From Logs to Lumber

Erwin Bush
August 7, 2006

North Petersburg, NY - Few think about where that 2” x 4” comes from when they pick it up at their local lumber yard or home center. Most come from large commercial sawmills, but here in the Hoosick Valley there is a sawmill that has been providing lumber for local residents and builders for more than 25 years. 

Paulson Wood Products is on Route 22 in the tiny village of North Petersburgh, NY. It would be easy to miss, nestled between the road and the Little Hoosic River on what was once part of an old railroad track bed. The business has been owned and operated by Don and Paula Paulson since June 1981, when they bought the facility from Ernie Yerke. Although they are no longer married, they still jointly own and run the business.

It is a family business. There are only four full time employees: Don, Paula, their son Andy, and Jeff O’Dell, an employee who stayed on when they bought the business in 1981. Paula runs the office, Don is in charge of the sawmill operation and handles the log and lumber moving, Andy runs the saw and Jeff sorts and stacks the cut lumber coming from the saw. They also have two part-time workers who help out as needed. They had more employees in the past when they operated at a more aggressive pace, but they always had trouble keeping workers. “It’s a lot of hard, physical labor,” Don said.

Don, who is originally from Eastern Massachusetts , earned a degree in Forest Utilization from the University of Maine . In 1972, after a tour of duty in the army where he did heavy equipment maintenance, he went to work at Kelly Hardwood in Pittsfield , MA . He later moved on to Berlin Lumber, where he was working when Ernie Yerke decided to sell his sawmill in North Petersburg .

The business has changed over the years, as they experimented with different business models and upgraded equipment. When they first bought the sawmill the logs had to be manipulated by hand to align them for cutting; now it’s done mechanically, using lasers to ensure the proper alignment. They used to sell a lot more to wholesalers; in 1999 they even experimented with going wholesale only; the experiment didn’t last very long. Today only about 20-25% of their sales are to wholesalers. Over the last few years they’ve let the business shrink to a size that is manageable by the four of them.

The biggest challenge isn’t sales, it’s getting logs. “It’s a raw material and it depends upon Mother Nature,” Paula said. Most of their logs come from local loggers, although homeowners will sometimes stop by with a tree or two they’ve cut down. Unfortunately homeowners often show up with logs far too short to be used; the sawmill requires logs of at least 8 feet in length. Over the past few years many of the small commercial loggers have taken their logs up to Canada where they can usually get a bit more money. However they have a few loggers on whom they can depend to regularly supply them with raw material.

In spite of this they occasionally have to turn logs away. It’s always a balance between buying and selling; as in any business cash flow is important. But they’ll always buy from the regulars; these are the folks they depend upon when times get tough, and turning them away now may mean they won’t be there when they desperately need logs.

They sell green, or fresh, rough cut lumber. Lumber you buy at a lumberyard or home center usually has been dried and finished, or sanded smooth, on one or more sides. Shrinkage from drying and sanding reduces the size of the finished wood; that 2”x4” you get at Home Depot is usually only 1½”x3¼”. “Over the years the dimensions of finished wood have been getting smaller,” Don said. The 2”x4”s sold at Paulson’s really are 2”x4”, if not slightly larger. But depending upon the use, you may have to take into account the shrinkage that will occur as the wood dries.

Unlike many small mills they can handle logs up to 24 feet long. Recently neighbor Wayne Bush tore out the ceiling out of his living room, opening it up to two skylights he had installed several years ago when he repaired his roof.  In order to keep the walls from buckling out after he removed the ceiling rafters, he put in four 4”x8”x24’ long beams that will stay exposed. Don had two 8”x8”x24’ beams that had been drying in his yard for about a year; he split them in half for Wayne . “Where else could a homeowner go to get 24’ beams?” Wayne said.

Turning a felled log into a tree at first appears simple. The logs are usually brought in on a flatbed truck. The loggers have already removed all the limbs and roots; what remains are barked–covered tree trunks. The loggers dump their logs and Andy scales them, making an estimate as to the quality and number of board feet of lumber he can cut from each log, calculating a price for the load. Once the load is bought Don moves the logs using a wheel loader, a machine which looks like a cross between a bulldozer and a fork lift, and sorts the logs into piles by size and species. Most of the wood they get in is pine, but they occasionally will get other types of logs; the mill can deal with any kind of soft or hard wood.

In addition to the stacked logs there are also stacks of rough-cut lumber of all sizes and lengths throughout the narrow yard. Much of their work is done to order, but there is also a lot of walk-in customers. When cutting logs to fill an order, extra pieces that are produced in the process are added to their in-house inventory; when needed they will cut additional logs to replenish diminishing supplies.

