TimberHomes has been working with Mike Gendron, a sawyer in West Newbury, VT for almost our entire existence as a company. His business is an important part of ours. You can see shots of Mike at his mill in our video on the homepage of this website.
Mike has been a sawyer for thirty years. He started out working for Steve Johnson at Johnson lumber. After working there for 10 years running the edger and resaw, he’d learned a great deal from Steve and under his supervision, began running that mill. He continued working at Johnson Lumber for twelve years before opening his own business.
Mike owns and runs a portable woodmizer LT70. I asked how Mike does what he does- his are the squarest, most consistent timbers we’ve found. He answered that the blades are sent out to be sharpened by woodmizer, and the mill has to be greased on a regular basis to keep everything running. (I suspect there’s a great deal of skill involved that he’s not telling me about). The secret, he says, is to take your time.
His logs are purchased from local loggers, and he does some of the logging himself. The hardest thing TimberHomes asks him to do is mill curved timber from cherry logs- trying to get the right curve by keeping the log clamped tight on the mill presents unique challenges.
