The dude walking across the logs in the water made it look so easy.

That place has got to smell amazing.

I love how the log core waste from back then is thicker than the logs used now...

I didn't realize the 1950's sawmills operated to the dankest of dope ass beats...

The 1950s factory was actually way more high tech than I was expecting

1954: alternating directions 2016: at right angles Using different words for exactly the same thing makes it so much more hi-tech.

I now know the reason my grandpa’s shed made of plywood from the 50’s is still standing and mine made 3 days ago is falling in. He remembered to use nails

I always wondered how they made the stuff. I didn’t know a tree trunk was “peeled” and rolled out. Interesting.

If you watch this is reverse, you'll learn how trees are made.

5:46 imagine having to wear a shirt that says “committed to wood” lol

I was actually impressed with the 50's mill. The process was actually pretty sophisticated and pretty well mechanized. There was even a guy wearing a hard hat. Was really sad to see the giant trees felled for this though. They should have also included OSB plywood. Since most modern homes constructed (in Canada at least) do not use laminated plywood. Maybe some of the cabinetry, but not much.

About 60 years ago, when I was about 4 years old, I remember riding in the back seat of my parents car in Ontario, Canada and looking down and seeing the river full of cut logs.... I was fascinated and asked my father why and how they got in the river...

The way lumber prices are, you’d think people do everything with their teeth.

Should have said that the size of the “scrap”log in the old times is the size of today’s starting log.

As a naval mine warfare historian, I find the inventor of plywood, Immanuel Nobel, to be fascinating. (1) He invented the first mines purchased on a large scale for military use. These mines were successfully used in the Crimean War to defend the approaches to St Petersburg. (2) One of his sons, Ludvig, invented the oil tanker ship, and together with his brother Robert basically founded the Russian oil industry. (2) A 3rd son, Alfred, invented dynamite. When a French newspaper mistakenly reported the death of Ludvig as being that of Alfred, and reported rather unflatteringly on Alfred’s life, Alfred bequeathed in his will his entire fortune to be used to reward advances in various pursuits, the highest of which is peace. That prize is known as the Nobel Peace Prize. Not a bad legacy for the inventor of plywood!

If anyone was curious like I was, the veneer patching machine was patented in 1953 by the E. V. Prentice company from Portland, Oregon

1954: 150 people work hard to make some fine plywood. 2016: 15 people oversee robots doing hard work to make some fine plywood. 2062: 1 person oversee advanced 3D printer rearranging cellulose molecules into some fine plywood.

Speaking of gloves, one fast rule is that you never wear them operating machinery.. such as feeding a rip saw. And to my surprise, pulling venear and core off the dryers, just how quick a man's hands calluse and toughen up. Besides, those typical thick canvas gloves only last maybe a week and a half, at tops, anyway. Loved the work, but that was there and then, not here and now w/ technology. My favorite postion was spreaderman, just before the Hot press. Thanks

That is some highly advanced machinery they are using in Finland , I have a feeling the plywood from homedepot is made using a 1948 Buick attached to reciprocating saw.

The dislikes are from OSHA inspectors that watched the first 5 minutes of the video.

I used to work in the "old" industry. I still remember the smells and the heavy machinery.

I can see they started to wear gloves

1:30 the "waste log" is the size of what they cut these days

I worked 4 summers for Weyerhaeuser on both the green end (where the wet boards are fed into the dryer machines) and the dry end where they are graded for the size of the imperfections before going to the ply-veneer machine. It was grueling, but working there put me through college and taught me the value of hard work.

Should be called "Documentary Film-Making: Then and Now." You really have to notice the rapid superfluous cuts and moving shots and the lack of attention to demonstrating the actual process, in the second part. It's like MTV vs. Citizen Kane.

Back in the 70s the same Koskisen sawmill was producing lots of waste wood core. My grandfather found out how cheap those cores were and started building saunas for himself from those cores. Sadly it didn't take long for the mill to catch on to what he was doing and they promptly raised the prices. Now 50 years later his saunas are still like brand new.

"Okay so basically we skin a log and press it together"

The veneer mill I work at has been there since the forties and is still doing it the same way. From cutting the logs, to the guillotine operater, to sorting the boards, to feeding the dryer, to chipping the waste and scraping the furnace. We have Zero robots and fancy controls, and I couldn't be happier with it.

