Friday, May 18, 2012
Fire Destroys Warehouse at TC Dunham in Yonkers, N.Y.
A three-alarm fire destroyed a warehouse at TC Dunham Paint & Coatings Inc.'s headquarters in Yonkers, N.Y., on Wednesday evening, according to the company. As a result of the blaze, approximately 30,000 gallons of polyurethane coatings and manufacturing material were destroyed, with some of it spilling into the adjacent Saw Mill River and finding its way to the Hudson River.
The blaze started around 10 p.m. Wednesday; fueled by industrial chemicals inside the warehouse, it burned into Thursday morning. Ely Fisch, general manager for TC Dunham, said early indications point to a wiring mishap as the fire's cause.
A passerby noticed flames and alerted firefighters at Yonkers' Fire Station 10, which is just two buildings southwest from TC Dunham. A total of 75 firefighters were involved in fighting the fire, and nine were injured, according to The Journal News. No TC Dunham workers were injured since the building was closed when the fire began.
TC Dunham's manufacturing operations were not damaged in the fire, and the company does not expect any meaningful disruptions in getting its products to customers, Fisch said. The company plans to raze the warehouse soon. "Hopefully next week Monday we'll be back manufacturing and building up inventory again. And then hopefully by the end of next week, we'll be able to ship again. We're going to be working 24/7," Fisch said.
Rob Friedman, a boat and water quality program consultant with the nonprofit environmental watchdog group Riverkeeper, said the Saw Mill and Hudson rivers appeared milky white on Thursday. "The paint was water-soluble, so it was mixing with the water; it wasn't just sitting on the surface," Friedman said.
According to multiple media outlets based in New York, firefighters tried to contain the fire's runoff by digging trenches around the warehouse and placing booms in Saw Mill River. "In the back of our building, we have about 40 feet—there's the Saw Mill River and that goes into the Hudson River," Fisch said.
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Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Artist Records Stories of Trees Through Making Prints
The easy comparison for the end-grain prints in artist Bryan Nash Gill's book "Woodcut" is the human fingerprint, with the white lines of the springwood undulating in their own unique way. Yet, whereas a fingerprint can only tell the story of a small section of a human body, Nash's relief prints—cut from the tree's bole—do a better job of telling a tree's whole story. Counting the number of rings tells its age; measuring the density of its springwood and summerwood reveals its lean and lavish years; and viewing its burls tells of experiencing disease.
"Red Ash"
Nash's book, published by Princeton Architectural Press, is available now. Some of the wood Gill finds on his farm in Connecticut, while friends bring him other pieces, and still more he finds along the side of the road. He cuts a cross section from the wood and sands it flat using sandpaper ranging from 36 grit to 200, depending on the species and how tight the grain is. Then he reduces the wood's softer springwood by burning it with a blowtorch or digging it out with a razor blade; he's determined that grinding it out with a Dremel results in lines that are "too sterile for me." After that he seals the surface with shellac, which "protects the information on the block." After the block is ready, Gill goes to printing. He applies carefully selected ink to the wood block, and then he presses paper to the wood using his fingers or a spoon.
"Leader"
Gill learned to experiment with his process. Take "Leader," which was made with ash and printed onto cloth instead of paper. Gill also tinkered with his ink here, combining a custom batch with solvents, which resulted in an image with a soft, three-dimensional quality. For a few pieces, Gill "bookmatches" his print, "in which a cut is opened, like a book, to reveal both sides in almost mirror image to each other." The result is a mirrored print where one side is just a little different from the other.
"Pipe Rot"
Some of the images are more stark, however. "Pipe Rot," made from a block Gill found at a local mill, has a hole in the middle where its heartwood used to be. This particular tree experienced a trauma early in its life, which caused the rings to separate. Anyone looking for traumatic symbolism in nature need look no further.
In the future, Gill dreams of making a print using an entire tree—"not a massive tree," though. He would take it apart, recreate it, and then take its print. "Perhaps I'm in the business of memorializing trees," he writes.
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Earnings Rise 27% at Home Depot
In the first quarter of 2012, net earnings at Home Depot Inc. rose 27 percent as a result of warm weather across the country, according to its latest earnings report posted Tuesday.
