Ronan business Tech Woods USA recently received a $350,000 Community Wood Grant from the United States Forest Service.

The Community Wood Energy and Wood Innovation Program awards funding to shovel-ready projects to install a community wood energy system or build an innovative wood product facility. The project helps to showcase models that better address wood-residue utilization, the press release said.

At Tech Wood USA the project funds will go to reuse wood byproducts as fuel for a biomass burner and to produce pellets to fuel the business’s thermal modification plant as well as all the kilns.

Marty Perkins, head of Tech Woods LLC, said, “We’re giving away a tremendous amount of wood every year. If we can use it, we’re further ahead.”

The biomass burner will consume wood chips so the company is bringing in a grinder to grind up all the small wood pieces.

“It burns so much cleaner than our regular furnace,” he said, noting that injected air burns a lot of the carbon.  

“And it’s more efficient,” he added. “We want to be as good a neighbor as we can.”

Tech Woods goes through four-and-a-half to five cords of sawdust in a week, Perkins said, which can produce enough pellets to heat everything at the plant.

“We’ll try to make it so we don’t have to use any petroleum and cut down on costs,” he said. “I expect we can probably sell some pellets, too.”

“COOKING” PROCESS

The process of thermally modifying wood begins when maple logs are trucked from Maine to Montana and unloaded at Tech Woods USA. From there, the logs are milled into up to three inches thick by sawyer Frank Kurtz.

He estimated that the logs stacked on a semi weigh 80,000 pounds and typically arrive in Montana from Maine in about three days.

The wood is measured on the metric system, with the smallest stock they produce measuring 55 millimeters, or slightly under 2.25 inches thick.

The planks continue to a kiln, where they are dried. Perkins built the kilns with furnaces in six bays and powers them with scrap wood, which will now be transformed into pellets they produce themselves. Then it’s off to the oven to be cooked.

The modified wood product is produced by Tech Wood’s 84,000-pound Moldrup thermal modification oven. One of the company’s primary products is thermally modified gunstock blanks, which are shipped to gunmakers worldwide, including Browning, Remington and Winchester.

According to Troy Marsh, who has worked with Perkins for 30 years, one-inch pine goes in for “the short cycle,” about 40 to 42 hours, while maple takes 46 hours and 36 minutes. When the wood enters the oven, its moisture content is usually from 10 to 12 percent. By the time it leaves, the moisture content is reduced by six-to-eight percent,” Marsh noted.

When wood is thermally modified, or “cooked,” as Tech Woods USA calls it, the wood is more durable, lighter, stronger and easier to work with, according to Cari Carter.

Carter is the quality control person for Tech Woods USA; she also works in the office and packs the blanks for shipping.

“A gunstock made from thermally modified maple could be left outside all winter, and it’s not going to warp,” Carter said.

NEW PROJECTS

Lately Perkins and Marsh have been working on pieces for an American spindle manufacturing plant, primarily making spindles for railings and bannisters. Tech Wood also makes “music wood” for guitars and mandolins.

“We make necks, backs and sides for Gibson,” Perkins said.

When visiting Gibson’s plant, they ran into Jelly Roll, who was ordering a guitar.

Tech Wood is manufacturing more and more “music” wood, with six companies using their product.

“The wood is pretty much all maple, and some of it’s modified wood,” Perkins said. “It does bend pretty well, and it has a better sound quality.”

Perkins compared modified wood to hardwood logs sunk in the Great Lakes ,which also had great sound quality. Modified wood does the same thing; it crushes the cells, according to him.

“It’s specialty stuff, it’s not their everyday stuff,” he said, adding, “We have some very special pieces of wood.”

“We’ve been here 28 years,” Perkins and his wife Donna said. “…We didn’t want to change anything.”

However, Perkins said as he gestured to the shop, “All these kids here need to make a living so they can stay here.”

Tech Woods LLC will keep improving, making the plant more efficient and cleaner and continue to hire local workers and to make outstanding gunstocks and do some custom work.