ST. CLOUD -- This week in our "Behind the Scenes" series on WJON, we cut, assemble and sand down thousands of cabinet doors at Woodcraft Industries.

Woodcraft Industries produces about 200,000 kitchen cabinet doors a week and have 12 plants located throughout the country.

Director of Operations Paul Becker says they get new shipments of wood everyday that they run through a machine to put spacers in to dry out.

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"The wood we receive comes in wet, so we run them through this machine to get them from 100 percent moisture to about 8 percent moisture in it," says Becker.

The materials are then brought to another building where it's ripped to size, cut and sorted.

"The machine takes the wood strips and runs them through the wood eye and it scans all four sides, then the computer makes the decision what characteristics are on that piece of wood, the determines from that when to cut that product out," says Becker.

The styles and rails are then cut into the wood planks before being assembled.

"From here we take the styles and the rails and assemble them in the plywood center panel before assembling them into the final door," says Becker.

The doors are then sanded on both sides and put through a final hand inspection.

"Any characteristic that should not be there, they'll make the repair on that door then from there it will go to our packaging area and shipped to our customers," says Becker.

The plant has about 1,500 employees building the individual components. Becker says to maintain order the plant is divided into two sections, stock and individual assemblies.

 

Employees at Woodcraft Industries inspect the cabinet doors before sending them to packaging. (Photo: Alex Svejkovsky, WJON News).
Employees at Woodcraft Industries inspect the cabinet doors before sending them to packaging. (Photo: Alex Svejkovsky, WJON News).
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