These are structural Glu-lams that have been stained. -Jim

We are needing to clad an LVL beam 17' long and are having trouble sourcing wood at that length. A local company offered laminated fir and said we wouldn't see the seam. Is this laminated fir something similar to glu-lam? I understand yours is for structural purposes and we are only looking for cladding. Any help would be great. Thanks for replying!

IMHO, an LVL by itself would be a bit rough...not a finished piece (unless you want a rough look). Cladding is an option, however, it needs to be done correctly otherwise it looks like...cladding rather than a monolithic piece of wood. Glu-lams are composed of built up 2 x members, so you would see each individual 2x...however, we felt this was acceptable as we wanted to express the structure. If the fir they are offering is finger jointed, I believe you *would* see the seam. Are they proposing to bevel the edges?

I don't recall him saying anything about bevelling the edges. We were asking for 2 side clad pieces at 17'x10"x1" thick and the bottom clad piece at 17'x6"x1" thick. They said the laminated fir would have stripes running vertical (when put up on the beam) so the seam would be hard to see since there are other stripes running vertical. Not really sure what this material is they are talking about and if that would look good. They said they could source fir at those measurements but would cost quite a bit more. Hindsight would have bought and engineered beam that had the finished look we were going for. Our current LVL beam has a painted orange bottom and ugly sides. Does IMHO mean "in my honest opinion"? or is that a building acronym?

IMHO means "in my honest opinion"

Thanks so much Jim for all the answers.