If
you’re ever in Branson, Missouri, stop in at the
Big Cedar Lodge at the Top of the Rock golf
course. You will find a marvelous green on which
to shoot a few rounds of golf and while there
you can check out the handiwork of Timberland
Wood Products of Bonners Ferry, Idaho.That lodge is sided with genuine North Idaho cedar boards, sixteen foot long, three inch thick and sixteen inch wide, milled by the Isaac family of Timberland Wood Products.
Glen Isaac began his business in 1998 with a small Woodland Pro band saw mill at a site south of Bonners Ferry.
He had spent considerable time in the timber industry, but with logging becoming so intensely competitive, he decided to try milling the logs instead of selling them.
In
2003, he moved his operation to the Oxford Loop
area, then in 2005 to its present site one-half
mile east of the Three-Mile junction on Highway
Two, where sons Chad, Todd and Nathan now share
in the ownership and operation of the mill.Some might label the Isaac’s operation a “horse-and-a-half” saw mill, but a cursory glance into the lumber storage area will dispel that notion.
Their storeroom displays a huge selection of beautiful trim, paneling, flooring, beam material and assorted lumber, both finished and rough-sawn. To the delight of the finish carpenter or the craftsman woodworker, the vast majority of their product is high grade and clear grained, with no knots or defects because Glenn and his crew are able to take their time sawing each individual log.
Utilizing
a Wood Miser LT 70 saw with an extra wide
throat, the Isaacs can rough cut almost any size
timber, trim or dimension lumber.Randy Ellson is Timberland’s full-time sawyer and a custom timber framer. Once the rough cuts are made on the logs, boards that are to be surfaced are handed over to Glen’s son, Dave, who operates a planer/molder at the Timberland location and can custom cut just about any pattern.
About 50 per cent of their raw material is obtained from a local saw mill and the rest from local land owners. They utilize all the Western soft woods available in this region, as well as a lot of birch. Occasionally they also purchase wood from other sources as well, such as two years ago when they obtained logs that had laid on the bottom of Montana’s Flathead Lake for decades. Glen says the grain patterns on those logs were unbelievable.
With the death of saw mills in North Idaho and the Pacific Northwest in general, finding a mill that can produce not only standard building studs and dimensional lumber, but also offer up such a large variety of custom-cut woods is a rarity these days.
As
Glen points out, presently the nearest head rig
for processing logs that are larger than 27
inches on the butt is the Riley Creek Mill at
Laclede, Idaho.Any logs bigger than those are normally transported to a saw mill at Lewiston, adding additional transportation costs to the finished product.
Timberland can process raw materials that high production saw mills would have “culled” or been unable to process because of their size, thus utilizing waste logs to the max.
Glen says his primary cuts are “whatever the customer asks for.”
Besides providing the unique cedar siding for Branson, Missouri’s Big Cedar Lodge, the Isaac’s have been asked to fill some other unusual custom orders. They recently completed the siding for a home at Lake Tahoe, California, where the customer wanted just the cedar slab with the bark left intact. Timberland shipped the six to ten inch-wide cedar slabs to a very satisfied customer and Isaac was pleased, too, because after the slabs were cut he had the remaining whole logs left over for other purposes.
Another unusual request was for blued pine flooring, which was shipped to a customer in Georgia.
Blued pine is seldom used for flooring since it is very soft. Besides shipping to folks all over the United States, Timberland receives many orders from Canadian customers as well.
Timberland Wood Products is open Monday through Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Stop by and check out their complete inventory. Glen and his sons would be happy to help you with all your building material needs.