Four Urban Wood Firms Snare Wood-Mizer Awards

Four enterprises recognized in Wood-Mizer LLC’s 2016 Business Best Contest are participating in their respective local urban wood movements.

The competition included first, second and third place winners in each of three categories. Entrants were judged on business practices, ethics, organization, and maintaining high-quality standards throughout their operations. Winners shared in $12,250 in prize credits and were profiled in The Wood-Mizer Way magazine.

Kamuela Hardwoods of Kamuela, HI, won first place in the Hydraulic Mills category. The company is going against the grain in offering lumber and specialty slabs from salvaged trees as an alternative to building materials that are predominantly imported. Kamuela Hardwoods’ customers make dining tables, bar tops, flooring, mouldings and trim, fence posts and even ukuleles.

J & M Logging & Sawmill of Fair Grove, MO, won first place for Manual Sawmills. Jacob Whitehead, who also possesses carpentry skills, operates a one-man sawmill operation focused on milling local trees.

The Wood Cycle of Oregon, WI, tied for third place in the Hydraulic Sawmill category. The Wood Cycle both mills and sells lumber and fabricates furniture, cabinets and products from urban wood. Owner Paul Morrison authored the book, “Tree to Table: Emergence of the Urban Wood Movement.”

Knotthead Custom Sawing and Fabworx of Ceres, CA, tied for third place in the Hydraulic Sawmill category. Many of the company’s projects involve milling a homeowner’s cherished tree into lumber and then crafting finished products from it. The Knotthead profile was written by Jennfer Alger, who spoke at the urban wood seminar presented at the 2016 International Woodworking Fair and who wrote a blog posted on the IL WUT website: Let’s Make Urban Wood a Household Name.

Read about all of the Business Best Contest winners.

 

 

 

THIRD PLACE TIE

BY JENN ALGER Today, about half of Knotthead’s

business is custom sawing and the other

half a mixture of the sale of slabs and

finished products including Adirondack

furniture, finished outdoor and indoor

tables, birdhouses, live edge rustic

outbuildings, and a whole lot more. Many

of their projects are a combination of

the custom sawing and finished products,

where they turn people’s trees into beautiful

finished products for them to treasure. “All

of the wood is reclaimed locally, cut

into lumber and slabs and sold back

to people in our community,” said

Charles. “People love to come buy wood

with a local story and keep the wood living

on as a nice project.”

FIRST PLACE MANUAL SAWMILLS

J & M Logging and Sawmill in the

southwest Missouri town of Fair

Grove has built his one-man business from

a startup company to a profitable and

successful operation.