Sawing in the Alaskan Wilderness

The Talaheim Lodge

Mark Miller is the founder and owner of the Talaheim Lodge located 80 miles west of Anchorage, Alaska. After purchasing his Wood-Mizer LT10 in 2006, Mark has built five buildings and added flooring and furniture to the existing buildings on the property. Read Mark’s story below, in his own words.

Sawing in the Alaskan Wilderness

By Mark Miller

Aerial view of The Talaheim Lodge

In 1976, my youthful dream started to unfold as I began building my remote fishing and hunting lodge (The Talaheim Lodge) in the wilderness of Alaska. Most of the state can’t be reached by road, so many Alaskan fishing lodges, like mine, have to be reached by either helicopter or plane. Everything from a toothpick to a gallon of gasoline has to be flown in to our site.

During those younger days we built stockade log construction by utilizing local timbers. Large cargo, single engine aircrafts on skis are expensive to charter, so most of my lumber was cut on-site with a chainsaw mill. That first crude building was built from logs and chainsaw cut lumber and went up like a kid building a tree fort. For the next 30 years, I used a chainsaw to cut as much lumber as possible in order to keep costs down when building miles away from roads. We only averaged about a board an hour but most of our lumber didn’t have to be flown in, saving us money.

Skidding logs by snowmobile

All our logs are skidded to our site by snowmobile in March and April when the snow is deep and settled. Everything out here comes by air except our snow machines that we drive out in the winter (a 50-mile journey from the nearest road system). In 2006, I purchased a very large wide-tracked snowmobile, which was capable of pulling in much larger logs than I was able to in the past. Glaring at my log deck of about 100, 12’ long and 16” diameter logs, I suddenly started to tense up thinking about all that back breaking chainsaw milling I would have to do.

Log deck, sorted by length

Cutting timber with chainsaws is slow, tedious and a backbreaking chore from being bent over for long periods of time. Not to mention chainsaws burn up gallons of fuel and oil, and the 3/8” wide kerf produce piles of sawdust that could be used as lumber. There had to be a better way.

Shortly after, I found a Wood-Mizer LT10 sawmill featured in a local outdoor magazine. It caught my eye as it was light and could easily fit onto a ski plane. The local Wood-Mizer dealer (100 miles away) had one on display that I could try. Seeing the mill in action secured the sale.

Mark and his Wood-Mizer LT10

After the snow left, we had a running Wood-Mizer mill in one day and a friend and I cut those 100 logs into lumber in about five days. With my LT10 and a small tractor rigged with a forklift attachment, we weren’t just in the fishing business, we were also in the lumber business.

My mill paid for itself in the first season with savings on lumber cut on site instead of flying it in. Most of our timbers are cut and used “green” with the exception of our hardwood cuts.  We cut primarily slow growth spruce for building and “house dry” birch for flooring.

Mark sawing on his LT10

I highly recommend the Wood-Mizer LT10 or LT15 for remote fly in sites like mine.  Both these mills will cut large amounts of lumber for large construction jobs. Four years into milling, I upgraded from a 7 HP to a 10 HP engine for my LT10 which made great lumber even quicker. Now I can cut a 10’ long, 8” wide board in 17 seconds!

Since having the LT10, I’ve built five new buildings from three-sided logs and timbers cut from our mill and cut in excess of 40,000 board foot. The mill has saved me thousands of dollars on lumber and has allowed me to cut huge beautiful beams that would be impossible to fly out. I’ve had great factory and local Wood-Mizer support from Anchorage, Alaska and with about all my buildings completed for my lifetime, I am now focusing on the fun stuff like birch flooring and birch and spruce furniture!

Mark's home built with lumber all cut on his LT10

Fishing guide's shack made from lumber cut on
Mark's LT10

I still love living in the wilderness and building with materials I’ve gathered locally. Today I manage with my Wood-Mizer LT10 sawmill, a tractor with a front-end lift, and snow machines capable of bringing in large logs over the snow. Not only do I save money, but also I enjoy working the land. Robert Service once wrote, “that it’s not the gold we seek, but the seeking of it”. For the past 38 years, my fishing lodge has given me the opportunity of “living off the land” in the Alaskan wilderness.

