In Scandinavia Scots pine heartwood has, in recent years, gained popularity as material for external structures exposed to moderate risk of decay. As non-durable sapwood surrounds the heartwood in pine trunks it is of crucial importance to separate this wood from the heartwood during log processing into heartwood products. Heartwood and sapwood can be differentiated by visual evaluation of colour differences, since the heartwood become darker when exposed to sunlight for some time. However, in many cases it can be very difficult to identify heartwood and sapwood visually, for example on wood surfaces not exposed to sunlight or on surfaces only containing one of either heartwood or sapwood. This paper presents a method for non-destructive classification of Scots pine sapwood and heartwood based on near infrared (NIR)-spectroscopy and multivariate data analyses.

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