Building a Home with a Wood-Mizer

Dream home built by Nathan Shewchuk and his Wood-Mizer LT40 Hydraulic

It’s one thing to dream about building your own home, but it’s another to accomplish this endeavor. Working as an electrician in Oregon for more than a decade, Nathan Shewchuk came to the realization one day that there must be more to life. With determination on his side, Nathan decided to ditch city living for greener pastures. “I was tired of the city and wanted nothing more than to move into a remote part of Canada and build a house, so I did,” said Nathan. With eight years of focus and hard work, along with a few helpers and a Wood-Mizer sawmill, Nathan was able to accomplish his lifelong dream of building a home.

Nathan and his Wood-Mizer LT40HD

After moving from the Pacific Northwest to British Columbia in 2007, Nathan began preparing his land for his dream home. While looking for a supply of lumber, Nathan found that he had a few options to choose from. He could either buy lumber and transport it to his remote location or produce the lumber himself utilizing local resources from his land. Call it coincidence or fate, while driving up the coast one day Nathan ran into someone using a Wood-Mizer portable sawmill. “I thought that this was the only way to go, what a handy tool,” he said. “I looked into a few different sawmills but found nothing compared to the Wood-Mizer.” Shortly after, Nathan purchased an LT40 Hydraulic and was set to continue his new life chapter. Believe it or not, Nathan didn’t have any previous sawmill experience before buying his Wood-Mizer. “I just went in headfirst and figured it out,” he said. “I spent basically my whole life in the trades, framing, and Finish carpentry, so [building and woodworking] wasn’t anything new to me.” Nathan did receive a week long training from “one of the best sawyers,” he said, but with sure determination and a Wood-Mizer sawmill, the foundation was built for big things to come.

 Constructing the 1,500 square foot woodworking shop        

After setting up necessary utilities such as roads, power, and water supply, Nathan shifted his focus to his home. He wanted 100% of the wood used in his home to be sawed on his Wood-Mizer, so that meant lots of trips to the kiln and many years of drying lumber. “It took eight years, that’s from clearing the property to the last nail,” he said. Nathan used half of the timber from his own property and sourced the other half from a friend who owns a nearby woodlot. With mostly cedar and birch on his property, Nathan needed a supply of douglas fir from his neighbor for framing and beams.  With winter setting in around November and the snow sticking through April, Nathan said he had to work efficiently with the seasons in mind. The first year of construction, he completed the roof and milled all the cedar materials needed for the windows and doors of his home. Nathan’s short-term goal was to live in his new home in the Fall of the second year of construction. With help from his neighbor and master Finish carpenter, Kit, the windows and doors were completed and Nathan was able to move into his home for the first time that Fall. “The Wood-Mizer was a wonderful tool, it was perfect for the job," he said.

The windows and doors were  built by
Nathan's neighbor - a Finish carpenter

Over the next few years, Nathan milled birch and douglas fir needed for the rest of the interior of his home and worked on all the finishing woodwork needed for the windows. He also built a rock fireplace and shower and milled all the tongue and groove wood for the walls and ceiling. When it was all said and done, eight years of hard work and sawing 100% of the 22,000 board feet of douglas fir, larch, birch and cedar on his LT40HD, Nathan had finally finished his dream home and woodworking shop. With help from many friends and neighbors, Nathan completed his home from the ground up, inside and out just how he had dreamed. “My neighbor, Kit did all the cabinets, doors and Finish carpentry and my friend Doug was there hand-in-hand for carpentry work and many brainstorming nights,” said Nathan. “Many people helped along the way, there is no way to count them all really, but I think this project was inspiring to many and I am very fortunate to have a lot of good friends and co-workers.”

Beautiful master bedroom built from douglas fir, larch, birch and cedar

The living quarters are estimated at 1,200 square feet, while the shop is 1,500 square feet and the deck is 500 square feet. Nathan estimates he saved between $70,000 and $80,000 by sawing his own lumber for his home. “I get an overwhelming response to my home, but I am not sure that the average person really understands the amount of work it takes to build something like this,” said Nathan. “All in all, I had the time of my life building my home and owe many people for their knowledge and skills,” said Nathan. “This would not have happened without that.”

As for the future, Nathan is looking forward to what’s next and there’s no rest in sight. “Eight years is a long time to build a house and it takes a lot of discipline along the way,” said Nathan. “It kind of became a full-time job for me and it was very enjoyable to figure it out along the way. I think I’m just very happy it’s done and can’t wait to get onto the next project.”