The company's sales during the first quarter hit $17.8 billion, a 5.9 percent increase from the first quarter of fiscal 2011, while its same-store sales for rose 5.8 percent. Its net earnings for this year's first quarter were $1.0 billion, compared with net earnings of $812 million in the same period last year.
"We saw a stronger-than-expected start to the year, driven by record warm weather and continued demand for core products," said Frank Blake, the company's chairman and CEO.
The company also updated its 2012 fiscal year outlook; it now expects sales to be up approximately 4.6 percent.
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Housing Starts Up Nearly 30% From Last April
Privately owned housing starts hit a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 717,000 in April, which is 2.6 percent above the revised March estimate of 699,000 and 29.9 percent above the revised rate from April 2011, when starts reached 552,000, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Commerce released today.
Single-family starts reached a rate of 492,000 in April, 2.3 percent higher than the March rate of 481,000 and 18.8 percent higher than the rate of 414,000 reached in April 2011.
"April's increase in housing production comes on top of strong upward revisions to the previous month's data, and is an encouraging sign that we are returning to a gradual, upward trend that should continue in the year ahead as builders respond to improving demand for new homes in certain markets," said Barry Rutenberg, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and a home builder from Gainesville, Fla. "Unfortunately, overly restrictive lending conditions for builders and buyers are slowing the pace of this trend considerably."
"While still less than half the pace of what we would expect in a fully healthy market, the rate of housing production in April was very solid for this point of the recovery and in keeping with the findings of our latest builder surveys that have registered modest improvements in buyer traffic and near-term sales expectations for single-family homes," said NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Federal Reserve Governor Elizabeth Duke said the housing market was improving through stabilizing home prices and a declining number of newly delinquent borrowers.
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Builder Confidence Reaches 5-Year High
Builder confidence in the market for newly built single-family homes reached a 5-year high on Tuesday as the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index rose five points in May.
"Builders in many markets are reporting that buyer traffic and sales have picked back up after a pause this April," said Barry Rutenberg, chairman of the NAHB and a home builder from Gainesville, Fla. "It seems we have resumed the gradual upward trend in confidence that started at the beginning of this year, as stabilizing prices and excellent affordability encourage more people to pursue a new-home purchase."
Each of the index's components rebounded from declines in April. The component gauging current sales conditions and the component gauging traffic of prospective buyers each rose five points in May to 30 and 23, respectively, with the traffic component hitting its highest level since April of 2007. The component gauging sales expectations in the next six months rose three points to 34.
On a regional basis, three out of four regions registered improving builder sentiment in May. This included a six-point gain to 32 in the Northeast, and five-point gains to 27 and 28 in the Midwest and South, respectively. The West posted a two-point decline to 29.
"While home building still has quite a way to go toward a fully healthy market, the fact that the HMI has returned to trend is an excellent sign that firming home values, improving employment and low mortgage rates are drawing consumers back," said NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe. "The pace of this emerging recovery could be stronger were it not for the significant impediments that the market continues to face with regard to builder and consumer access to credit, inaccurate appraisals, and, more recently, rising materials prices."
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Famed Forester to Be Buried in Casket Made From Elm He Tried to Save
Frank Knight had an affinity for wood that some wood flooring installers can probably relate to. Knight, who gained international fame in 2009 for his ongoing battle to save the life of a 217-year-old elm in Maine, died on Monday at 103, and he is to be buried in a casket made from the very elm he fought to save, according to the Boston Herald.
The tree's nickname was Herbie, and Knight looked after it for more than 50 years while serving as the tree warden in Yarmouth, Maine. In January 2010, Herbie finally succumbed to Dutch elm disease and had to be cut down. Afterward, wood from Herbie was made into a casket, a secret that was kept from Knight, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
"Herbie was the apple of his eye," Deb Hopkins, Knight’s friend, told the Boston Herald. "He was passionate about that one tree because it was so beautiful."
