Particleboard from Silage Sycamore – Laboratory Production and Testing

Five- to 6-year-old sycamore saplings, with basal diameters of 3 to 6 inches and heights of 20 to 30 feet were used, with bark on but without leaves, to make flakes for both phenolic (PF) and urea (UF) resin bonded flakeboards of 35 and 45 pcf densities. PF boards were all 1/2 inch thick, but both 1/2 and 3/4 inch UF boards were made. Both main stems and the limbs were feasibly converted into a good flake furnish by a preliminary hogging to pulp chip size and then flaking. Some filtering of bark particles was noted on the bottoms of the test panels, but this may have been associated with the hand mat forming process used. Data on mechanical properties and watersoak thickness swelling show that the sycamore furnish makes an acceptable flakeboard with either binder. MOR for the 45 pcf, 6 percent resin content boards averaged 4904 psi and 4066 psi for the UF boards. Although internal bond results were less decisively different, the 24 hour watersoak thickness swelling values for the 45 pcf, 6 percent resin content, 1 percent wax content boards, averaged 12 percent for PF boards and 20 percent for UF boards. WCAMA boil test, accelerated aging on the PF bonded boards indicates that lower board densities and higher resin contents are desirable where the minimizing of thickness swelling is the objective.

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