Event

Working with Local Wood

Learn how to harvest, handle, process, and mill local wood to quality lumber.

Milling your own lumber is more than cutting boards from a log. At this day-long workshop, we will cover the following topics, and more:

- How to select trees for quality and quantity

- How to get the log to the mill, or vice versa

- The best way to mill a log for different purposes

- What to do with the boards after milling in order to save your investment and preserve the board's worth

The presenters at this Saturday workshop have many decades of experience dealing with local woods, which include come of the world's premier species and some of the most difficult to dry and preserve. At the workshop we will discuss both conifer and hardwood species.

The presenters include:

Len Brackett spent 5 years as an apprentice in Japan learning temple building in the traditional timber framing manner and established East Wind Construction Company on the San Juan Ridge 45 years ago. The rich Japanese cultural understanding and appreciation of conifer wood is deep and fascinating.

Bob Erickson has been a furniture maker since 1969 and brings a rich understanding of what it means to work with local hardwoods and the pitfalls of not doing it right. His work is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art and Los Angeles County Museum plus others.

Theo Killigrew des Tombe has been a timber faller for CAL FIRE and a saw mill operator since 1996. He operates a Wood-Mizer LT40 portable sawmill and will display and demonstrate its operation. In the off season he is found in Nashvilles music venues playing and singing his original songs.

Robert Beauchamp has a diverse business plan. He is an accomplished furniture maker, a California walnut sawyer and dealer and a pine cone picking contractor who has climbed many of the largest trees in the world, the giant sequoias. He harvests, mills and sells California Claro walnut.