With a band saw, making wood floors as a hobby can turn into a successful small business

Nils Ohlin, tells us how he plans and prepares to change the routine of office work for the creative work of producing customized wood flooring  

I work as a project manager on a construction site, which is mostly office work. For me, it is very relaxing to come home and work with my hands. My goal is that in a couple of years I will devote all my time to this work here at home. It started as a hobby, but it's not a hobby anymore! My production is very small and very specialized. The idea is to make only custom-made floors. The product itself requires a lot of craftsmanship and is intended to last for generations. My typical customers want a unique product - something no one else has.

Some customers even give me the lumber themselves. Some farms may have been in the same family for hundreds of years. So they can take a tree grown there and make siding in the house. I have developed this business over the last 5 years. What I think is really great about this idea is that I can do everything myself, from felling the tree in the forest, transporting it home and then cutting, drying and processing the complete material to the finished flooring product. 

For me, the whole process of turning raw material into a finished product is important. There are many different tasks related to it, and you also need to know quite a lot about machinery to be able to control the whole process. I actually have a lot of oak wood on my property. I simply take a small tree-cutting machine and go and fell the tree, cut it down and cut the branches off. Then I bring it home and put it on the bandsaw. Once the log is cut, a lot of traditional work has to be done - sorting the pieces, stacking them before drying. 

You also have to leave a small carbon footprint - there's a lot of talk about that lately. I heat my buildings with the waste from the cutting waste, and I also use it to fuel the drying kiln. It is very good for the carbon footprint. I work with wood with a lot of life in it, because my goal is to make a living product. This makes the material harder to work with, because wood has higher values of tension and internal motility. The biggest secret to make it work is to work with the natural properties of wood. You have to adapt the process to the properties of the wood. 

The hardest part of the process is that all cutting operations have to be very accurate in terms of measurements. If you don't, you won't be able to lay the floor. Wood is a living material and I don't think I've ever been able to make two pieces that are exactly the same.

 The ability of the LT40 bandsaw to cut large sizes - that was the important aspect for me. With the Wood-Mizer you have simple and stable functionality. Things have been designed so you can work on your own.

The ribbon saw I had before was from 1990. Since then bandsaw design has come a long way, and the new LT40 I recently bought is so professional that I could work full time to support myself on lumber sawing alone. I would definitely recommend it, I am really very happy with the bandsaw and its functions. 

Wood air-drying takes ten weeks. Then we kiln dry it to 4.5%. In the last week we add water once more to bring it to 8.5% before removing it. It makes the material more stable.

 It's a real pleasure to see the finished product, knowing what part you played in making it. The feeling of fulfillment, of being able to do all these beautiful oak floors, it's pretty cool.

 Author: Nils Ohlin, Sweden

 Sbear: www.woodmizer.ro