Beverly Wood Manufacturing: Colonial Millwork & Armstrong

Knives for moldings

The group started the day by visiting Colonial Millwork in Beverly, WV.  Colonial Millwork makes mouldings for cabinets and floors. Typically the mill has 800,000 board feet of lumber on hand of various species that includes exotic woods from around the world. They purchase lumber from the eastern U.S. and distribute directly to retailers. The company has over 4,000 knife profiles to create mouldings for up to 9,000 SKU.

         CNC Machine for cutting shapes from panels













Our next stop was was Armstrong Products. The division in Beverly is the hardwood flooring for Armstrong. The products manufactured are pre-finished floors that are ready to shipment to retailers for ultimate consumption by consumers. The plant has the largest kiln operation east of the Mississippi River and operates 38 kilns for drying wood. The kilns are fueled by sawdust from the plant, but even with the kiln sawdust burning, Armstrong removes four full truck loads of sawdust each day from the facility. They focus on the traditional flooring lines the utilize oak, maple, and ash species. Unfortunately, photography and video was not allowed in the plant which is by far the largest wood manufacturer we visited while in Randolph County.

Think about the following:

• What are the benefits of focusing on only a few species of wood for Armstrong?
• Why would Colonial Millwork store so many knife profiles? How would this affect future mill work?