Once they decide what sizes of lumber they need at a particular time, whether for inventory or for a special order, they determine the appropriate sized log required and load the feeding deck of the debarker from one of the piles of logs; it’s more efficient to work with logs of the same length at any one time. The deck holds 14 to 16 logs; typically they process two decks full in the morning and two in the afternoon. Once they are loaded onto the deck they are under the control of Andy in the saw control room; human hands do not touch the wood again until after they become dimensional, or cut-to-size lumber traveling on the conveyer belt away from the saw.

The debarker acts like a giant vegetable peeler, removing the outer bark and smoothing out the log surface a bit; it also trims the ends of the log to give a flat, perpendicular surface. The skinned logs then travel by conveyer belt to the saw. Here Andy grasps the log with metal hands, positioning it for the first cut. Initially he makes four perpendicular cuts, squaring off the sides of the log. After each cut the log is returned to the starting point and turned 90 degrees for the next pass. It is reminiscent of an old-fashioned typewriter, completing a line and doing a carriage return  The positioning is critical and precise to maximize the number of usable pieces of lumber that can be produced. A large dial opposite the control station indicates how far the back of the wood is from the saw blade.

Although the log is handled mechanically, all of the cuts are set up by Andy, the human operator. As he is working with a log he determines on the fly the proper cuts needed to maximize its end product. It almost reminds one of a diamond cutter, looking for the optimum way to cleave a raw stone. The size of the pieces are only part of the equation; other factors include the quality of the wood, any imperfections, and the location of knotholes. A knothole in the center of a piece of lumber will significantly weaken the piece, so attempts are made to keep any knotholes at the edges of the cut lumber.  

Once the first cuts are made to the sides of the logs, the next set usually produces the first usable lumber. In addition to the large main saw blade there are two smaller blades preceding it that cut perpendicular to the main one; this allows the operator to produce dimensional lumber in one pass, without requiring any additional trimming. Andy continues to rotate the log as he makes further passes, until he is left with a square or rectangular piece of the required dimension. At this point he continues to shave off  slices of wood of the desired thickness.

The cut pieces fall on another conveyer belt. Andy can control whether or not the wood drops down below and fed into the maw of a wood chipper, or passes down the line to where Jeff waits. He sorts them; dimensional pieces are pulled aside for stacking while scrap bits are tossed over the edge of the conveyer belt where they too, are destined for the wood chipper.

Even the stacking of the dimensional lumber is done carefully. Between each layer of lumber Jeff places slips of wood as spacers between the layers. This is green lumber, and without air between the layers the wood would dry unevenly and warp. Once a pile is complete Don will pick it up with a fork lift and move it, either for outdoor storage or as part of an order.

Nothing is wasted. The wood chips produced from the scrap trimmings piles up in an covered space open on the end; when there is enough to fill a truck they call one of their wood chip customers to cart it away. All of the sawdust produced is captured in another covered space; it too is sold. Even the initial peelings of bark are collected in an uncovered pile; this becomes bark mulch used by homeowners, landscapers and gardeners.

Don said that when they first bought the sawmill there wasn’t a market for the bark. “We used to bury it in the field.” But when it became popular as mulch they sold that as well. “If you don’t sell every speck… you’d be in the hole.” 

Although a seemingly noisy, mechanical business, the sawmill blends in well with the surrounding woods and fields. In summer all you can see from the road are the tops of the buildings until you reach the entrance at Webster Road ; the rest is hidden by trees. The operation straddles the dirt road; it would be easy to mistake Webster Road as the driveway into the sawmill. The office and covered browsing stacks of lumber are on the right, the sawmill proper and outdoor lumber storage are on the left.

The saw makes a lot of noise and they wear ear protection, but it is quieter than one might expect. “We used to have a large diesel engine to run the saw and it was noisy and needed constant maintenance,” Don said. Now they use electric motors which are much quieter and easier to maintain. The neighbors don’t complain; the closest neighbors are Don and Paula themselves, who have separate homes on Webster Road across the Little Hoosic from the sawmill. And the neighbor on the office side is the NY State Highway Department, whose trucks drown out what noise may travel in their direction.

It’s not a high-volume or high-margin business; Don and Paula admit they’re never going to get rich from it. It’s also not a business for those fearful of uncertainty and hard, physical labor. But it’s a decent living and Don and Paula Paulson clearly enjoy it.