100% of the 22,000 board feet needed for Nathan's dream home and woodworking shop were sawed on his LT40HD

Salvaging Urban Wood with a Wood-Mizer Sawmill

As Wood-Mizer owners utilize the benefits of their portable, thin-kerf sawmills, they are discovering economically and environmentally effective solutions to salvage fallen and diseased city trees that would’ve otherwise gone to waste. Learn how Megan Offner and her social enterprise, New York Heartwoods, is paving the way as a model for future businesses interested in becoming a part of the growing urban wood industry.

Logs recovered after Hurricane Sandy 

The Emerging Economy of Urban Wood

By Megan Offner

New York Heartwoods (NYH) began in 2010, with the help of Dave and Steve Washburn, Hugh Herrera, myself, and a Wood-Mizer LT40 Hydraulic. Our plan to manage and harvest trees ourselves was scratched when we realized how many were falling over, dying and being removed by arborists. Multiple severe storms and several invasive insect epidemics have led to unprecedented challenges to our forests and communities while budgets of municipalities and landowners are stretched with the reoccurring removals of downed or dying trees. Landfills across the country are struggling to keep up with the amount of wood waste that is being generated and at the same time, people need jobs and communities are evolving to become more resilient. By processing urban wood, we participate in creating solutions: reducing wood disposal expenses, redirecting material from our waste stream, decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, fueling the demand for local wood products, and growing an exciting new economy.

Working with a local tree service to lower a maple log onto NYH's
flatbed trailer. (Photo by Megan Offner)

Community relationships are the key to both supply and demand. Due to annual weather events like Hurricanes Irene and Sandy along with the arrival of pests such as the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB), we have access to more logs than we are equipped to process. Harvesting logs ourselves is labor intensive and therefore, in most cases, cost-prohibitive at our scale. By working with tree services we can have waste logs delivered for free or, at most, for the cost of gas and the driver’s time. Beyond the tree services that provide logs and clients to buy wood, are landowners, institutions, land trusts, the Department of Transportation, utility companies, municipal land managers and local officials. We have found the latter is an especially fruitful connection as they control what the contracted arborist does with city trees. As most towns and cities are burdened with increasing costs for citywide services, decreasing revenues, rising landfill costs, and decreasing landfill space, redirecting logs creates waste management solutions and reduces storm clean up expenses, which can generate wood for park benches, picnic tables, fencing, flooring and cabinets for city buildings. The ability to ameliorate local issues while creating valuable lumber may lead to municipal contracts and resources that will support both log supply and the demand for products.

Megan milling a white ash log. (Photo by Rose Kallal)

Portable band sawmills have a great advantage over large circular sawmills when working with urban trees. Their ability to travel to sites can eliminate logistical challenges and expenses of transporting or disposing of logs. For example, after Hurricane Sandy landfills were at full capacity so many cities and towns across New York State designated parking lots for the staging of logs. Local sawyers were invited to come mill what they wanted for free, and even still, it took months for many of those piles to diminish. The possibility of hitting metal, common in urban trees, is too expensive a risk for commercial circular sawmills. Metal can dull blades and slow down band saw production, but since the narrow band blades are inexpensive and easy to sharpen, that value can be recouped with proper marketing of the tree’s story and the wood’s character.

Urban trees generally have lower branches and contain metal or other foreign objects, creating dramatic knots, colors, and grain. These unique characteristics, along with the tree’s history, are desirable to artisans, fabricators, interior designers and architects for the creation of furniture, flooring and other custom products. Documenting the tree’s story and providing pictures of its transformation into finished products adds value by making it more meaningful to the buyer. Every industry uses wood in some capacity, which leads to a multitude of niche market possibilities. By reaching out to my previous networks to see how I could create solutions to their problems, I was able to build most of my business on personal contacts and word-of-mouth.

On display at Eileen Fisher, 5th Ave. in New York City

As my access to urban markets is one of NYH’s strengths, I am increasingly brokering wood for other local sawyers with a similar ethos. I see that in the same way that marketing and distribution hubs are being created to assist the success of small farmers, and local wood being the next “local food”, there is needed support for the growing number of independent sawyers. The Illinois Urban Wood Utilization team and Urbanwood in Michigan are two wonderful non-profit models of networks that facilitate the wood use chain from arborists, sawyers, woodworkers, distributors to buyers. As our population grows, so does the amount of urban land in the United States. According to the Journal of Forestry, by 2050 the amount of urbanized areas is projected to increase from 3.1% in 2000 to 8.1%, a total of 392,400 km, which is larger than the state of Montana. With this, the production and sale of urban wood will also grow, and there will be more integration into municipal management systems. For now, innovation is happening on the ground- one mill at a time.

