A new manufacturing system, the PrimWood Method, has been proposed to improve the utilization of wood.  A basic concept within this method is the sawing pattern called star sawing, which produces timber with both rectangular and triangular cross sections. This method facilitates an efficient production of radially sawn timber with vertical annual rings, without juvenile wood.

The sawn timber produced in the PrimWood Method is used to produce high quality, knot-free solid wood panels with vertical annual rings.  In this process, the timber is finger jointed to form knot-free lengths which are glued together into a block.  This block can then be divided according to thickness into thinner panels with vertical annual rings.  In star-sawing, a certain volume of clear pieces are obtained which are relatively long, i.e. longer than 1 metre. It is not desirable to finger-joint these pieces, but instead to use them to manufacture products without any finger-joint.

The PrimWood Method has been tested in an industrial plant. The manufacturing system was designed for a sawing capacity of about 30 000 m3 logs, which corresponds to 16 800 m3 of star-sawn timber per shift per annum.  The production of solid wood panel was then designed to give a volume of 5 800 m3 per annum.