I went over to Hull Forrest Products and took a tour of the facility. It was a very interesting hour+ tour from tree coming in the front door to boards going out the back door.
Most interesting was watching the mill cut the tree, taking off just enough to expose what will be a good board on the next cut, then the saw returning to make that cut. Damned fast. It was a 40' long double sided blade that takes a 1/4" kerf.
The flatsawn board then go to the grader. This is a $900,000 machine that takes the image of the board, determines the best way to cut the sides give the size, grade, the dollar value, board feet, and then sends it through the saw. I asked about accuracy compared to hand grading. He said that test they ran with the trained professional graders are about equal, but the human cannot do 15 boards per minute.
After cutting off the better outside board, the inner core is sent to another machine where it is cut for lower grades for furniture frames, pallets, whatever.
They sell green as well as dried lumber. Their kilns each hold 220,000 board feet and take about 31 days to dry a batch to 7%. It is the regraded (they remove any splits, etc) bundled, stored, shipped (much to export).
The heat for the kilns as well as the buildings is from steam generated in a sawdust fired boiler.
Overall, a very interesting morning.