Glulam wood beams and method of making same

Abstract

There is provided a glulam wood beam comprising planks having a width substantially smaller than The width of the beam, assembled into snips. The beam is characterized by the presence of flash in the interior by external surfaces made essentially of duramen. There is further provided a method for making the wood beam of the instant invention wherein the strips are derived from panels and in which the cutting of the panels into strips is programmed to ensure that the subsequent assembly of the strips will result in beams having external surfaces comprised essentially of duramen, thus providing a beam with enhanced mechanical resistance.

Description

[0001] Conventional, glulam wood beams manufacturing are usually manufactured with perfectly squared wood planks corresponding to the width of the desired beam less the wood necessary to plane down the beam so as to obtain perfectly smooth surfaces,[0002] The planing down step is often necessary in view of the fact that the glulam beams can be used as decorating elements as well as structural elements. This double use of glulam beans requires that the surface be exempt of any defects such as the presence of flash on the planks.[0003] On the other hand, an optimum exploitation of forest resources requires that saw mills exact as much squad planks as possible. This objective is particularly difficult to reach when the trees are of small diameter. In this case, the proportion of planks with bark can be important since the diameter of the tree is sometimes insufficient to provide planks of standard dimensions to produce perfectly squared surfaces. However, this type of tree with small t...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0026] One of the important aspects of the invention is to provide a glulam wood beam and a method of making the same, allowing the use of planks exhibiting flash and consequently permitting the use of trees having small diameter trunks. This aspect not only allows the exploitation of a neglected forest resource in the manufacturing of glulam but it also allows a significant increase in the yield of gross product / finish product. The beam, despite the presence of flash, exhibits mechanical properties that conform to the standards in the construction industry.

[0058] As illustrated in FIG. 8, it is possible to obtain strips with dispersed finger joints using beams assembled according to the method of the instant invention. The beam is cut along a longitadinal axis 81 perpendicular to the finger joints 40 and in such a way that the axis defining the cutting line does not coincide with the lateral joints. There is thus obtained a strip 83 with dispersed finger joints. The strips can be used to form the top and bottom of beams of the instant invention and to provide an increased mechanical stability to beams that are constituted by strips having non dispersed finger joints.

Problems solved by technology

This objective is particularly difficult to reach when the trees are of small diameter.

Furthermore, the planks with greater width generally used in the preparation of glulam wood beams are made with trunks exhibiting large diameter and they have the tendency to change shape upon drying.

This property renders the glueing of the planks difficult.

This property renders the glueing of the plank difficult by eating tensions within the beams.

Due to the difficulty to extract planks of sufficient width and exempt of a flash, the above mentioned northern forest resource has been neglected up to now for the manufacturing of plank for the use in glulam wood beams.

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