Properties of solid wood for improved sawn products have been so far been investigated for three tree species.

 

In the Innovood project, samples of Norway spruce (Picea abies) and Scots pine (Pinus silvestris) were samples in Sweden and Finland. Samples were taken at different heights from trees of differenet growth rates in stands of different ages and site conditions. Wood and fibre properties were analysed in the Innventia Wood and Fibre Measurement Centre, chemical composition by Södra Research (Sweden), wood and knot properties at VTT (Finland) and pulp properties at Innventia. A database was compiled by Innventia with related properties of stands, trees, wood, knots and fibres, reflecting the large variability in the forest. It is available for the project partners, offering a spectrum of possibiliyies in modelling of property variations and relationships between properties, for sawn products mostly by VTT.

 

Properties of different progeny of Sitka spruce (Picea sichensis) in Scotland have been compared from a sawmilling perspective in cooperation with Forest Research (UK). In another project, variations in wood density, microfibril angle and wood stiffness with SilviScan, and relationships between them, have been investigated and modelled, resulting in a thesis at Glasgow Universtity.  

 

Mechanical properties of Norway spruce (Picea abies) and their heritability have been investigated, resulting in a thesis at the Norvegian University of Life Sciences. Another study on Norway spruce and Loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) is soon concluded with a thesis at NCSU (US).