Manufactured wood is also referred to as engineered wood. This wood has been modified and enhanced by combining different wood pieces and pressing them together with glue, sawdust, and other ingredients. The wood top layer or surface consists of natural wood protected by melamine. However, the underneath layers consist of wood composite layers. These layers get primarily referred to as MDF or Medium Density Fiberboard.
You might think that manufactured wood is only a recent thing. Yet, there are indications that even the ancient Egyptians knew how to laminate wood. In fact, archeologists have found traces and evidence of laminated wood in the pharaohs’ tombs. Moreover, the ancient Chinese also knew how to glue together shaved pieces of wood for use in their furniture. So, we can assume that the ancient people knew how to make manufactured wood.
How Are Manufactured Wood Made?
The lumber drying mill industry is the specific industry that transforms natural wood from trees to manufactured wood products. Wood undergoes various processes in the lumber drying mills like the head rig, edging, trimming, rough lumber sorting, stickering, drying, planing, and grading.
Manufactured wood, however, is different from natural wood products. It is enhanced and modified wood that has undergone combining of wood pieces together and pressing these wood pieces along with other essential ingredients like sawdust and glue.
As you strip the manufactured wood of its top layer, you will discover that it is made of softwood and hardwood. Nevertheless, these hard and softwoods get combined with additives consisting of adhesives.
Remember the waste wood you often see in sawmills. Those pieces of waste wood get treated with chemicals and heated to reduce them to the proper size requirements for manufactured wood. Nevertheless, whole logs get often used for plywood, particle board, and MDF.
Manufactured wood gets often utilized in different applications. Moreover, you can use them in home construction or commercial buildings. They also get used in industrial products.
However, some manufacturers started to invent a method to produce engineered wood without using the wood raw materials at all. Let’s take a look at the video below.
Advantages and Disadvantages of the Use of Engineered Wood
If ever you intend to purchase and use manufactured wood for your wood projects, it will be best to know the following pros and cons of its use. This way, you can decide whether to use manufactured wood or not:
Advantages of Manufactured/Engineered Wood
Engineered wood has quickly become a favorite for flooring because of the many advantages it offers. First, it is sustainable. Manufacturers of engineered wood can use young trees and still achieve the same strength and density as old timber.
Manufacturing engineered wood lessens waste because it maximizes the use of every tree part. In making the engineered wood, even the leftover pieces and defective lumber are utilized.
Furthermore, engineered wood can be more robust and sturdier than dimensional lumber, given its high density. Moreover, its grain layers run in different directions for added stability.
You can also choose engineered beams of various sizes since they were made of composite rather than cut from a single tree. You will also find engineered wood capable of resisting splitting or warping.
Disadvantages of Using Manufactured/Engineered Wood
Nothing can beat natural wood when it comes to aesthetics because real wood is very pleasing to look at. You will see the beautiful strips of the real wood, which you will not see in engineered wood, save for the architectural-grade glulam. Another thing is that engineered wood like the LSL, for example, is more expensive compared to dimensional lumber.
Different Types of Manufactured Wood
If you are considering using manufactured wood, you might be confused at the myriads of manufactured wood at hand, making the choosing process challenging. It will help if you are cognizant of the following different types of manufactured wood to help you quickly distinguish one from the other and choose the ideal type of engineered wood for your needs:
1) Plywood
The original engineered wood is the plywood that you would often see used by woodworkers and DIYers. It gets manufactured using cross-laminated veneer sheets, bonded under pressure and heat, and adhesives that are moisture-resistant and durable.
As you flay open the plywood panels, you will see that the veneer’s grain direction alternate from one layer to another. This cross-orienting of grain direction adds panel strength and stiffness to plywood.
Examples of plywood include structural composite panels and oriented strand boards. As a panel-shaped material made of many thin layers of veneers or plies, the plywood gets produced in various qualities due to their different usage. The plywood’s quality usually hinges on the number of veneer layers and gluing.
2) Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF)
Medium density fiberboard is popularly known by its initial. Manufacturers produce MDF by breaking down softwood and hardwood pieces into tiny fibers. Afterward, these fibers get combined by resin binders and wax forming panels.
This combination of fibers, wax, and resin binders happens under extreme pressure and heat. The resulting MDF is more often very dense and is even denser than oriented strand board and plywood. MDF, however, are graded accordingly, and there are MDF grades that could withstand weather and water.
3) Oriented Strand Board (OSB)
OSB gets manufactured by combining wood flakes and strands along with adhesives. Afterward, the combination gets compressed. You’ll see OSB in wide mats and can use it to bear enough load. Hence, they are ideal for roof decking and flooring.
Oriented strand boards get created equally. You’ll see some OSB sanded like those of Legacy premium subfloor or Advantech. However, other boards are not sanded. Besides, some OSB can resist moisture while others can’t. So, if ever you would use OSB, go for OSB with premium grade.
Oriented strand boards might expand and contract due to moisture. So, if you would use them, you should allow for a gap at their ends so that they would not buckle. You can also go for those with a pre-manufactured stop that allows for a ½” gap between boards for the tongue and groove of your subflooring.
4) Densified Wood
Densified wood is a product of compressing wood fibers using a mechanical hot press. This process increases the density of the wood. This enhanced density can increase the stiffness and strength of the wood significantly. Studies on densified wood show that the mechanical strength of this wood increases many times (three-fold).
5) Chemically Densified Wood
Recent experiments combined chemical processes and hot mechanical press methods to enhance wood’s mechanical properties and density further. The chemical processes allow the breaking down of hemicellulose and lignin, which wood has. The remaining cellulose strands get mechanically hot pressed.
