Abstract: A process and apparatus for forming a reconsolidated wood product, and a partially rended natural wood bundle therefor, comprises partially rending natural wood to form a plurality of flexible open lattice work webs each of naturally interconnected wood strands which are generally aligned along a common grain direction with a substantial proportion of the strands in each web being substantially discrete but incompletely separated from each other. Each web is of increased width laterally and correspondingly decreased thickness compared to the natural wood but they may vary in dry wood densities. To avoid this the webs are compacted widthwise to substantially uniform dry wood densities and this may involve weighing the webs and measuring their moisture content. The compacted webs are then abutted width-to-width and partially rended natural wood bundles of preselected widths and dry wood densities are cut from the mat.

Abstract: Apparatus and method for spreading and refining natural wood (13) which has been crushed in a pair of crushing rollers, to form a flexible open lattice work web (14) of naturally interconnected wood strands which are generally aligned along a common grain direction and a substantial proportion of which are substantially discrete but incompletely separated from each other. The spreading and refining is performed by passing the crushed carcass (14) through at least two roller pairs (30) which have spaced corrugated rollers (32) with the maximum spacing between the corrugations of the opposed spaced corrugated rollers decreasing in the roller pairs with increasing distance from the crushing rollers. At least one roller (32) of each spaced corrugated roller pair is axially reciprocated. Between said at least two spaced corrugated roller pairs (30) is a pair (66) of intermeshing corrugated rollers (70, 74).