Logs to Lumber

These pictures are posted on our Facebook page in an album also (along with a couple others that didn't make it here), but we often have people ask us about our process here and how we operate. Unfortunately due to insurance reasons we cannot show people what goes on in the sawmill or millwork buildings. Hopefully this gives you a better idea as to what all goes on to get you your lumber.

I hope to bring you a blog post about our millwork building and capabilities soon- keep an eye out!

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People bring logs in to either sell to us or to have them custom sawn. We lay them out in our log yard so we can scale them up and determine the board footage of the log.

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Log Yard again. Once the logs have been scaled, if they are our logs we will group them by species and stack them up. ​

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When we are ready to saw the logs we lay them out on the de-barker. It does just what it sounds like- it de-barks the logs. ​

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It quite literally eats the bark off the logs.

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"Naked" Logs ready to be sawn into lumber.

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The bark goes through our grinder and is turned into mulch.

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Logs are laid out, ready to be sawn.

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The log is squared up first in order to make the boards.

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The log is rotated until all four sides have been squared up.

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Once the log is squared up the sawyer can program the saw to cut at the desired thickness. ​

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Once a board has been cut- the saw pushes it off the rest of the wood so that the sawing can continue.

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Once a board has been produced it goes through the edger to clean up the edges of the boards.

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​The boards all end up on what we call the green chain- it is a slow moving conveyor belt that allows the boards to be sorted into orders.

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Each cart represents an order.

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If the lumber needs to be kiln drying it is placed on "sticks" to allow the air to move between the boards.

​Once the lumber has been dried it is taken off "sticks" and either sorted into the bins for our warehouse or millwork is done to it for customers.

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All of our buildings have vents hooked up to eliminate the sawdust in the buildings- the vents lead to this building- our sawdust bin. We have a lot of customers who will get sawdust for animal bedding- mainly horses. Since it is mainly used for horses we keep our walnut dust separate (in a building behind this one).