About the Author: Megan Offner co-founded New York Heartwoods, a woman-owned social enterprise in Warwick, NY in 2010. Her mission is to regenerate forest vitality and local economies by building systems and relationships that maximize the value of "waste" trees. Connect with New York Heartwoods on Facebook or at www.newyorkheartwoods.com.

Building a Successful Business with a Portable Sawmill

While there are a lot of elements in every successful business, two Wood-Mizer sawmill owners agree that their sawmill is the cornerstone of their business and offers them versatility, creativity, and the ability to meet the diverse needs of their customers. Through both strong and tough economic times, their Wood-Mizer sawmill has provided them with a competitive advantage and the ability to make dreams come true for their customers.

David Yasenchack Timber Framing & Design, Kingsville, Ohio

One-of-a-kind timber frame pool structure designed and constructed by David Yasenchack.

Utilizing a unique natural bend in a log

For more than 15 years, the self-motivated entrepreneur, David Yasenchack, has been building one-of-a-kind timber frame homes, studios and garden structures for his small Kingsville, Ohio business. David Yasenchack Timber Framing and Design operates with a Wood-Mizer sawmill in order to create unique lumber from their own forestland, but it was David’s determination that enabled him to follow his dreams and establish his own timber framing business.

While working for the Forest Service and managing a commercial apple orchard in the early 1990s, David was inspired to pursue a new and challenging project, so he began building his first timber frame structure. It was during this project that reshaped David’s life and his career. “In the process of gathering materials for my first timber frame project, I purchased timber and lumber from numerous local sawmills,” said David. “I became intrigued by the sawing process, particularly with the accuracy of the band sawmills.” By the end of this project, and after seeing his neighbor mill a very large oak tree with his portable band sawmill, David envisioned the investment of a portable sawmill as the stepping stone to building custom timber frame structures for a living.

David's Wood-Mizer sawmill enables him to saw logs with
 unique bends and curves for building timber frame structures

Shortly after, David purchased his first Wood-Mizer, an LT40 Manual sawmill, to serve as an affordable entry into self-employment. “The mill helped me to find my calling in the timber framing trade,” he said. “I am proud of my Wood-Mizer. From the outset, it shaped my living, but it went on to shape the path of my career.” Today, David operates with his Wood-Mizer LT40 Hydraulic sawmill and constructs custom timber frame buildings using select trees from his own forestland and from client’s own trees.

The business saws a wide variety of hardwoods on their sawmill, but mainly oak, cherry and walnut to create the necessary building materials for his customers. David also uses his mill to saw conventional lumber and wide, live-edge flitches for use in furniture projects as well as for other woodworkers needing customized material. “I’ve told many people over the years that an investment smaller than the purchase of a new pickup truck put me on the path of not just personal fulfillment, but a fair measure of financial security and independence,” David said. “It’s an ever evolving tool that gives me the ability to shape one of the world’s most common and abundant resources.

A custom timber frame structure

”David says his Wood-Mizer is a main component of his entrepreneurial success. “It would be difficult to overstate the importance of the Wood-Mizer in my business,” he said. “It gives us creative control by allowing us to create just the right live-edge timbers from the particular logs we choose.” David also touts the design of his Wood-Mizer which gives him a distinct advantage for his specialty sawing projects. “The cantilevered head is an advantage in many ways, but mostly because it allows us to saw highly curved logs in a practical and accurate way,” he said.

David Yasenchack, owner of David
Yasenchack Timber Framing & Design

By utilizing the features of his Wood-Mizer sawmill, David says his timber work is crafted to the highest level. The mill enables David and his team to revise and develop a custom design in response to special and unique logs harvested from his or a client’s woodlot. By keeping a unique bend or curve in a tree for his lumber, David can maintain the wood’s natural shape and characteristics in his finished timber frame structures. “In short, the mill makes us more adaptable and creative,” David said. “Those are both huge competitive advantages in our field.”

