How We Mill and Kiln Dry Our Slabs
MINAE, Costa Rica's Ministry of Environment, inspects each farm and sets how many trees per hectare may be harvested. I select and approve every Parota and Monkey Pod log we buy from local farmers. Once the paperwork is approved, each log gets its yellow tag, the permit that lets it travel to the mill.
At the mill we unload every log, check it against inventory and number it by size and species. My team and I decide how to cut each log to get the best slabs from it. Fresh slabs are stickered right away and moved to the warehouse where the kiln is.
Slabs are sorted by size, species and thickness, stickered every 12–16 inches and pre-dried for 1.5 months before they go in the kiln. The kiln holds three carts of 15 tons each, about 30 slabs per cart.
Italian control software reads four moisture sensors in the slabs and the humidity in the chamber, and runs four bidirectional fans, four exhaust flaps and a 12-meter stainless steel heater to dry the wood slowly to our target moisture.
Dry slabs are sanded to 120 grit to open up the grain. We wet the surface to photograph its true color before finishing, and give each slab a unique code that ties it to its photos and keeps it traceable all the way to your shop.
When our US stock falls to about half, we load the next container. Each slab is cleaned and strapped in sets of five so nothing shifts in transit. MINAE and phytosanitary officials then fumigate the container and check it against the manifest, the controls that keep illegal wood out of export.
The container ships to Laurens, South Carolina, where every slab on this site is stocked, ready to ship.
MINAE, Costa Rica's Ministry of Environment, inspects each farm and sets how many trees per hectare may be harvested. I select and approve every Parota and Monkey Pod log we buy from local farmers. Once the paperwork is approved, each log gets its yellow tag, the permit that lets it travel to the mill.
At the mill we unload every log, check it against inventory and number it by size and species. My team and I decide how to cut each log to get the best slabs from it. Fresh slabs are stickered right away and moved to the warehouse where the kiln is.
Slabs are sorted by size, species and thickness, stickered every 12–16 inches and pre-dried for 1.5 months before they go in the kiln. The kiln holds three carts of 15 tons each, about 30 slabs per cart.
Italian control software reads four moisture sensors in the slabs and the humidity in the chamber, and runs four bidirectional fans, four exhaust flaps and a 12-meter stainless steel heater to dry the wood slowly to our target moisture.
Dry slabs are sanded to 120 grit to open up the grain. We wet the surface to photograph its true color before finishing, and give each slab a unique code that ties it to its photos and keeps it traceable all the way to your shop.
When our US stock falls to about half, we load the next container. Each slab is cleaned and strapped in sets of five so nothing shifts in transit. MINAE and phytosanitary officials then fumigate the container and check it against the manifest, the controls that keep illegal wood out of export.
The container ships to Laurens, South Carolina, where every slab on this site is stocked, ready to ship.