9313081 Occena Over the years, the human sawyer has been making saw placement decision based on limited information provided by external defects, and whatever internal defects are eventually revealed on the cut log faces by the sawing pattern. The planning of how the hardwood log can be sawn to improve recovery of high value lumber is hampered by the inability of the sawyer to "see" the internal defect location, orientation, and distribution inside the log. With expanded export and domestic markets, low quality logs, increased competition from non wood products, social pressures to manage public lands for nontimber resources, and the reduced profit margin between log costs and lumber process, the hardwood products industry has been exploring alternative means of improving value yield. This provides science and technology based methods and information that will benefit the hardwood products industry through improved product yield. The recent work on the application of photon tomography and other means of non invasive internal scanning of solids have opened up new avenues in the log breakdown planning problem. With new information related to internal defects, questions arise on how this new information can be put to best advantage. Do we need to recognize each defect? How do we process, organize, and interpret the internal defect information? How do we use it to determine sawing cuts for primary processing? Can we use this information as a look ahead for secondary processing?
