Shamco Lumber Completes Expansion of Its Iron River, MI, Sawmill

Iron River, Michigan-based Shamco Lumber Inc. recently hosted a grand opening to showcase the recent expansion and upgrades to their sawmill facility, according to the Iron County Reporter (6-21-24).

The expansion itself cost $5.5 million and consists of the addition of an automatic railroad tie stacker which takes lumber that has been cut into ties then stacks the ties and groups them together, and an add-on to the building itself. These upgrades have tripled output, allowing the mill to process approximately one log per minute and cut maple year-round.

With the expansion, the process that a log goes through when it gets to the mill begins with debarking, where it is also counted and put through a metal detector to find anything that could potentially damage the mill’s equipment. The debarked log is then fed into the head rig which scans the log and optimizes the cuts to get the most usable lumber out of every log.

After this the lumber is sent down the line where it is split between going to the auto-tie-stacker and the combination gang saw/edger which will cut it to the right height and width. The final step for the lumber before it is stacked and sold is grading based on the number of knots that the board has (the fewer being the better) and then cut to a specified length.