Economic Feasibility of Products From Inland West Small-Diameter Timber

A large part of the forests located in the Rocky Mountain region of the U.S. West (inland West) is characterized by densely packed, small-diameter stands. The purpose of this study was to examine the economic feasibility of using small-diameter material from this resource to manufacture various wood products: oriented strandboard (OSB), stud lumber, random-length dimension lumber, machine-stress-rated random-length lumber, laminated veneer lumber (LVL), and market pulp. The analysis indicated that LVL promises the best ratio of revenue to wood input, followed by market pulp and OSB. Among the lumber alternatives, machine-stress-rated lumber yields the greatest return. In terms of investment risk, the lower-cost lumber alternatives are fa-vored over the capital-intensive OSB, market pulp, and LVL options. The manufacture of OSB would require the most fiber, almost four times the amount required for market pulp