Thread: How they make plywood (then and now)

Reminded me of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCTk0iLjdfI

Interesting. At about the same period, there was a mill in Cairns cutting veneers from local timbers, but they used to cut them flat, rather than roll cut (not sure if that's the correct term.) This gave a better grain, especially on some of the timbers like Australian red cedar. Also, it left a backboard about 12 - 15mm thick, which they used to dump. If you could salvage some of those you had some useful timber.

I wonder if any logs of that immensity even exist today. Bet every last twig is gone - Lorax!

Did you see the quality of that Finnish ply???? Try buying that quality here without a kidney donation.

Originally Posted by AlexS

Interesting. At about the same period, there was a mill in Cairns cutting veneers from local timbers, but they used to cut them flat, rather than roll cut (not sure if that's the correct term.) This gave a better grain, especially on some of the timbers like Australian red cedar. Also, it left a backboard about 12 - 15mm thick, which they used to dump. If you could salvage some of those you had some useful timber.

Ply manufacture was very big business with several veneer / ply mills in Cairns in the 1960's & 1970's. The companies below either produced & manufactured veneer / ply in Cairns, or in the Cairns hinterland. I used to visit a few in the Lyons, Spence & Kenny Street areas after school to collect "project materials" from the scrap heaps. Some produced only rotary veneer for ply manufacture, others produced sliced and rotary veneers for both HQ veneer and faced ply or general plywood. It was a real treat to watch the slicing and rotary machines at work.

The cores from the rotary veneer mills were also handy and often produced some HQ wood. Usually they were 8' long and about 5 - 6" in diameter.

Cairns Plywoods
Capricornia Plywoods
Edge Hill Sawmills *
Foxwood
Lae Timbers
Northern Veneer
Paterson Plywoods *
Rankine Bros *
Rotaven *

* rotary veneers only

It all came undone in 1988 when Graeme Richardson and his fellow politicians introduced the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. Fortunes were lost, when saw / veneer / ply mills became virtually worthless.

I used to do some contract work on the machinery they used at the plywood manufacturer at Ipswich in Queensland years ago. For the life of me I cant remember the name of the place. Its probably gone now. I worked on the machinery that made the glue (urea formaldehyde). They used plain old bakers flour to thicken it up!

Originally Posted by Pearo

I used to do some contract work on the machinery they used at the plywood manufacturer at Ipswich in Queensland years ago. For the life of me I cant remember the name of the place. Its probably gone now. I worked on the machinery that made the glue (urea formaldehyde). They used plain old bakers flour to thicken it up!

The veneer and ply mill at Ipswich was probably Hancock Brothers, which would have been using plantation-grown slash pine and hoop pine at that time. They subsequently sold to the Boral group and continued quite successfully for many years. They repaired the place after the 1974 floods completely inundated it, but when it happened again in 2011, the company decide to invest the insurance payout at another facility elsewhere, and closed the North Ipswich plant down.

Queensland used to be the centre of Australia's veneer and plymilling industry but it shrunk massively when access to rainforest timber was lost in the late 80s. Veneer plants still operating are Austral Plywood at Tennyson in Brisbane, making rotary (peeled) veneer from the plantation hoop pine resource and manufacturing from it some beautiful high-end architectural products, including acoustic control panels; and Proveneer near Ipswich, which makes high quality decorative sliced veneer from a range of species. The Director of Proveneer used to manage operations at the Hancock mill.