NeLMA (Northeastern Lumber Manufacturers Association)

06/03/2026

The Only Material That Already Belongs.
What happens when all buildings embody the spirit of the treehouse?

Read on: https://www.nelma.org/the-only-material-that-already-belongs/

05/28/2026

In Freeport, Maine, students and researchers now gather in a building that was designed to do more than shelter them — it was designed to teach them something just by existing.

The Smith Center for Education and Research at Wolfe's Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment opened last fall as the campus centerpiece of a 600-acre working farm focused on regenerative agriculture. Designed by Belfast-based architecture studio OPAL, the 8,800-square-foot building is mass timber throughout, modeled after the working barns on the property, and built to Passive House standards. It is entirely fossil-fuel free and is expected to produce more energy than it consumes over its lifetime.

It is also, simply, a beautiful wood building — and that matters more than people often realize.

Read morehttps://www.nelma.org/surround-students-in-wood/
Photography by Trent Bell.

05/21/2026

Smith College is modeling something valuable for our industry: Wood is a structural material. It belongs in serious buildings.

Read more here: https://www.nelma.org/the-best-classroom-is-the-building-itself/

05/18/2026

What Your Grade Stamp Is Actually Telling You.
Part 1 of 3: How Lumber Gets Graded

This is the first in a three-part series from NELMA breaking down what's in a lumber grade stamp and why it matters. Part 2 covers species designations. Part 3 covers the certification and traceability system.

Every piece of dimensional lumber that leaves a certified mill carries a grade stamp. Most people on the job site treat it as background noise — a smudge of ink that means the wood passed some inspection somewhere. That's underselling it considerably.

The grade stamp is a compressed regulatory document. It tells you what the lumber is rated to do structurally, what species you're working with, where it came from, and who verified it. Building officials require it. Engineers rely on it. And if there's ever a question about whether the right material was used, it's your chain of custody.

This first installment focuses on the part of the stamp most directly tied to structural performance: the grade itself.

Read the article here:
nelma.org/see-the-stamp-trust-the-quality-part-1-of-3/

What Your Grade Stamp Is Actually Telling You. Part 1 of 3: How Lumber Gets Graded This is the first in a three-part series from NELMA breaking down what’s in a lumber grade stamp and why it matters. Part 2 covers species designations. Part 3 covers the certification and traceability system. Every...

05/16/2026

Our hearts and prayers go out to the Robbins family, their employees, and to the family of the firefighter who lost their life serving bravely yesterday afternoon. We continue to lift up all the firefighters and their families following Friday's devastating fire and subsequent explosion at Robbins Lumber Company in Searsmont, Maine.

The Robbins family has been, for generations, an integral part of the NELMA family. As early leaders in wood marketing, they have played a major role in the introduction of Eastern White Pine to the world.

It is with certainty that the Searsmont operation will come back even stronger in the weeks and months to come, and the NELMA family stands beside them as they rebuild.

05/06/2026

When NELMA Students Designed the Moon Base We’re Now Building

In 2018, NELMA challenged architecture and design students to imagine a lunar colony built with wood. At the time, it read like creative speculation — an exercise in rethinking a familiar material in an unfamiliar place. Seven years later, with astronauts having just looped around the Moon on the Artemis II mission and NASA actively planning permanent surface infrastructure as a waypoint to Mars, those student designs look less like imagination and more like early drafts.

Read more: https://www.nelma.org/when-nelma-students-designed-the-moon-base-were-now-building/

05/01/2026

The lumber industry has long supplied the raw material for civilization — framing homes, shaping skylines, furnishing interiors. But raw material alone doesn't drive innovation. That requires designers, architects, and engineers who understand wood deeply enough to push it in new directions. Student design competitions are one of the most direct ways the industry invests in that future, and the organizations and manufacturers behind them deserve more credit than they typically receive.

Learn more here: https://www.nelma.org/building-tomorrows-architects-why-student-design-competitions-matter-for-the-lumber-industry/

04/27/2026

For a siding style rooted in practicality — wide boards nailed to barn frames, with narrow strips sealing the gaps against a New England winter — board and batten has had a remarkable second act. After decades as a footnote in residential exterior design, it's showing up on new construction across the country, on Pinterest boards, in design magazines, and increasingly, in the spec sheets of custom home builders.

Read more about this classic siding style: https://www.nelma.org/board-batten-siding-eastern-white-pine-manufacturers-should-be-paying-attention/

Image from Hancock Lumber.
Project Details:Builder: Solvesen Construction | Bath, MEProject Type: Residential New ConstructionLocation: Georgetown, MaineHancock Location: BrunswickAccount Manager: Ryan Storey

04/21/2026

Over a century ago, a group of architects gathered at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, to judge a design competition for something deceptively simple: a beautiful American house built entirely from white pine, priced at $12,500. The resulting monograph — Volume III, Number 4 of the White Pine Series of Architectural Monographs, published August 1917 — has now reached 2,400 reads, making it our most-read issue by a wide margin.
Read More: https://www.nelma.org/a-1917-white-pine-monograph-has-2-4k-reads-nearly-triple-our-next-most-popular-issue/

04/21/2026

Over a century ago, a group of architects gathered at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, to judge a design competition for something deceptively simple: a beautiful American house built entirely from white pine, priced at $12,500. The resulting monograph — Volume III, Number 4 of the White Pine Series of Architectural Monographs, published August 1917 — has now reached 2,400 reads, making it our most-read issue by a wide margin.

Read more:
https://www.nelma.org/a-1917-white-pine-monograph-has-2-4k-reads-nearly-triple-our-next-most-popular-issue/