Leonard Opel, the founder and one of the owners of Meadowood Industries, has discovered a way to make a beautiful, durable panel out of rye grass straw without using any formaldehyde or other toxic chemicals to bind the straw. In 1976, Leonard and a partner, Dale Rose, began doing some preliminary research and test-ing to see if rye grass straw could be used to make durable boards.
“We bought ourselves an old clothes dryer, and that’s how we mixed our first batch of straw and sprayed the resin in on it,” recounts Leonard. Dale worked in the local plywood mill, Lebanon Plywood, so he was familiar with the techniques involved and brought in others from the mill to help. “We went down to the plywood mill and they made us a four by four foot sheet in their lab. They really encouraged us to go on with it. So we went up to a plywood and panel equipment sales company in Portland and found an old plywood press in the trash heap. They refurbished it and sold it to us for $21,000, half of the $40,000 plus we had been quoted by others. Then we got an old fertilizer mixer from an outfit over by Corvallis and revamped it so we could filter the fines out of the straw and spray resin in and mix it togeth-er.” With this bootstrapped equipment, Meadowood Industries was in business, officially incorporating in 1977.
Leonard is careful to explain that strawboard is an interior, not exterior product and will not replace wood. “All we’re doing is making our wood products go farther. If they hadn’t come up with particleboard, we’d already be out of timber. Now let’s use the straw.”