Profit with Portable Sawmills

Image Gallery Tim Hensley and his Percheron gelding, Pappy, pull a log from the woods at the Sustainable Mountain Agricultural Center's field days near Berea, Kentucky.

Bootstrap Businesses

Story and photos by Brook Elliot

Dreaming of a new home or barn you can't quite afford? If you cut your own lumber using a portable sawmill, you could save enough to bring the project within reach. And you can use the mill to develop a business custom-cutting lumber or producing other wood products. (Or, after you've cut all the lumber you need, you could sell the mill.)

This special section outlines how tochoose and use a portable mill to create value-added lumber and other products. Evenif you don't have your own forest, you cansalvage storm-damaged trees or harvest treesbeing removed when land is cleared forconstruction or farming (see "TheTreeincarnaters," Page 36).

When it comes to making money from lumber, it's all about value added," says Michael Best. "The further you take wood from a tree to a finished product, the more valuable it is."

Best is the executive director of the nonprofit Sustainable Mountain Agricultural Center near Berea, Kentucky. SMAC's mission is to demonstrate that sustainable agriculture is possible on small farms. "Farmers can make enough profit to avoid working outside the farm if they utilize the whole farm, including woodlots."

Initially, SMAC used its manually operated Wood-Mizer LT40 portable sawmill for on-farm use, cutting trees for tomato stakes, barn hoards and racks.

Will Johnson, president of TimberKing, a sawmill manufacturer, says about half of sawmill buyers get one for their own use. "Younger customers especially tend to buy a mill because they have one or two big projects in mind, and then get into custom cutting or into developing niche markets—which is where the real money is." Some niche markets are particularly valuable, he says. "If you find the right niche, such as cutting beams for custom homes, you can pay for the saw with just one or two jobs..

SMAC board member Carl Kilbourne, a former tree farmer and lumber dealer, was interested in the value-added aspect of turning hardwoods, which are abundant in the mountain regions of the south, into valuable kiln-dried lumber.

He found tree farming and managing small woodlots frustrating because timber cruisers are not interested in buying small, scattered stands of trees. And, he says, even if hardwood trees were cut, commercial woodkiln operators were only interested in processing large quantities of lumber, making it inconvenient and expensive to kiln-dry small batches.

"About a decade ago," he says, "I suddenly realized that the development of the one-man band sawmill and the inexpensive solar kiln were the major breakthroughs farmers with woodlots needed to harvest their valuable hardwood trees."