" We're in the port of Wilmington, Delaware at the Georgia Pacific wallboard plant where every 3 weeks, a cargo vessel laden with about 30,000 tons of gypsum that's been poured up in Nova Scotia arrive, and all that gypsum, which looks like this, comes on a conveyor belt and gets dumped into a huge pile behind me. That shed is about the size of a football field, and when it's filled with 30,000 tons of gypsum, it reaches all the way up to the ridge. Now the gypsum which the chemist would call calcium sulfate is actually what we would know as the plaster of Paris, and here in this facility, they take this stuff and they turn it into wallboards. We're gonna get together with Monty Palmowski, the plant manager. He's gonna show us how to do it. Come on. Hi, Monty."

" Hi, Bob. How are you doing?"

" You got a lot of noise in this plant here, I got to tell you."

" It's just a little square that's part of the [unk]."

" That's great to hear."

" What's happening up in here?"

" Just to brought you to speed, Bob, that is the process at this point. it's taking through a series of grinding and drying processes."

" So you're actually removing moisture from the rock?"

" That's correct, Bob. So the large elliptical dryers you see are taking out the natural moisture of the rock."

" Exactly."

" It then enters that raven roller mill. It is ground to a fine powder. It's rolling towards channels at which point, we remove some excessive water."

" So you've got an actual powder."

" That's correct."

" Then what's next?"

" What's next is it enters the production process. The second most important ingredient in manufacture of wallboard is paper, Bob. Based paper and tack paper, we've got plenty of it. What you see here, Bob are 2 sheets of paper, 1 for the back of the wallboard and 1 for the front of the wallboard. "

" Are they the same kind of paper?"

" No, they're not, Bob. This is the back of the paper. [unk] drops, yeah."

" Here's the front of the paper."

" Especial size and surface to shut space."

" Okay. So where do you actually start making the wallboard? "

" Right down here, Bob. At this point, we've got the face paper coming over here. We're laying down a flurry of shift for another 3 inch on this."

" Yeah."

" We're forming the edges. We're applying really deep wheel so that we can glue the back paper to the face paper."

" Slow down now. That's the---- These are the paper that goes to the back."

" That's correct."

" The paper here is the paper that goes to the front. And what's the glue for?"

" The glue is to glue the back paper to the face paper since we're gonna [unk]."

" Oh, you're holding, you're bending the edges, folding the edges."

" That's correct."

" Wait a second. [unk] don't work to the [unk]."

" Good job, Lee."

" At this point, we're actually adjusting the thickness of the wallboard. We've got a finished wallboard that's coming out of here, 48 inches x 800 feet."

" Alright, you got a 4 x 800 feet of wallboard here, huh."

" That's correct, and the [unk] is still soft here."

" Still soft."

" The reason we had to have 800 feet is because of the speed we run, by the time it's gets ready for its cut, we don't want the [unk] leaking out of it. So it's dried up by the time it gets to the end."

" Hardens up, correct."

" Hardens up. Is that the next step? Trotting it?"

" Yes. Monty, just [unk] 5 miles long."

" We're halfway down, Bob."

" Yes."

" If you feel the board, you'll see the core edge considerably skipped and done."

" Sure?"

" We're making a 4-foot wallboard here."

" 4 x 12 feet."

" That's correct. But you'll notice we cut it every 36 feet, which protects, store, and [unk]."

" So you've got a 36 foot length. Why is that?"

" That's correct. What we're trying to do, we're tracking through a 700-foot drying of it. extract the left center the harder the length."

" It's a longer length. It's okay."

" The reason we're flipping the board this way Bob is so that if you pick up any bird marks at the end of the [unk], it will be at the back of the board."

" Okay. Now, what's the conveyor belt doing here though?"

" Since we have a 10 big drawing of it, we have to get as much wallboard into the oven if we can so we end it deck by deck."

" So you have 10 layers of wallboard going into the drying oven? "

" that is correct."

" And this is a smart conveyor and it's just got to know when it's stuck 1 level and it moves itself up to the next 1?"

" Yes. There's a proximity switch on it that goes what level it's on."

" How hot it the oven? "

" The oven is 600 degrees in the 1st zone. Morty spends about 35 minutes drying throughout the entire oven. "

" 35 minutes. And then at the other end, they're coming out already dry?"

" That's correct."

" Let's take a look."

" Sure."

" This is really the way they go. That's why everybody goes to the plant. So you got to go 800 feet in 1 direction and 800 feet in the other."

" That's true."

" Got to ride a bike. Okay. At this point, we've separated the boards on the preparations that we saw tonight."

" Yeah."

" This is the machine that actually breaks the boards to desirable length."

" So all you're doing is you're gonna change the level of [unk] on it."

" That's correct. Where the damage is."

" Snapping with the floor market. And then, once they're done, are they ready for packaging?"

" That's right, Bob. Send them over to our [unk]. We sent something to the exact length, and then we [unk] at the bottom of the table."

" Well Monty, that was a terrific tour. We know just all there is to know about how you make wallboards. I'm curious as to how much you're making a day."

" Bob, our average daily production is 1.3 million square feet."

" That's a lot. I can't quite relate to those figures. Watch out."

" That's enough to build 300 single-family homes."

" 300 single-family homes?"

" Yes."

" Just 1 day?"

" 1 day."

" More than we'll ever need, but thanks for the tour."

" Thanks for coming."

" I really enjoyed it."