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CMH Space Acquires Bayard Sales Corporation
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Distributor CMH Space Flooring Products Inc. (Wadesboro, N.C.) has acquired Bayard Sales Corporation, which has served Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, New York City and Washington, D.C., since 1943. Bayard's former owner Don Wohlfarth Sr. and manager Don Wohlfarth Jr. have joined CMH Space to facilitate its expansion into Bayard's former territory; both Wohlfarths will take on top leadership roles in that territory.
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Woodworking Machinery Association Recognizes Members
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The Woodworking Machinery Industry Association held an awards ceremony Monday and recognized members with Wooden Globe awards. For integrating a highly automated lumber and molding operation, Northland Forest Products (Kingston, N.H.) received the Wooden Globe in the Commitment to Excellence Through Technology category. For increasing its raw material yield, raising capacity and reducing labor costs, Premier Harwood Products Inc. (Jamesville, N.Y.) received a Wooden Globe in the Innovator of the Year category. And for integrating a student internship and apprenticeship program alongside its decorative hardware manufacturing operations, Blum (Stanley, N.C.) received the Educator Wooden Globe Award.
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HF Briefs: Basic Coatings Hiring; Quanex Launches Online CEU
Basic Coatings (Toledo, Ohio) recently posted notices for a director of sales and wood coatings product manager in the HF Classifieds. Both positions are based in Toledo, Ohio, and both require a Bachelor's Degree in business.
Quanex Building Products Corporation (Houston), owner of the Owens Flooring brand, has launched an online continuing education course—dubbed "Building Green Interiors with Wood Products"—through the Interior Design Continuing Education Council at www.idcec.org. Students of the course, which is worth one continuing education unit (CEU), will receive an overview of engineered wood flooring's sustainable attributes, as well as information on Baltic birch plywood, on-site and factory-finishing methods, and green building programs and organizations.
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Monday, May 14, 2012
TW Flooring Group Acquires EcoTimber, Inks Deal With Dasso
TW Flooring Group (Pennsauken, N.J.), formerly Tesoro Woods, has acquired the brand-related assets of EcoTimber Inc. (Denver), and it has been named the exclusive importer of bamboo products made by Dasso Group (Hangzhou City, China).
Terms of the purchase of EcoTimber were not disclosed.
The relationship between EcoTimber and TW Flooring Group's CEO William Jopling go back to when EcoTimber was formed in 1992. Then, Jopling's International Wood Flooring company supplied EcoTimber with commercial flooring. Later on, Jopling's Wood Flooring International supplied EcoTimber with residential hand-scraped products. Also, Jopling and EcoTimber served as early members of the Vermont-based Woodworkers Alliance for Rainforest Protection.
"We have a long history through a lot of companies," Jopling said.
Jopling has garnered the support of EcoTimber's original founders—Jason Grant and Aaron Maizlish, who both left the company to pursue other ventures—to take EcoTimber forward. "No one is better positioned than Bill Jopling and TW Flooring Group when it comes to servicing the green wood and bamboo flooring needs of EcoTimber’s dealer base and A&D clientele," Grant said in a statement from TW Flooring Group.
"Bill Jopling was perhaps the first person in the mainstream flooring industry to truly embrace sustainable forestry and environmental marketing," Maizlish said.
Dasso, which makes strand-woven and pressed bamboo products, is a major player in China's bamboo products industry; the company boasts 10 manufacturing sites and more than 1,000 employees, according to a release from TW Flooring Group. Jopling said Dasso has global sales offices in the Netherlands, Hungary, China and Singapore, and it has long served as a supplier for American companies such as Mannington, Anderson, Wood Flooring International and other well-known brands, including EcoTimber. Dasso's wood products were not part of the deal.
Moving forward, EcoTimber’s wood products will be grouped under TW Flooring's Tesoro Woods banner, and all of EcoTimber’s bamboo products will be grouped under the Dasso banner.
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Alan Blake Takes Sales Spot With BKB
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Wood flooring importer BKB Flooring USA (Chatham, N.J.) recently named Alan Blake national sales manager. Formerly, Blake worked at Halex Corporation, Chemque Inc. and Stauf Adhesives. Blake's first task at BKB is lining up distributors in select markets. The company imports prefinished engineered flooring from Malaysia, and it boasts the worldwide spec for Apple stores. For more information, Blake can be reached at ablake@bkbflooringusa.com, (303) 619-4685 (cell) or (303) 432-2943 (office).