Good Fishing,

Mark Miller

Inside of the fishing guide's shack

Getting Your Lumber Grade Stamped

 

FIVE STEPS TO USING YOUR OWN LUMBER IN PERMITTED STRUCTURES
Anyone contemplating producing lumber for construction should follow these steps before sawing.

1) Check with your local city, county, and/or state building code office to find out the exact requirements in your area. Requirements and the level of enforcement vary. Don’t be satisfied until you have seen the rules yourself. Keep a copy for future reference.

2) Purchase the softwood grading rules book that applies to the species of lumber you’ll be using. Thoroughly review the pertinent parts of the book to make sure you understand what the standards apply.

3) Once you have a written plan on how to proceed, contact the appropriate softwood lumber grading agency to discuss your plan with them and to make certain that your lumber will meet all of the requirements, such as thickness, widths, and lengths, moisture content, and required other items. Checking out all of the details before sawing can save time and wasted materials. (If going the self-certification route, make sure your certification is up-to-date)

4) Saw and dry your lumber according to your specific plan.

5) Schedule a visit with the lumber inspector, make sure you have enough time for his visit, and your area is
properly laid out for inspection. Make certain any documentation is prepared and available should the inspector ask for it.

THE GRADE STAMP
As part of a structure, each piece of lumber carries a certain amount of load. Softwood grades for dimension and timbers have been established according to engineering methods that determine how much load each piece is capable of supporting. When a building is inspected, the inspector will look for a grade stamp on the lumber. This grade stamp is the only way for the inspector to determine if the lumber used in the structure is acceptable. The grade stamp is extremely important to building inspectors, as it is required by all building codes. The code is usually enforced at the county level, where a building permit is required before any construction can begin. The building can be rejected if the lumber is not grade stamped. The level of code enforcement can vary by county, however a lack of enforcement does not mean you can disregard building codes. Be certain to check with your county building inspector and permits office to determine exactly what is required. Past experiences may not predict future expectations. There may be some state and local exceptions when the lumber is produced and used for one’s own building projects.

Example grade stamp showing Southern Pine Inspection Bureau (SPIB) as the agency, the grade as No. 1, kiln-dried (KD) to 19 percent moisture content, heat treated (HT), and producing mill lumber 406. The species is not given but implied as SPIB deals exclusively with Southern Pine lumber.

GETTING YOUR LUMBER GRADED
Producers of small quantities of softwood or hardwood lumber to be used in construction can call for a “certificate inspection.” When a certificate inspection is requested, the grading agency will arrange for their first available or nearest inspector to travel to the location of the lumber. The lumber is grade-stamped, and a certificate is issued in regards to the inspection. The lumber is then eligible to be used in building construction. The owner of the lumber should be prepared to turn and move the boards for the inspector. Also, presorting the lumber by widths and lengths is important. Additional sorting by estimated grade will further speed up the process. The lumber may be rough or surfaced. Lumber having moisture content in excess of 19 percent will be marked “S-GRN.” Air-dried lumber or that with a moisture content of less than 19 percent will be stamped “S-DRY.” Sawyers should be certain that they follow the size requirements set forth by the rule writing agencies for different species. In order to finish to the sizes required, lumber must be cut oversized to allow for shrinkage during drying, planing, and sawing variation.


THE BOTTOM LINE
In most of North America, using your own lumber for construction material is an option available to you, and in some places, it is actually encouraged and rewarded. We hope that this short introduction to the topic has given you some good direction to finding out how to go about it in your own area. Rules can change, so ten years from now, when you pull out this article again to reference, the bottom line will still apply: Find out what your local requirements are, and abide by them!