It’s amazing to see that in the old days, the difference in the diameter is one that the “waste” of the Douglas fir core is about the same as what the modern Finnish company was using (in relative terms of course). Loved watching both operations! Thanks for showing us this video....Phil

That old footage was very impressing, the future of the past.

3:35 You have a core feeder who feeds the strips through the glue machine, a core layer who lays the glued strips, and then you have the head and tail sheet turners who lift 2 full sheets together up over the body of the core layer. I was a sheet turner for 2 summers right out of high school. Long, hot work. We wore skin tight heavy rubber gloves. The core layer got pretty pissed of if you hit him with sheets going over his head. Sometimes it couldn't be helped because the sheets would break apart in your hand from being so brittle or cracked. 30 sheets of plywood to a load (into press) at 100 to 150 loads per shift if you were fast and the wood was good.

A tree took 300 hundred years to grow, or even more, and a man in minutes turn it into plywood. No wonder we have nothing left. Nature paying a high price for industrialization.

In the middle 1960's I worked in the Weyerhauser plywood plant in Longview, WA and that 1950's technology was still in use.

Making cylinders into planes

Boy, that takes me back 50 years to when I operated these machines in the Georgia Pacific plywood mill in Sweethome Oregon. The things you forget...

they also apparently add a layer of gold nowadays, at least the price reflects that.

I was a sawyer and grader in a plywood mill in the early 70s. This is a fascinating film, especially how different it is from then.

The moment you realize that the waste in 1954 is the size of today's tree

Amazing! The way the wood just rolls off the log in flexible sheets is soo cool!

You mill workers are beasts, thanks for all you do.

Almost every job shown in the old timey one was a high possibility of instant death or brutal injury.

Did I just watch a 6 minute video on plywood? Yes, yes i did.

Wow and no gloves while handling those raw sheets! The comparison between then and now is an awesome look at how manufacturing has evolved. That truly is a high tech factory of the future!

This song is so addictive it makes me want to watch the video over and over and over and over again just so I can listen to the music.

This is really cool, but how is the garbage I buy at Home Depot made? Because it has thousands of voids and cracks instantly.

Gotta love how they did it with the camera shots in today's version vs old days! Back then cameramen just stood there going WHOOOOAAA everytime in one spot while today's cameramen would be whipping their drones in the air full swing at the angles and good hd close-ups!

Old timey engineering on full display. Nothing new under the sun. Great video.

Watching this is so habit forming. One of best videos on UKposts. Way better than the garbage on TV. Any new TV sold should have UKposts standard.

No gloves back in the day, splinters must have been hell.

Those lady's t-shirts said commitment to wood, I need one of those for my girlfriend!

That is some amazing technology. I love that with plywood there is no sawdust waste from milling boards, the cross lamination gives it exceptional properties, not splitting and higher strength and well it is just all around interesting to see! Thanks for sharing

thank u for putting it here.. (appreciate it)

What's the best way to carve wood? Whittle by whittle.

My great grandfather in North Western Ontario worked on the saw mills doing this very same thing!

Wood is a hugely underappreciated miracle material! We all take it for granted!

Dude this music is on point. Plywood used to be so cool.

That place must smell amazing

Man I have been seeing that biscuit cut out on plywood 3:18 for so many years and always wondered about it finally my life is complete

Just amazing. I always wondered how it was done, after working off and on over the years with plywood.

Fascinating absolutely amazing! I work with the stuff all the time but never really considered how it’s made

2:55 Good grief those dudes must have hands like leather

This is the first video I have seen with this kind of music that was about actual wood.

Worked in a plywood mill for 8.5 years. We made Multiply underlay with the green X's on it and we also made wood hockey stick shafts.

Humans are incredible . To come up with this idea, then build the machines to accomplish it....is..well, incredible !

I’ll bet that whole operation smells amazing. I’ll bet a lot of that equipment is still working. I’ll bet a lot of that plywood from the fifties is still in service. I’ll bet the trees grew back by now.

"...The Finnish'ed plywood ..." Hey wait a minute!

I was just wondering yesterday how plywood is made. Thank you for posting!

Back breaking work all day long. Who can be nostalgic about it, but those who where not there?

Everything in this process is so fucking dangerous and I love it.

