Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 7 · column 3 of 6 · from the scan, no model involved
logger who bought the 35-year-old operation two years ago in the hope of getting a better return if he sold his logs sawn instead of whole.
With four employees, including his son, and three huge saws running, he’s big enough to produce railroad ties and grade lumber for retailers (90 percent of his business), yet small enough to do custom milling for local folks.
“If someone wants to haul a couple of walnut logs in here, we’ll saw it any way they like,” Mr. Dove says. “We just did a mantle for Dr. Gangel.”
Mr. Dove sells his slab wood— the stuff trimmed off oak, poplar and ash before the good core is reached—for $20 per pickup load (you haul). His dust is free for the taking.
Somewhere between the occasional sawing of Jim Hitt and the roaring enterprise of John Dove sit two younger fellows: Chris Bird and Sam Dwyer.
If these two weren’t such fast friends, they’d be competitors. Both have basically the same sawmill—a portable one that can be towed like a camping trailer to the customer’s land. Both do custom sawing only. Both are part-time, one-man operations. And both know the value of kiln-dried wood, Mr. Dwyer got a kiln three years ago; Mr. Bird bought one this spring.
One recent day, Mr. Dwyer showed up at Mr. Bird’s sawmill, which was parked by his massive Pennsylvania-style bam between Flint Hill and Washington. Mr. Bird was turning oak trees that were two feet in diameter into floor joists.
“It kills me to put all this beautiful oak into floor joists,” Mr. Bird was telling a visitor as Mr. Dwyer got out of his truck. “But it’s a great investment for Laura Majorana. She gets 2-by-12s as opposed to 11/2-by11s (the actual dimensions of lumberyard joists), and they’re out of rot-resistent, doubly-strong oak as opposed to spruce, which we humorously refer to as pretend lumber.”
Mr. Bird turned off his machine, and the men spent 15 minutes discussing how Mr. Dwyer should repair a broken part on his sawmill: They studied the part on Mr. Bird’s sawmill; then Mr. Dwyer went off to fix his own.
A few days later, Mr. Dwyer was found behind his house on Rt. 622 outside Sperryville, sawing some 200-year-old beams from a dismantled church into flooring. Obviously, the repair had worked.
If there’s a difference between the Dwyer and Bird operations, it stems from the men’s private selves. Sam Dwyer is a sixth-generation na
89.7%