RESOURCES
For current rule writing and grading agency lists:
American Lumber Standard Committee
www.alsc.org
alsc@alsc.org
301.972.1700

Canadian Lumber Standards
Accreditation Board
www.clsab.ca
info@clsab.ca
613.482.2480

A Visit to a Sawmill for a Video Shoot

Andy Beaver milling beams for the log lodge project.

A couple months ago, I got a call from a Wood-Mizer portable sawmill owner just a few towns over. His name was Andy Beaver, a police officer in Martinsville, Indiana, and a longtime Wood-Mizer customer. He shared with me that he was working with a local Christian camp facility (www.highlandlakes.org) to build a new log lodge to expand their lodging capabilities. Andy hoped we would be interested in documenting the project in our Wood-Mizer Way magazine. He shared that much of the work, including his own, would be utilizing the good old-fashioned 'barter system' and with volunteers, because the camp just didn't have the funds to contract out a 30'X80' lodge.

The project sounded interesting, but my initial impression was that he was talking about a relatively rustic building. However, he told me that the proposed lodge would look a lot like another building they had built in a similar way a couple years back, almost every wood element coming off the sawmill (flooring, logs, beams, t&g ceiling, etc.) After browsing their website, and seeing how well their Welcome Center had turned out, we were very excited about having a project so close that we could document the progress of.

The current Welcome Center at Highland Lakes Camp.

The poplar logs for the lodge were logged from the camp property. Although it was during a very busy week at Wood-Mizer, I was able to jump in a truck with a video camera and run down one afternoon to get some footage of the logging in action. 30 minutes later, I had ran a 1/2 mile, jumped a creek, and ridden a log being pulled through the forest, which all resulted in some great footage of the logs that would in a few months return to the same property milled and ready to be assembled into a building.

Poplar logs staged, logged from the camp property they will return to as building material for the camp lodge!

Yesterday, we loaded up our camera equipment into a truck and made the 45 minute trip out to Andy's house, where he is sawing up all the logs for the project. James Bull, our videographer is in charge of the shoot, I help out with a camera and usually conduct the interviews, and Eric Groeschen, our newly hired print shop coordinator, came along for the ride. When Eric was hired, there was so much on his plate, he never even got to see a Wood-Mizer in action! We decided it was high time we pull him out of the print shop for a morning of fresh air and fresh sawdust. He brought his DSLR camera, and functioned as our photographer for the morning.

Andy's first log cabin, his own, he built with logs he cut on his first Wood-Mizer mill 23 years ago.

After winding through Indiana's back roads for several miles, we found Andy's house. 23 years ago, Andy was running a service station just a few miles from the Wood-Mizer office. He was really wanting to get out of the city and build his own log home kit in the country. After looking through kit after kit, he wonderful if he couldn't just do it himself, in spite of his lack of building experience. He ended up buying a LT30 sawmill, and through trial and error, built his own log cabin. He builds several log cabins and homes each year now for clients as a part time business, and he insists that he knows a whole lot more now about building log homes then he did 23 years ago!

Several men showed up to help Andy with the sawing, and pick up some lumber to take back to the camp.

When we arrived, I was surprised to find 4 other guys hanging out with Andy at 9 am in the below 40 degree weather. Andy explained that they were all associated with the camp in some way, and were there to help him out with the sawing. Later, he shared that having extra guys hang out with him while he's sawing is not unusual. There are several regulars in the area that just show up to help him for a couple hours just for the fun of it! He said, with a chuckle, that he gets a lot more work done when someone shows up and pitches in, but that when more than 5 show up on a Saturday, that's usually when nothing gets done! ;-)

Andy was almost too comfortable in front of the camera ;-)

After spending a few minutes chatting, we got Andy mic'ed up, sat him on a log in front of his LT40 Super Hydraulic mill and filmed an interview, covering any topic related to sawing, the camp lodge project, and Andy's own side business of building custom log homes. He was a rare find - naturally comfortable on camera! He credited his 20+ years as a police officer for his easy going style throughout the interview. He said he wasn't nearly as nervous yesterday as when he has to testify in court, or give a disposition! ;-)

James getting Andy all mic'ed up.

