Begun as a complement to The Last Word in the January 2022 issue, this page contains links to the article series written over the last several years. Wood Components in Multi-Family Housing (5 articles from March 2018 to July 2018): Wood Components in Multi-Family Housing, Part...

Alpine Engineered Products’ new owners greenlighted both a new linear saw and a major upgrade to their component saw, but they gave Dave McAdoo a nearly impossible deadline. He would have to deliver both by BCMC 2002, just 3½ months away. And the most difficult of these, the linear...

Do CMs have a role in Cross Laminated Timber Structures? I returned to the Apex Plaza (described on these pages in April 2021, The Last Word on CLT – Cross Laminated Timber) to find out. On my prior trip, I marveled at the beauty of the fully exposed beams, columns, and CLT floor panels....

A David and Goliath struggle was brewing over the linear saw, and it was ready to boil over at BCMC in October 2002. It would pit Jim Urmson, a lone mechanic who was pioneering his first machine, against Alpine’s engineers, who had launched multiple winning machines. Though Urmson had...

At each BCMC, we’re able to see the evolution of our industry in real time. Right now, we’re seeing how to integrate machines that used to operate independently. These machines, the saws and the tables, have had sixty years of improvements, and a billion dollars of CM investments....

As the new Millennium dawned, it still hadn’t dawned on CMs that a linear saw was a sure bet. Jim Urmson was getting great results with his rough prototype, but he didn’t know whether other truss shops would. Fortunately, Jim’s plate salesman, Sid Gwyn, was so confident in...

Only a fortunate few in our industry knew Paul Robertson, who succumbed to Covid September 7. But those of us who did know that he stood for the values that has made this business great, honesty, humility, and hard work. Paul was a nuts-and-bolts guy in a nuts-and-bolts business. Yet he was able...

What I experienced at the truss industry’s first trade show was the bare bones beginning of fifty years of industry progress. But, at first glance in 1971, it didn’t seem so, as I found only a handful of 8x10 booths, tucked in the corner of the Louisville Fairgrounds. Yet plenty of...

In the 1990s, two small town entrepreneurs tackled vexing cutting problems, but from very different angles, and their innovations set the table for today’s linear saw industry. Jim Urmson, working in Mt. Dora, Florida, population 14,000, started from the ground up, aiming to automate his...

Why did most of today’s saw technology come from small shops and not from large machinery companies? And how could just a handful of not well-known people, working in remote locations, make such a difference? Until recent years, they didn’t make much money. Most sold their businesses...