Martinsville's Crone Lumber gets cut of hardwood industry

While corn and soybeans may be Indiana's biggest agricultural products, another product produced in the state doesn't lag too far behind - and could be in your yard.

Hardwood lumber production in Indiana produced some $8 billion worth of product in 2005, making up 3 percent of Indiana's Gross Domestic Product, and is an industry with strong roots - no pun intended - in southern Indiana. Crone Lumber Co. in Martinsville has been producing mainly hardwood board lumber and mulch since 1972, when brothers Harmon and Bill Crone purchased a lumber mill on Martinsville's northwest side.

Steve Crone, Harmon's son, now runs the sawmill, which produces about $6.5 million a year in kiln-dried rough-sawn hardwood boards that are shipped as far away as California. Crone said he does ship hickory for tool handles to factories in China, however.

"That's about the only exporting I do," he said. "Most of what we make goes to California, Iowa, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan."

The sawmill process begins when Crone's timber buyers strike a deal with a landowner - 85 percent of Indiana's trees grow on private land - and a contractor comes in to cut down the selected trees.

Crone said most of the timber his company buys comes from Morgan, Putnam, Owen and Greene counties, but they have purchased trees from as far away as Madison in southern Indiana, and Illinois.

"Probably our average haul is about 20 miles, one way," he said.

Those logs are then loaded onto Crone's trucks and brought to the sawmill, where they are loaded into an automated conveyor that strips the logs of bark, brings them down to the saw, where computer-controlled sensors measure the dimensions of each log, and gives the sawmill operator directions on how to cut up the log to maximize the amount of usable lumber, which is cut to various standard thicknesses.

One of the biggest problems during the sawing process is running into metal objects embedded in trees - parts of fence or nails. That can damage the saw blade and halt production.

"The saw can be fixed, but that's 20 minutes to change a blade," Crone said.

The computer-assisted measuring and cutting has been a huge help to the company's bottom line, Crone said, increasing production by 10 percent and increasing board yield by 15 percent.

"We're getting 15 percent more lumber out of the logs than we were before," Crone said. "The increase in yield, that makes you wonder how you stayed in business before." Boards are then fed into a rip saw that cuts it to standard widths and are fed into a plainer before being stacked on carts for drying.

As they are sorted, each board is stacked according to one of four grades for lumber.

The boards are then placed in a kiln to remove the moisture, a process that can take more than a month for oak, or as little as a week for poplar. Drying the lumber prevents the boards from cracking later.

"The drier it is, the quicker its going to go through the kiln," Crone explained.

The kilns use steam heat to dry the lumber, and temperature sensors and a 'wet bulb' help control the humidity in the kilns to keep the wood drying at the correct rate. Oak, for example, dries at 2 percent a day, while poplar can dry as quickly as 15 percent a day.

All wood scrap that is created is fed into a chipper to create hardwood mulch, a popular product with many landscapers. Crone said several years ago, the chipped wood was sold to a paper mill in Terre Haute, which has since gone out of business. But in the past five years, landscapers have increased demand for hardwood mulch, particularly for use in playgrounds at schools and public parks.

Crone said the automated saw mill can cut about 2,000 board feet of lumber an hour, and at maximum production, can cut about 6.7 million board feet in a year, which happened in 2005, the company's busiest year in the past decade. That adds up to about two semi-truckloads a day that go to fill orders for cabinet, trim and furniture makers up to 300 miles away.

Crone said his company employs about 40, and typically runs sawmilling operations about 45 hours per week. But the added efficiency came at a price - in 2003, a fire leveled the sawmill and destroyed all the former saw equipment. The newer computer-controlled equipment and sawmill building cost the company $2.3 million to rebuild the business.

Crone said times have been tough lately for the wood industry, since the slump in housing construction. "Early in '06 was when things really stared to go downhill," Crone said.

Crone said hardwood prices have declined about 35 percent in the past two years, with the exception of walnut, the price of which has gone up 30 percent.

One change in Indiana's hardwood industry in the past 20 years has been brought on by nature - the decline in certain species of trees.

He said hard maple is the most dominant wood his company handles now, because many forested areas in southern Indiana have high canopies - preventing sunlight from reaching the ground, which oak and hickory trees prefer to sprout.

That's quite different from the mid-1980s, when Crone said half of all the company's production was oak.

"Now 50 percent of our production is walnut," he said. "About 20 percent is hard maple, 20 percent oak and the rest other species."

Crone said he supports active forest management practices recommended by foresters with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, which frequently include advice to regularly harvest trees for the health of forest stands.

"You can go back to some (timber) stands every 10 to 15 years and harvest," said Crone. "Every time you go back, it's better quality canopy."