BURNHAM - Inside Pride Sports manufacturing plant, thousands of wooden dowels rolled off an internal assembly line. Dowels are the basic unit of Pride Sports’ wood products and most were milled into golf tees and cigar tips as usual. But a handful emerged as smaller dowels with distinctively spaced notches: Lincoln Logs.

On Wednesday executives of the Tennessee-based company announced that they are close to finalizing a deal with K’NEX, maker of the nearly 100-year-old homestead construction toy, to manufacture pieces that have long been made overseas.

According to Chris Thompson, Pride Sports’ vice president of operations, the company approached K’NEX in 2013 after an employee learned that the Pennsylvania-based toymaker was looking for a domestic manufacturer for Lincoln Logs. Earlier this year, Pride built two machines to mill the miniature notched log segments that make up the bulk of a typical Lincoln Logs set.

On Wednesday, the machines were set up to make these pieces in two sizes. Thompson said Pride will be submitting samples to K’NEX for final approval. If all goes well, Pride would start supplying pieces to K’NEX in the fourth quarter of this year.

Thompson anticipated Pride Sports would make around 30 million individual pieces annually, including milling the wood forms and applying colored stains. That would be a small fraction company’s operations. Pride Sports makes around 15 billion golf tees each year and 250 million cigar tips. Thompson said the company is the world’s largest supplier of both.

Pride Sports was founded in the 1930s in Florida and subsequently moved manufacturing to Maine to be closer to a wood supply. The company moved its manufacturing operations into a former Ethan Allen factory in Burnham in the early 1990s. 

Thompson said the company has always grown according to demand and this would continue to be the case with Lincoln Logs.

“Should Lincoln Logs [sales] grow to be in the hundreds of millions, we will grow to support that volume as well,” he said.

Lincoln Logs were invented in 1916 by John Lloyd Wright, son of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, according to information published on the website of K’NEX. A Wikipedia article on the toy notes several accounts of the name, including a reference to Abraham Lincoln, a nod to Frank Lloyd Wright’s given name, Frank Lincoln Wright, and a play on the joinery scheme of the “linkin’” logs.

Wednesday’s announcement was attended by Gov. Paul LePage and Department of Agriculture Commissioner Walter Whitcomb. 

In prepared remarks provided to The Penobscot Bay Pilot, Gov. LePage called the anticipated Pride Sports expansion an example of Maine’s potential to compete in the global market. He also suggested that toy would be add to a number of other iconic Maine products like lobster and maple syrup, and said he looked forward to seeing his grandchildren, and children around the world, playing with the toy, knowing that it was made in Maine.

Ethan Andrews can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com