In order to make a wood-product panel, for instance a sheet of fiber board, it is standard as described in German patent 4,201,193 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,410,474 to use a continuous belt press having heated upper and lower press plates over which run lower and upper stretches of sheet-steel belts, typically via rollers, that define a longitudinally extending passage. A low-density strand formed of a mixture of wood particles and a heat-activatable binder is fed into the upstream end of this passage and the strand is compacted and heated as it moves downstream to form a hard and dense wood-product panel that is of a vertical thickness that is much smaller than that of the uncompacted strand.
This system is excellent for making large-format panels. It is, however, not suitable for making structural members which are of more compact cross section, that is of roughly equal width and thickness. Forming a large panel and cutting it into strips is an unsatisfactory solution not only because of the extra labor in cutting up the workpiece, but because the cut edges have little structural stability.