I work at a lumber company, and we watched this during some classroom instruction. The whole time I was comparing to how laxed the safety was back in the 1950s, compared to now. This is well before OSHA, and they certainly did things WAY different 70 years ago. It's honestly stunning for me.

This a great video educational. I'm a die hard fan of plywood and many other lumber products. This is not only my first watching of this channel but how plywood & veneer is made. At this writing i'm looking for veneers for my older loudspeaker sets.They're drying & over waxed they need replacement. I learned so much watching this nostalgia & current technologies cut & create lumbers! Awesome video! 🎥👋👋👋👋👋👋👋

I could watch this all day.

And yet every damn sheet of modern birch plywood we receive is either delaminating , has voids, or is badly out of square. I e been building furniture and cabinets for 35years prices keep going up and quality keeps going down.

Good stuff. It's interesting to see how occupational safety has changed over the years.

I hope the people of Finland appreciate the engineering and workmanship that went into building this machinery they use. That engineering from the Congo is a sight to behold

My favorite part is how everyone back then had a job and purpose, and how machines replaced them all to save a few dollars.

With all these modern, efficient, cost saving techniques, why is plywood so freaking expensive?

Finnish Birch ply is good stuff. Should show how the craptastic plywood from the local big box store is made. :P

Greetings from British Columbia, Canada. The first part of this video reminded me of the films we were shown in elementary school, extolling the virtues of our major industry. That was the 1960s, and how much has changed. Back then, those huge old-growth trees were still seen as limitless, the forests clear cut as fast as possible. Forestry jobs, whether falling trees or working in the mills, paid well but had a staggering death and injury rate, which was accepted as normal back then. Fast forward, and how much has changed. The "cores" that were discarded in the first segment are about as big around as the second or third growth trees being harvested now. The plants are all computerized to maximize yield from smaller stick trees (and yes, when you are old enough to remember the size of the logs on the logging trucks once going to the mills, they are sticks today) with a fraction of the previous workforce. Once ravaged forests struggle to recover, but even extensive replanting can't replace in a couple of decades what took centuries to grow. Now, warmer winters have led to wide swaths of forests dying to beetle infestation - so much that the dead wood can't be harvested before it's unusable. Then the mega-fires come in and scorch the earth so that everything, including the micro-environment in the soil, is dead. I hope they're doing better work in Finland with replacing trees faster than they consume them, otherwise it's just another damned gold rush, and when it's over.... Fancy computerized plants won't make a damned bit of difference if the resource is managed with long-term goals in mind.

Wow!!! the real MVP is the one who created the machine to make the plywood!!!

The 1954 footage is astounding. Massive old growth trees being used for plywood!?!? They could have gotten some awesome dimensional lumber out of that! Such waste of our resources, things were taken for granted then.

I never realized that one layer in plywood is called Veneer in English. I think this must have something in relation with Finnish word for Plywood - it's called Vaneri

Look how many people were employed back then! Men and women. Talk about team work💪

Thank you for posting this.

oof, breaks my heart every time i see someone chop a redwood

How many workers does it take to make a sheet of plywood? Depends on how thin you slice them.

thank you for showing it!

Thank you for your hard work

1:28 the centers of logs now a days is where the money is , Heart wood. Pretty incredible that we can peel a log like its a paper towel roll.

Modern way ain't no fun. No risk of death or at least serious injury. I love the Amish sawmills!!!

It's amazing how well dressed and skilled workers were back then

Human ingenuity - the advance of technology , I wouldn't trade with the wealthiest king of 100 years ago. The internet and plywood and a thousand other things... overall life just keeps getting better

I thought the thumbnail picture was of a huge burrito

IS IT ME OR THE THICKNESS OF THE LOGS HAVE BEEN REDUCED SIGNIFICANTLY? TEN YEARS FROM NOW WE WILL BE PROCESSING TWIGS!!!

this video is buttery smooth

This is a gold mine.

Wtf?! Freddy Krueger at 51 sec😂

Very interesting. Both processes are interesting But I have to admit, watching machines do most of the work is not as poetic as watching the men do their thing.

Really interesting! I love watching these how things are made videos!

I worked in a pulp mill and used to work the pond and wood room. I fell into the pond once. Lucky to be alive since it wasn't full at the time. All the bark wanted to pull me under.