Patent ID: 8245741

Claim:
A method for continuous glulams fabrication from small pieces of wood in a single line, comprising: using a finger-jointing unit, finger-jointing small pieces of wood of a thickness of at most 2 inches into wood pieces of a target length; surfacing the wood pieces of the target length, at a rate between about 100 and 600 feet per minute, cutting the wood pieces to predetermined lengths at a rate of up to about 400 feet per minute; and directly laying-up the wood pieces and forming into structural timbers of a target thickness from about 3.5 inches up to about 30 inches and of the target length, in a continuous line at a rate of up to about 500-600 linear feet/minute; wherein said step of finger-jointing comprises joint machining at least one joint of the small pieces of wood and applying glue inside the at least one joint, joint inserting the resulting machined preglued wood pieces, and sizing the resulting wood pieces of the target length; and wherein said finger-jointing unit comprises a joint machining station, a joint insertion station and a sizing station, said sizing station leading to a beam forming unit.