100 Percent Wood Utilization

Where each part of the log goes

We mill dry balsam: the logs left burnt or behind in the bush that larger mills will not take. Every log leaves the yard as squared cants for finished lumber or as chips bound for a local pellet plant, so nothing is wasted.

• Cants: the squared core of the log, milled into solid timbers. See dry balsam cants.
• Rough boards: two-inch lumber from wood that does not square into a cant, sold direct to local customers.
• Chips and sawdust: the rest becomes feedstock. See residuals and wood chips.

What the alternative looks like

The wood we buy has usually been written off already. It is standing dead, burnt in a fire, or knocked down and left in the bush because an operation chasing green sawlogs had no use for it. Left alone, that timber either stands until the next fire runs through it or ends up in a slash pile and gets burned on purpose.

So a hundred percent utilization here is not really a claim about tidiness in the yard. It is about wood that had no future getting one. The squared core leaves as cants, the wood around it that will not square leaves as boards, and the fines and edgings leave as chips. A log arrives as salvage and goes out as three products.

Why a small mill can do this

Being small is the point. We take dry balsam larger operations walk past, and because every output has a home, the part that is not a cant does not become waste. Our chips truck to a local pellet plant; nothing leaves the yard as a burn pile. A mill built for volume needs a steady supply of uniform green logs to keep its line fed. We are not built that way, and that is what lets us take wood in whatever condition the bush left it in. Read more on our sustainability page, or see exactly how it happens in how we mill.

What it means if you are buying

Utilization is the reason our rough-cut boards exist at all. They come off the wood that will not square into a cant, which at a lot of operations is chip material and nothing else. Sawing it into two-inch boards instead only makes sense if somebody nearby buys them, so the local retail side of the yard is part of how the loop closes rather than a sideline to it.

That also explains what the boards are: rough, ungraded, untreated, random in width. Honest wood for fences, corrals, barns, and outbuildings, where a finish is not the point. Buying a load is the most direct way anyone outside the yard keeps that part of the log out of the chip pile. Tell us the sizes and roughly how much you need and we will tell you what is on the ground.