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Show RIPPING LUMBER COSTS Thanks to an ingenious new way to rip the edges from planks and timbers that is more accurate than ever before, many consumers con-sumers are getting their lumber at lower costs. The ingenious new idea is . . . light. A pure intense beam of light of a single color. A laser beam . . . which provides a nearly straight line. The first laser was built in 1960 by an American, Charles Townes. Lasers were soon used to drill holes in diamonds -the hardest material ma-terial in the world. They allowed doctors to perform surgery on tiny human cells, even to weld the retina ol an eye to its supports to prevent blindness. Five years ago, people at Georgia-Pacific put the laser to a new use. Large slabs of wood have to be broken down to narrow widths after they are milled. Bark has to be removed from the edges, and sometimes the entire edpe has to be riDDed if some wood is missing-called missing-called "wane." No piece of wood is perfect. It may have knots where branches grew from the trunk, irregular shrinkage or warp. Taking that crooked wood and edging it into the straight dimensions we know causes waste and that costs money. So Georgia-Pacific installed a laser at the company's Fort Bragg, California sawmill. The laser casts a shadow on the wood, telling the sawyer exactly where to rip it. The wood can be edged more accurately than ever before and less maintenance is required. As a result, less wood can make more lumber, and lumber prices can stay affordable. |