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The first and most important thing to consider about any worktop is the stave width, as this immediately illustrates the quality of lumber the manufacturer started with. The narrower the stave the lower grade of lumber, with 40 mm being the lowest. 40 mm staves have become an industry standard for low grade finger jointed worktops as the process only demands the poorest lumber. Since the wastage in so high with such narrow staves, it would be uneconomical to even consider third grade. The knock on effects from starting with such a low grade of lumber are numerous. For example, rarely do you find factories in China and Bulgaria using waterproof glue as it is simply too expensive relative to the value of product they are producing. Likewise, production plants don’t run with the fine tolerances required, and the attention to detail needed to produce a lovely flowing worktop, for example colour matching, is just not there. Norfolk Oak’s minimum stave width for Classic Butchers’ Block is 55 mm, going up to 85 mm. In fact we manufacture some staves 125 mm wide, however this looks too wide in the classic worktops, so we slice it in half. |
When the lumber arrives at our mill in Ohio it is spot checked for grading, and then goes in to the rough mill. On this photgraph you can see Oak boards about to go through the laser sizer. First thing to note is the quality of the Oak planks - this is how they have come from the lumber merchant. Most of them are already clear of knots and defects, and are 'over long' planks - ie over 12 feet. The laser sizer simply measues the planks for length and width, and then a computer automatically tells the rip saw (not seen in this photograph) where to cut that particular plank to optimse the yield. 
Having been sized, the planks then go through a 'dynamic' rip saw and come out in one of three standard widths. The photograph to the right shows the output run. Normally there are a couple of guys watching this part of the process, and if we are looking for planks for certain types of boards we manually pull them off the line here. Roughly two thirds of the workers in the mill are Amish, and it would offend them to have their photographs taken, hence the lack of people around. In the background you can just make out stacks of lumber waiting to go in to the rough mill.
The different lengths are then sorted and stacked according to length and width as seen here. We can separate up to 15 different lengths/widths if we want to.
The finger jointing machine cuts 'fingers' at each end so when the ends are glued and pressed together the join it makes is enormously strong. It is at this point that we have to decide how long we want this particular run of worktops to be. The machine automatically selects the required number of staves to make that length, and then it glues and compresses the staves to make one long stave.