Why it’s valuable to notice what makes your business unique

There’s a good chance you take for granted some special stuff you do during the course of your day. A lot of us operate at such a high level of integrity and service that what we are doing becomes invisible.

Humbled by the gifts we’ve been given in this life, we wouldn’t have it any other way. But it can be valuable — especially for business owners — to purposefully look or be in a spot to see (or hear) what makes that stuff special.

I noticed something while I was unloading the kiln recently (I’ve been spending more time in the shop because I needed to for a few weeks, and now because I want to — it feels so good and it’s putting me back in touch with why and how we do what we do here): our wood conditioning process is unique.

It got me to thinking about why we condition our wood products the way we do. It’s no big deal to anyone outside the wood industry — until they go to handle a wood product that hasn’t been kiln-dried so close to perfection as ours is. I’ve been doing this so long that I had begun to take that part of the process for granted; it had become invisible to me.

Other companies are processing white pine day in and day out. I guarantee you they can’t come close to our average moisture content in our wood. We always condition our wood products. We kiln dry material 1” to 10” thick and condition it for up to 14 hours. This means once we have achieved the average moisture content in the wood we target, then steam is introduced to soften and relieve the stress in kiln-dried products.  

It struck me the other day: I could hear the difference. Our wood makes a sound different from other companies’ wood as it passes through the molder. I actually had to do a double-take because I was thinking, “Are they running wood down there?” They were; it’s just so quiet.

Our wood mills nicer. It also helps in the hewn process. We can never eliminate chipping; that’s a natural part of the process, but we reduce it by the way we condition our wood. It’s soft. Even the knots are softer.

I’m telling you, what we do is a big deal to the folks handling our wood products. People using our wood on a table saw will notice it won’t split or catch. They notice. They tell us. It took me being out in the shop to realize I’d been taking an awful lot for granted.

If you’re considering a high-quality wood product for a project, please call us or email your request to us! We’ll ship you a sample kit. Better yet, come and visit us. We’ll show you around and let you see how we make it.

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