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Armstrong Recognized for Two Wood Flooring Lines
Armstrong World Industries (Lancaster, Pa.) was recently recognized by ADEX—the Awards for Design Excellence—for its Hand Tooled Birch and Performance Plus wood flooring.
ADEX gives its awards annually, and, according to Armstrong, the competition is the largest and most prestigious for the design of furniture, fixtures and finishes. Armstrong received the ADEX Platinum award for its hand-sculpted domestic birch flooring, and it received the ADEX Gold for its acrylic-infused Performance Plus flooring.
Hand Tooled Birch
Performance Plus
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Mafi's Carving Club Named 'Red Dot Award' Winner
Carving Club 1 engineered flooring has garnered a Red Dot Award for manufacturer Mafi America Inc. Corp. (Venice, Calif.). The flooring was recognized in the product design category.
Carving Club's top layer features a Burberry pattern, and it comes with an oil finish that Mafi says is resistant to water. Mafi says the flooring has anti-slip properties, and Mafi recommends it for "wellness and wet areas."
Red Dot awards are offered in three categories: product design, communication and design concept. Winners in the design category must demonstrate excellence in multiple areas including usability, quality and innovation, according to a release from Mafi. The awards are coordinated by Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen of Essen, Germany.
In the February/March 2012 issue, Hardwood Floors told you about the Carving Kids line from Mafi.
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Derr Flooring to Celebrate 100 Years and Honor Employees
One hundred years ago, John Derr started Derr Lumber Company at the intersection of 63rd and Market Street in Philadelphia. Through the years, the business grew, diversified its product offerings and spun off certain operations, and today Derr Flooring Company (Willow Grove, Pa.) is one of the leading wood flooring distributors on the East Coast. To celebrate this milestone and honor the company's current employees, Derr Flooring will host an employee dinner on Sept. 29 at the Valley Forge Casino and Convention Center in Valley Forge, Pa. To further commemorate the milestone, Derr Flooring has produced a PDF on its history, which can be read below:
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Farmers, Environmentalists Battle Over Brazilian Amazon
Agricultural interests took an upper hand on forestry interests in Brazil last month when the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies approved legislation that eases rules on how much land farmers must preserve as forest, according to the BBC.
The bill will leave it up to Brazil's states to determine how much forest farmers must replace along riversides. Farmers say the move will lead to sustainable food product; however, environmentalists say the change will lead to further destruction of the Amazon rainforest. At stake, farmers say, is agricultural investment that accounts for more than 5 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP).
The bill is "one of the most controversial to pass Brazil's Congress in recent years," according to a report from Reuters posted on the Huffington Post. It now passes to President Dilma Rousseff, who could veto it; opponents of the bill have launched an online petition in order to sway the president to do just that.
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USFS's New Method to Fell Trees is Dynamite
Paul Bunyan may have flinched at hearing the U.S. Forest Service’s latest attempt at feeling trees: In Montana, the Forest Service recently experimented with using nitrate-based explosives to fell large volumes of beetle-killed trees, according to the Missoulian.
The rotting beetle-killed trees are bad for several reasons. There is the threat of forest fire, and the trees fall unpredictably, making them dangerous for sawyers and cutting machines alike, the Forest Service's Gordon Ash told the Missoulian. The experiment took place around Montana's Pioneer Mountain Scenic Byway, and the Forest Service was searching for the best kind of explosives, and the most efficient use of personnel and time.
The number of beetle-killed trees prompted the Forest Service to try dynamiting; “We just don’t have a whole lot of really good sawyers,” Charlie Showers, an engineering program leader at the Missoula Technology and Development Center, told the Missoulian.
The experiment showed promise. The Forest Service said there is "little effect" on surrounding wildlife, and that the technique is going to be a "viable tool" in mitigating danger posed by beetle-killed trees.
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Rippling Stream Finishing Hosts Open House
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Rippling Stream Finishing Inc. (West Farmington, Ohio) recently hosted an open house for its shareholders and their families; the company's President Robert Miller showed guests its new 7,200-square-feet "Rollcoat Line" for applying waterbased stains, UV seals and topcoats. For more information, Miller can be reached at (330) 889-9663.