Northern Log and Timber, Kelowna, British Columbia

Northern Log and Timber constructs custom log homes with lumber milled on their Wood-Mizer sawmills

Family operated for more than 60 years, Northern Log and Timber offers a variety of services and products available both locally and around the world. From lumber to log home packages and more, the company operates with two Wood-Mizer LT40 Hydraulic sawmills and an LT40 Super Hydraulic sawmill, which have positioned them for global success in the lumber industry.

Construction of a custom log home

Founded in 1952 by John Morgan Sr., the company supplied lumber to northern Yukon and Alaska until they relocated to the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia in 1972. In the 1980s, Northern Log and Timber expanded into global markets by exporting lumber to Asia, Europe, and South America and has since built log homes, barns, schools for clients from Japan to Mexico. Today, the family business is operated by John’s son and daughter, John Jr. and Julie. John is a builder and runs the sawmills, while Julie designs homes for clients and handles sales.

Beams and flooring milled on a Wood-Mizer portable sawmill

Typically, Northern Log and Timber saws lumber for log home packages but they also produce beams, joists, decking, posts, flooring, trim, v-joints, timber trusses, and custom siding. Julie attributes the company’s diverse offering of products and services to be crucial to their success over the years. “Because we have a wide variety of products, and a large variation in our customer base, we have continued to grow,” she said. Head sawyer, John Jr., said their Wood-Mizer sawmills are another one of the reasons for their company’s success. “The support system at Wood-Mizer is the best. It’s the best mill on the market,” said John Jr. “Downtime is minimal and usually short, it produces the volume needed. This success translates into higher wages and profits.”

Interior bedroom of a Northern Log and Timber custom home

Locally, the Morgan family supplies building material stores, contractors, and landscapers with lumber as well as design and build log homes onsite with their own profiled timbers. Due to the volume of orders, the majority of their business comes from building supply stores. However, Julie adds, “The most satisfying customers are the ones you help to accomplish their dreams. My father always said that it was great to build the high-end, impressive projects, but the most satisfying was the look on a customer’s face when their home was completed – the simple home for the working man.”

Trusses sawed on a
Wood-Mizer sawmill

By utilizing the versatility of their Wood-Mizer sawmills, Northern Log and Timber has continued to grow and succeed in the global lumber market. “The Wood- Mizer mills have allowed us to expand our product line,” said Julie. “The mills are the backbone of our business. Without them, we wouldn’t have survived in this economy.”

Missionary to Mongolia, Asia using a LT40 Hydraulic to build School and local Market Facility

Two decades after Mongolian independence from Soviet control, much of the isolated northern Mongolian town of Khatgal still lies in ruins, families live in extreme poverty, and the struggling government is limited in the support and opportunities it can provide. 

With tourism on the rise in the area, many have turned to traditional craft making. Local artisans labor in their one room cabins or Mongolian tents, working in homes smaller than the average American bedroom. During the short-lived summer months, women and children wander for miles through scattered camps placing their wares on the ground to display to foreign travelers. With an average annual income of less than $500, dreams of making a living for their families too often fades under the hardships. 

Mission Director Mickey Cofer and his wife Trina are on location working to make a difference. Their backgrounds as professional artists prepared them to be able to reach out to the needs of poverty-stricken artisans. They have set up a nonprofit organization called Local Craftsmen Foundation where individuals can receive training in quality craftsmanship and effective marketing. Through the generous gifts of American churches, the foundation has purchased a 100,000 square foot abandoned Soviet factory – a five building complex sitting on twelve acres of lakefront property. 

They are planning to turn the roadfront building into an Arts and Crafts Center to create a vibrant showcase and market opportunity for local artisans. The midsection of the factory is allocated for a Leadership Training Institute, and the lakeside facility is being renovated into a Summer Youth Camp and Community Center. 

The gift of a brand new Wood-Mizer LT40 hydraulic sawmill is making the renovation of this incredible site possible. It has afforded Mongolian Missions the opportunity to labor efficiently and inexpensively using local labor and materials. Through the help of this amazing tool the Cofer’s are working to help revitalize the region. Once renovations are complete, the sawmill will continue to be the main piece of equipment used for the long-term woodcraft project; not only producing crafts for tourists, but the furniture, frames and floors of their traditional Mongolian yurts for families around the country.

Through partnerships with people and organizations like Wood-Mizer, dreams are becoming a reality, and major steps are being taken toward strengthening one of the most charming and unique societies left on the face of the earth.

Inspired? Get involved with Mickey’s work: vesselsofhonor@hotmail.com. 
Contact address: Mickey Cofer, Mongolian Missions, PO Box 189 Winchester OH 45697

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