Interviewing Andy Beaver about his 23 years of sawing experience and the camp lodge project.

After the interview and a tour of the mill, Andy and his crew fired up the LT40 and started sawing. Andy's workspace seemed well suited to his workflow. Boards were sticker stacked directly behind the mill, slabs went in a pile to one side of the mill, flitches went back onto the loading arms for edging later, and sawdust was quickly shoveled into a shed with one open side. Doors on the backside of the shed make it easy for local farmers to back up to the sawdust and load it right into the truck.

Slabs go in the pile to the left, and the shed on the right has a large pile of fresh sawdust stored inside.

One of the men present at the mill, Brian Christy, is the Highland Lakes Director of Operations, so we were also able to interview him about what all the camp has to offer, what their goals are, and get his perspective on the progress of the camp lodge project Andy is working with them on. They have the foundation all poured, and once Andy has milled a good quantity of the 6"x9" beams they need, they're looking forward to starting work on the walls.

Jake setting up the interview with Highland Lakes camp director, Brian Christy. 

Not wanting to keep the crew from their work, we finished up some filming and chatting with the guys, and packed up our gear, very pleased with all the great video footage of the sawing and interviews we had been able to get. Hungry, we stopped at a truck stop diner for lunch, and enjoyed a large country breakfast, and then we were back to the office to return to the finer comforts of central heating. ;-)

We look forward to continuing to document this unique project! As soon as walls start going up, we'll be back down to get good video footage of that part of the process. :-) 

Are you looking forward to seeing more photos and eventually a finished project video? 

Building Backyard Projects with Lumber from a Portable Sawmill

Sawing lumber for the farm

As stewards of our land and resources, we cultivate and care for what’s been given to us. One way that many people are becoming even more self-sufficient is in the way that they obtain lumber for projects around the farm and in their back yards, using a small personal sawmill.

You can mill your own wood a lot easier than you might think. Small portable sawmills are making it possible for anyone to be able to cut their own boards for garden sheds and other backyard building projects. These one-man mills take up little space, and fit nicely into a garage or set up in the backyard.

Jim Oseychuk of Ontario, Canada, not only used his Wood-Mizer sawmill to saw all the lumber for his house and deck, but also for his garden shed.

Jim Oseychuck's backyard garden shed, which he built all from self-sawn lumber

“We were standing in our old raspberry patch,” he recalls, “when my wife suggested that we rip it all out and construct a garden shed.  I had been saving some fir logs that had enormous curves, mostly caused from growing on steep rocky slopes. For conventional purposes, they were quite worthless.  But from a creative sense, they were very unique.  This was my chance to use them!” 

What was originally meant to be a simple backyard shed became a masterpiece of creativity and craftsmanship.   His wife, an “original North Carolina girl with a love of gardening,” got her much anticipated and award-winning garden shed.

Danny Hamsley (Hawkinsville Georgia) uses his portable sawmill to harvest trees that fall down in storms, saws them into lumber, and then builds custom furniture, or sells the lumber to local woodworking hobbyists. 

The enjoyment of actually sawing lumber yourself is only one of the benefits that come from using a portable sawmill. You have the choice of where your wood comes from, and do not have to limit yourself to just what is on the store shelf. You can get your wood in ways that allow you to be a good steward of natural resources. Trees that often end up as firewood can be turned into valuable lumber instead. The milling process produces sawdust that can be combined with your compost pile as well.

Most portable sawmill owners feel that their investment pays for itself after only a couple of projects. And it’s a gift that keeps on giving, giving you years of enjoyment and the ability to produce your own wood for you and your neighbors.

Danny with a fresh stack of lumber, ready for drying.

Learn more about sawing your own lumber at www.woodmizer.com. Wood-Mizer carries a full line of portable sawmills, from entry level mills to mills with advanced hydraulic log handling functions. Order your free portable sawmill catalog here.

See Wood-Mizer saw mills in action in the video below.