News Release Distributed 06/09/08
The Louisiana Forest Products Development Center, a unit of the LSU AgCenter, will conduct a comprehensive three-day lumber drying workshop on July 23-25 on the LSU campus in Baton Rouge.
The workshop, “Drying Lumber For Quality and Profit,” will thoroughly cover the process of drying both hardwood and softwood lumber from start to finish, according to Dr. Todd Shupe, a forest products researcher in the LSU AgCenter’s Louisiana Forest Products Development Center.
“In addition, participants will gain valuable hands-on experience in the laboratory periods,” Shupe said.
Shupe said some of the workshop topics will include wood-water relations, wood anatomy, EMC-temperature-RH, moisture meters, steam kilns and operation, kiln control principles, drying stress and degrade, statistical process control, trouble-shooting, air drying and stain, and wood shrinkage.
In addition to Shupe, instructors for the workshop include Dr. Qinglin Wu and Dr. Charles Clément with the Louisiana Forest Products Development Center and Pat Bennett, kiln supervisor with Roy O. Martin Lumber Co. in Alexandria.
All instructors are international experts in lumber drying and wood-moisture relationships, Shupe said, and Bennett has more than 20 years of industrial hardwood and softwood lumber drying experience.
More information is available from Shupe at (225) 578-6432 or tshupe@agcenter.lsu.edu.
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Contact: Todd Shupe at (225) 578-6432 or tshupe@agcenter.lsu.edu
Writer: Rick Bogren at (225) 578-4839 or rbogren@agcenter.lsu.edu