Editor’s Note: We posted our first story about TimberKing Owner, Todd Langford, just as he was getting his sawing business started. Following up now, several years later, his business is really booming. Read how he’s done it!
It’s like printing money
“Owning a TimberKing sawmill is like printing money! Every time you cut a slab, every time the blade comes out of wood, you’re making hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Back in 2014, we bought a TimberKing 1220. I retired from the Air Force a year later and started sawing full time in our backyard. Things have been growing ever since!
Movin’ up to the big time
By 2018 our family business had grown enough to move the operation to a bigger industrial location. Since then, we’ve added staff people, equipment, tools, and a full wood shop where we build furniture including a lot of commercial work like conference tables and desks.
Today we have 3 TimberKing machines and 10 employees including me, my wife Terri, and our son, Oscar. Two guys work full time in our wood shop building custom furniture. We just hired a dedicated customer service rep. Terri does the books. The rest of us work on the sawing and selling end of the business.
We have our original TimberKing sawmill, the 1220. We also have a TimberKing Talon Resaw system, a slab saw from Australia, a forced-air dry kiln, and another on order. Plus a Kubota articulating loader with a grapple, and a big Ford F550 flatbed.
New 2520’s big…massive…a production monster!
We recently bought our newest TimberKing sawmill, the big 2520. Oscar and I drove 40 hours in our commercial flatbed to pick it up at the factory in Kansas City. It was worth the trip — this machine is a production monster! It’s big, it’s massive. We didn’t get it to saw dimensional lumber; we got it to saw very large-growth desert hardwoods like ironwood, mesquite, acacia, and more.
For example, we recently sawed out a 2,000 year-old ironwood log. Ironwood is hard as steel. This log was 34” diameter by 11’ long. We run carbide blades with the feed rate set low for jobs like that.
The 2520 is a real money-maker. Right off the mill, ironwood can sell for $8.00/lb and this log weighted 3,400 lbs. But we’ll add even more value by processing the wood into products like writing pen blanks and knife handle blanks. Do-it-yourselfers buy these products. And when we add processes, we add value.
$200,000 payday from scrap wood
Here’s something that should be of interest to every sawmill owner. We’ve had remarkable success with a new product — charcuterie boards. Charcuterie (shar-KOO-ta-REE) is French for a type of wooden serving tray used to cut and serve hors d’oeuvres like meats, cheeses, fruits, and breads.
Making these boards changed everything for us. TimberKing’s Talon Resaw made it possible. We modified our TimberKing 1220 to hold and saw firewood-sized logs in half lengthwise. Then, with the Talon Resaw, we slice off 1-1/2” thick boards, 12 – 16” wide by 24 – 30” long. Besides all our other produces, we made 8,000 charcuterie boards last year. We sold every one we could make for $25 each. So we turned free scrap wood into $200,000! We’ll do more this year and may use this product to start a second business.
Orders booked out 1 full year
Orders are booked out a full year! Everything’s word of mouth. We had a website but took it down to keep up with the work coming in. We do no advertising though we have two pages on Facebook; one we put up ourselves and one on the TimberKing Owner Group site.
Our intention is to keep scaling up, keep growing. A friend of mine had an interesting observation. He said our sawing business is like a goldfish. I didn’t know if that was an insult or not until he reminded me a goldfish will grow as big as the enclosure it’s kept in. We’ll keep growing and, eventually, our son will take over. It’s been a real blessing to have him working with me.
Thank you, TimberKing
Please tell the TimberKing company — the TimberKing family — how much our family appreciates the help they’ve given us. Every time I contact them, they walk me through everything I need to know.”
— Todd Langford, Chequest Millworks, TimberKing Owner, Peoria Arizona
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