" -So, Bruce, you're making birch veneer plywood, a hardwood plywood here. Where did all the raw material come from?"

" -All the raw material comes from North America, mostly from the United States. "

" -Great."

" -Some from Canada."

" -What's happening here?"

" -Here, Sonya Davis, one of our 15-year employees, is grading the face and back veneers. What she is doing is, this is the first quality control step. She is separating faces from backs. The birch plywood has a birch on the face and on the back."

" -She has 19 different grading characteristics that she is keeping in mind while she sorts through the gibbus, the face and the back. But it's all very beautiful clear birch. The inside of the plywood is made out of a cheaper wood, right?"

" -The inside of the plywood is very different. It is yellow poplar and I can show you how we put it together over here. The first veneer in this case is oak instead of birch and the grain is running the long direction of the plywood. The next veneer is what we call the cross band and this is the yellow poplar. It may not appear extremely beautiful to you, but its virtue is that it's relatively solid."

" -Yeah."

" -So that when you drill a hole in it, you will hit wood for your screws or your other fixtures."

" -Right."

" -The plywood is cross laminated. Every adjacent layer is perpendicular to the other. And finally for some by product we get to the back."

" -Yeah."

" -So that's the secret of the strength is that you are alternating the direction of the grain vertical, horizontal, vertical, horizontal and all you've got is a very thin veneer on the outer edges, which is the beautiful stuff."

" -How do you put it all together?"

" -We put it together on a glue spreader. We'll go over and take a look at that right now."

" -All right."

" -Tell me about the nature of the glue. I assume the glue is on those rollers up there?"

" -Yes. Those are double roll coaters. They are applying urea-formaldehyde glue to both sides of every other piece of veneer that makes the lay-up of the 7-ply plywood. "

" -Isn't there a great deal of concern about emissions from this kind of glue?"

" -Yes, there is. It is a very important issue for Georgia-Pacific. The glue is specially formulated. It contains a small amount of formaldehyde to begin with. It also contains scavenging agents, which bind the formaldehyde into the product and do not allow it to escape into the atmosphere. It is an important issue for the consumers to understand that as well for our millworkers there because they have to work around it all the time and the health concern here too."

" -Yeah."

" -What happens once they created all these sandwiches that I see over here, what happens to them?"

" -Well, they are headed for the cold press. It is a necessary step to press the sandwich together so the glue can spread to the other veneer that did not originally have glue."

" -How much pressure is it put through?"

" -200,000 pressure, 15-minute time; it is a cold press. After that, it goes to the hot press where under about a 250-pound pressure and 270-degree temperature, the sandwiches are compressed together. You need that heat and pressure for a good glue bond."

" -Alright, Bill. You know, every builder has to be assured that he gets precise sizes. Whether it's plywood or lumber."

" -How can you make sure that in the cutting operations, you're gonna come out with 4x8 sheets and not have any variation?"

" -The way we do that, Bob, is we have a precision cut line with 6 rotary saw blades that are carbide tipped and we have 2 operators who monitor their operations all the time."

" -So they are all the same size, what is the next step now?"

" -That will be sanding. Let us take a look."

" -So, it gets pretty noisy in here. I guess they are used to it, huh?"

" -What does this look like, Bob?"

" -It looks like a belt for the belt sander for the jolly green giant."

" -It is, in fact, it is very similar to the belt that you have at home for your belt sander."

" -Yeah."

" -Except that it is 50 inches wide and it is 6 feet long."

" -What do you pay for something like this?"

" -In the quantities that we buy them, they are only $50.00. We buy a lot of them."

" -And where is the sander itself? Back in here?"

" -The sander that we use is right back behind this door."

" -We can open it?"

" -Yes."

" -Gigantic! But that is only hitting one side of the sheet, right?"

" -Correct. That is 3 sanders there that is sanding the bottom of the panel. Behind us, further down the line, is an identical set of sanders inverted and on top the sander top half."

" -How much are you actually taking off the plywood? "

" -We're taking off about, at most, 10,000 of an inch, or usually it's much, much less."

" -So, it is really just putting it on?"

" -It is."

" -What about quality control?"

" -Annie is our quality control grader and in here she's using 3 mirrors to look at all 6 edges of each panel. So, determine a grade and then drop the panels into 1 of 6 bins."

" -Bob, this is the end of the sander line. The panels fall into bins depending on what grade they are. There are 6 bins here. In this particular bin, we're finding our highest grade of birch plywood, A-1. Stamped over here on that side, the grader's name is also stamped on. That's how proud we are of our plywood. "

" -Terrific! So from here, it goes to the warehouse?"

" -That's right."

" -Thanks for the tour."