Remember that in densified wood, the hot compression produces a three-fold increase in the wood strength. However, the resulting wood exhibits approximately an 11-fold enhancement in density and strength in the chemically densified wood. The reason is the ensuing hydrogen bonds formed between the cellulose nanofibers.
Hence, the chemically densified wood exhibits strength equal to that of steel utilized in the structural construction of a building.
6) Fiberboard
Fiberboard either comes in medium density or high density. It gets usually manufactured by breaking down softwood and hardwood residuals into fibers. Afterward, the resulting tiny fibers are combined with resin binder and wax. Then, the mixture gets formed into panels via the application of pressure and high temperature.
7) Particle Board
Particle boards get produced from wood chips, sawdust, and sawmill shavings that get combined with a suitable binder or synthetic resin. This mixture gets compressed and extruded. Manufacturers of particle boards usually use Urea Formaldehyde as glue to bind wooden chips.
Particle boards come in different types like single-layer, three-layer, and graded-density particle boards. As a wood material, particle board is less expensive but denser than conventional plywood.
Particle board, however, tends to expand and discolorize when affected by moisture, especially when you don’t finish them with sealer or paint.
8) Laminated Veneer Lumber (LVL)
Laminated veneer lumber or LVL is manufactured by bonding wood veneers in a huge billet. The veneers’ grains are parallel to the length. The result exhibits improved dimensional stability and mechanical properties.
LVL belongs to the structural composite lumber family that you can use for similar structural applications like those of conventional sawn timber and lumber.
LVL is composed of many veneer sheets assembled using waterproof adhesives. You can use it for beams, headers, rim boards, roadway signposts, truck bed decking, and other applications.
9) Cross Laminated Timber (CLT)
If you’re looking for a versatile multi-layered panel, you should check out the CLT. You will notice that CLT has its layer of boards positioned crosswise to another layer for enhanced strength and rigidity.
You can use the CLT for all assemblies and long spans like walls, floors, and roofs. CLT allows for faster construction because the panels get finished off-site and are ready to fit when supplied to you. All you need to do is screw them together.
10) Parallel Strand Lumber (PSL)
Parallel strand lumber is composed of long veneer strands set in parallel formation, where it got its name. The veneer strands get bonded by adhesive to form the structural section. PSL exhibits a high load carrying capacity.
Besides, it is resistant to changes in season. For this reason, it is ideal for column and beams construction. You can also use it for headers, beams, and lintels.
11) Laminated Strand Lumber (LSL)
Another engineered wood is laminated strand lumber or LSL. This engineered wood gets produced from (flaked) short wood strands around one foot long, and it exhibits an excellent length-to-thickness ratio. It also shows remarkable fastener-holding strength.
These strands get oriented, fashioned into a billet or large mat, and pressed. LSL often gets used in different applications like headers, beams, studs, millwork, components, and rim boards.
Manufactured Wood’s Grades
If you want to purchase manufactured wood, it will be best to consider the grades of manufactured wood. Manufactured timbers are graded accordingly from low grade to high grade. Low-grade engineered wood, of course, is not meant for high-end applications.
Manufactured woods get graded according to the wood’s number of knotholes and voids. Besides, the grades refer to the amount of repair needed to patch up the defects of the manufactured wood.
Moreover, the adhesive used in wood manufacturing also forms part of the grading determination. One method used for grading wood is the method offered by the APA Engineered Wood Association.
- Grade A: A is the highest grade of manufactured wood that showcases excellent quality. Included in this grade are the Smooth Can and Expensive Veneers. These manufactured woods are also easy to paint.
- Grade B: B refers to the high-quality manufactured wood with small patches and is less smooth compared to Grade A. Its minor flaws, however, are easy to repair.
- Grade C: C includes manufactured wood with knots that are visible and with 1.5” discoloration.
- Grade D: D include those manufactured woods that can get damaged due to their defects and cheap manufacturing process. They are also hard to repair.
When selecting manufactured wood based on its grade, you need to consider the applications of the manufactured wood you intend to buy. If you want to build a cabinet, for example, it will be best to select A-grade engineered wood so that you will not have problems with nailing, screwing, and painting. It will help to choose something with solid and lightweight properties. Plywood, for example, is great for cabinet making. However, if you have a limited budget, you can also go for MDF, which has many applications.
Which is Better Between Solid Wood and Manufactured Wood?
At first glance, you might mistake manufactured wood for solid wood. Yet, there are remarkable differences between these two. Manufactured wood, for example, gets produced by a series of processes like heating, gluing, and compressing of sawdust and wood chips to come up with a composite material with wood-like properties. Besides, the manufactured wood is usually topped with authentic wood called veneer.
Manufactured wood is a composite of organic components bonded together by inorganic chemicals. It also exhibits layers if you look at it from the side. So, if you don’t have a keen eye, you might conclude that the manufactured wood is natural.
Solid wood, however, is milled directly from tree timber. This means it did not undergo any artificial processes except that drying and milling. Besides, they are made of a single wood piece and don’t contain glue or any adhesive. Hence, they are naturally durable.
Conclusion
We have constantly been searching for the ultimate construction materials that are even better than natural construction materials like wood. In our search for the best materials, the engineered wood or manufactured wood was born. Engineered timber offers dimensional stability and strength that you would seldom find in some kinds of wood. Hence, it is best used for flooring, siding, ceiling, and subfloor.
Engineered wood offers versatility. You can use them for various applications like building cabinets, bed frames, etc. As mentioned above, the use of engineered wood comes with pros and cons. Knowing these pros and cons, as well as the different types of engineered wood will help you decide whether to go for engineered wood or not in your woodworking projects.