Many of us make a living from harvesting trees. We build beautiful furniture, amazing homes, and even produce timber for profit. And now we face questions about whether we’re harming the environment. 

Rowan Reid asked himself these same questions. He then spent 30 years trying to answer them....

Processing your logs into boards can dramatically increase their value…if they come out & stay straight! This isn’t always as easy as it sounds -- wood is an extremely complex material to work with—however for the majority of the time, it is one of three things that is causing your lumber to come out warped, cupped, or flared. Here are 3 common causes of less than perfect lumber & how to...

Wisdom is the reward of experience, and it should be shared. Maybe even moreso than putting hundreds of hours on your sawmill, time spent learning from other sawyers may be the best way to take your milling from experienced to professional calibre. We believe in this so much, that we created the Norwood Connect forum over 10 years ago to cultivate a community of sawyers learning from sawyers. With thousands of owners putting endless hours...

The most valuable lumber you’re ever going to mill isn’t oak, walnut, or even something exotic. The valuable lumber we’re talking about, you will probably never sell a single piece of Stickers! These 1-inch thick pieces of lumber are unsung heroes, responsible for preserving & maximizing the value of your milled lumber. When you air dry your lumber, stickers & blocking...

Building and using a log deck is an easy & efficient way to load logs for milling. And while these log-loading decks don’t need to be fancy, they do need to be stable and strong enough to handle the weight of heavy logs. What are the main reasons why you should consider creating your own log loading setup? Here’s a bit of sawyer wisdom we have to...

It took Joplin, Missouri only thirty-four minutes to lose nearly half of its urban trees during an F-5 tornado that ripped the town apart on May 22, 2011. Nearly a third of the city including homes, businesses, and a major hospital complex were destroyed that night. Century-old trees came crashing down on homes, streets, and miles of power lines, causing further damage and complicating a massive and difficult search-and-rescue effort that lasted...

Years ago, we had a local logger with a good reputation harvest oak and walnut lumber on our family tree farm in southwest Missouri. The contract provided for an 8% bonus for careful practices that would not damage other growing stock or make ruts on trails. For the first week, I watched with great respect as he dropped the trees precisely where they would do the least damage