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Wednesday, May 09, 2012
Lacey Act Debated on Capitol Hill
Legislators, government officials, musicians and representatives of the wood products industry on Tuesday offered criticism and support for two Lacey Act amendments under consideration in Congress.
The RELIEF Act, introduced in October 2011 by Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) in the wake the second federal raid on Gibson Guitar, would eliminate penalties for people who unknowingly possess illegal woods, lower penalties for first offenses and exempt wood products that were imported before 2008. Meanwhile, the FOCUS Act, introduced by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), would repeal Lacey Act requirements that companies comply with foreign laws.
In his testimony, Paul characterized the current incarnation of the Lacey Act as a dangerous example of overcriminalization in the U.S., and he said it is unconstitutional because it "essentially delegates law-making authority to other nations."
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), who was instrumental in amending the act in 2008 so that it covered forest products, voiced opposition for the two amendments. He said that the Lacey Act is straightforward, and "Companies who import wood products need to play by the rules in the countries from which they import … This is a reasonable expectation."
Donna Harman, CEO of the American Forest & Paper Association, said her group does not support either of the two Lacey Act amendments under consideration. She noted that adoption of the FOCUS Act would "eviscerate" the Lacey Act.
Cooper noted in his testimony that his RELIEF Act would "correct several mistakes" that Congress made in 2008 when it amended the Lacey Act, and his testimony focused on improving the act to specifically benefit musicians. "A store owner who unknowingly imports a guitar made from illegal wood shouldn’t be penalized the first time. But those firms and individuals that knowingly violate U.S. laws on importing endangered species should be severely punished," he said. Cooper also voiced opposition for Rand's FOCUS Act because it "harms efforts to curb illegal logging."
Barry Rutenberg, chairman of NAHB, voiced support for Cooper's amendment, saying the RELIEF Act would "improve and protect the integrity of the law." Rutenberg went a step further and said there needs to be provisions added to the Lacey Act that would allow contractors to seek the return of property in court if it was seized as a result of any enforcement action under the Lacey Act. "… We look forward to working with Rep. Cooper to improve the bill as it moves through the legislative process," Rutenberg said.
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Group Hopes to Build Forestry Research Center in Peru
The Tropical Forest Foundation (TFF) recently launched a 60-day fundraising campaign to establish a Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) training center in the Peruvian Amazon. TFF will work with communities and government officials to teach SFM practices to harvesting companies in order to sustaining local economies while conserving the tropical forest, according to a press release.
TFF's goal is to raise $100,000 to serve as seed money for the research center. Further, the facility will require $4 million in cash for operations over five years and $500,000 million in in-kind equipment and services. The center in Peru will be TFF's first such research center to teach in Spanish. In March, TFF gained approval for the research center from government agencies in the U.S. and Peru, and it was granted access to a forest concession where the proposed training center will be located.
“When I visited Peru to discuss establishing a sustainable forestry training center, I was received warmly and enthusiastically by the government, conservation NGOs, industry, and international agencies,” said Bob Johnston, executive director of TFF. “They believe that this will help their local communities that depend on the resources of the forests see the benefits to the environment and economy, and also see how government would improve with more knowledge. People in Peru are ready for TFF to begin training as soon as possible.”
TFF has other research facilities located in Brazil, Guyana, Gabon and Indonesia.
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Maryland Amends Employee/Contractor Classification Law
The governor of Maryland recently signed a bill to amend the state's Workplace Fraud Act so that the burden of proof to show a worker is an employee now falls on the state if certain requirements are met, according to a release from the Maryland/Northern Virginia Floor Covering Association. Previously, nearly all subcontractors in the flooring industry were presumed to be employees unless the business could prove otherwise.
Now, the amendment gives businesses more time to comply with audit requests and gives businesses the option of providing auditors with document copies instead of having an auditor occupy their place of business for the duration of the audit. What's more, the amendment requires Maryland's Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation to issue citations under the act, hold hearings and close audits within a reasonable amount of time.
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