under one roof. In 1928, during peak production, its 500 employees produced 31 million board feet of lumber, cutting 3,000 acres (12 km2) of virgin timber a year.
The Great Southern Lumber Company was chartered in 1902 to harvest and market the virgin longleaf pine forests in southeastern Louisiana and southwestern Mississippi. Bogalusa, Louisiana was developed from the ground up as a company town and was the location for Great Southern Lumber Company's sawmill, which began operation in 1908. Other company interests included a railroad and paper mill. The company ceased operation in 1938, when the supply of virgin pines was depleted. Bogalusa became the site of a paper mill and chemical operations, followed by other industry.
Reclaimed lumber is processed wood retrieved from its original application for purposes of subsequent use. Most reclaimed lumber comes from timbers and decking rescued from old barns, factories and warehouses, although some companies use wood from less traditional structures such as boxcars, coal mines and wine barrels. Reclaimed or antique lumber is used primarily for decoration and home building, for example for siding, architectural details, cabinetry, furniture and flooring.
The hoppus cubic foot was the standard volume measurement used for timber in the British Empire and countries in the British sphere of influence before the introduction of metric units. It is still used in the hardwood trade in some countries. This volume measurement was developed to estimate what volume of a round log would be usable timber after processing, in effect attempting to ‘square’ the log and allow for waste. The hoppus ton (HT) was also a traditionally used unit of volume in British forestry. One hoppus ton is equal to 50 hoppus feet or 1.8027 cubic meters. Some shipments of tropical hardwoods, especially shipments of teak from Myanmar (Burma), are still stated in hoppus tons.
Rift sawing is a woodworking process that aims to produce lumber that is less vulnerable to distortion than flat-sawn lumber. Rift-sawing may be done strictly along a log's radials—perpendicular to the annular growth ring orientation or wood grain—or as part of the quarter sawing process.
LL Flooring is an American retailer of hard-surface flooring including hardwood flooring, laminate flooring, vinyl plank flooring, tile flooring, bamboo flooring and cork flooring, as well as flooring tools and accessories.
The original Whitney Bros. Co. factory was located in a water-powered mill building located on the Minnewawa River in the town of Marlborough, New Hampshire, during the American Industrial Revolution. Water power was important to Whitney Bros. Co. in its early days.
Baird Brothers Fine Hardwoods is a privately held manufacturer and retailer of interior hardwood products. It has been family owned and operated since 1960. The company is headquartered in Canfield, Ohio.
A swingblade sawmill utilizes a single circular sawblade which pivots about a 90 degree point, to saw in both vertical and horizontal planes. The single blade travels horizontally in one direction down the log, and returns in vertical position, thus removing a sawn piece of timber. The swingblade head unit is normally mounted on a moving frame that travels along a track or tracks, up and down a stationary log.
Flat sawing, flitch sawing or plain sawing is a woodworking process that produces flat-cut or plain-cut boards of lumber.