From the forest to your floors, we custom mill wood one board at a time.
FOREST
Our wood comes from northern forests, which with their cold winters slows the growth of the trees yielding tighter growth rings, better color consistency, and more pronounced flooring. Since growing conditions vary greatly by area, the look of the wood from those areas also varies. Combining floor boards harvested from different forests will lead to competing colors and grains in your flooring. We purchase our trees from the same forest ensuring you more consistency.
SAW MILL
Wood is debarked and then cut piece by piece to our specifications, or Plain Sawn, Rift & Quartered, or Live Sawn. The wood is then graded and shipped to the kiln to be dried.
KILN
Wood is stacked on dryer sticks and left to air dry for 2 to 4 weeks. The boards are then transferred into the kiln for 30 to 45 days. After the kiln the boards are unstacked and sent off to the mill.
MANUFACTURING
The wood is hand fed through a double sided plainer, then through the straight line rip to determine width. Each piece of wood is individually inspected and then it is
determined which side will look the most unique as the face of the board. Unlike larger companies who mass produce their wood, we are able to take the time to look at each board. The wood is then fed through the molder by hand which mills the wood to 3/4" and adds a tongue and groove. Then the wood is moved into the chop saw for grading and the defects will be cut out. Next the end matcher will add tongue and groove to the ends of the boards. When that is completed the wood is moved to stacking tables where the flooring is assembled into bundles and loaded by hand onto pallets.
OFF SITE FINISH
A tremendous amount of care and precision goes into our off site finishing. First each board is hand scraped individually using different specialty tools. Then the boards are sanded, stained (if chosen), and buffed (with oil and/or wax) by hand. When all finishing is complete the boards are carefully stacked, bundled, and finally loaded onto pallets all by hand.
NEW - We will mill your trees into flooring. Contact us for more information. |
