A mill in Victoria, Australia, believes cutting logs radiallyâlike how you slice a pizza or a cakeâcreates demonstrably more stable boards than conventionally sawn wood, according to ABC Australia.
The company, Radial Timber, recently built a $6 million sawmill based around the radial milling technique. Radial milling has been around for three decades, but Radial Timber Owner Chris McEvoy said the technique and technology has finally developed to the point where building a mill solely for radial cutting made sense.
McEvoy, a former wood scientist, told ABC the technique has âenormous advantagesâ over existing milling methods. In addition to creating a more stable product, radial sawing allows the mill to convert smaller logs into useful lumber. That means radial sawing could hasten a shift away from natural forest harvesting toward Australiaâs nascent plantation-grown lumber industry, he said.
