Wood products technology students are winding down from a productive semester, which included various wood processing and furniture design and construction class projects.
The program is also progressing toward innovative engineered wood products. Led by Mohammadali Azadfar, assistant professor of environmental & renewable resources, and instructor Seth Carsten, students performed a series of technical experiments focused to test the strength of different wood species and glue joints as a part of their class projects during the Fall 2022 semester.
The experiment enabled students to evaluate the strength of glued-jointed sawn white pine, hard maple, and black cherry reinforced with various positioned wood joints such as dowel and biscuit joints. The results will be presented at SUNY Morrisville’s annual Undergraduate Research Conference in Spring 2023.
“The experiment’s results are used to design better small-scale furniture projects in terms of stability and strength at this point and will then assist us in designing large-scale engineered wood products (like CLT) that can be used, for example, in residential construction,” Azadfar said.
Students involved in the experiment were: Gabriel Teeter, Peter Henry Lacijan and Ryan Saffioti.
Azadfar has years of experience in forest biomaterials science and engineering, resource planning and sustaining extension education and applied research programs, with the goal of increasing the cost-effective utilization of forest biomaterials including wood products and sustainable materials.
SUNY Morrisville’s wood technology program offers two options: finish carpentry, which provides students with woodworking and construction skills and also teaches electrical, plumbing and light framing; and furniture production and business, which focuses on the business aspect of the industry and prepares students to work in furniture manufacturing or start their own business. This option also exposes students to accounting, marketing and human resources management.
