System for improving wood strand orientation in a wood strand orienter using rotating orienting fingers

A system for improving wood strand orientation in a wood strand orienter having a plurality of orienter disks. The system includes a plurality of axially-spaced, parallel pre-orienting shafts positioned in a second plane above and substantially parallel to the orienter disks, each one of the pre-orienting shafts having a plurality of wheels mounted thereon. Each of the wheels has a hub and a plurality of outwardly-extending finger members. When the pre-orienting shafts are positioned over the disks, each one of the finger members passes, in turn, through a portion of the volume defined between the two adjacent orienter disks the wheel sits between. This permits bridged wood strands to be turned and straightened, reducing the "% overs", the percentage of strands bridging the orienter disks and carried across the top of the orienter without falling through the orienter.