A coffee table, a mantle, a bar, a conference table for the board room of a large company.
Customers will all see something different when they gaze upon Redgate Sawmill’s collection of live edge slabs of wood, but every piece or decoration started as a tree, probably somewhere in Portage County.
“It’s just the style right now,” said Cassius Harris, who runs the sawmill with his father, Roy Harris. “Sometimes it can be rustic looking with metal legs that are real modern looking.”
Redgate Sawmill, located at 8767 Route 44 in Shalersville, doesn’t create furniture, it simply mills the wood that eventually becomes the the furniture, tabletop, or counter of the buyer’s imagination. In live edge style, the natural edge of the wood — or bark — is kept and incorporated into the design.
Over the past five years, slabs of wood geared toward live edge furniture have become increasingly popular, to the point that Roy said the slabs are all that the sawmill produces.
Roy remembers a large butternut tree that came in from a tree company. He said a regular browser at the sawmill quickly made an offer on the log, but Roy said he wanted to think about it.
“I did some research to see what was going on with this,” he said. “That log they were trying buy from me for a couple thousand dollars was probably worth about $20,000 sawed and dried. We actually sat on that log for over a year before we sawed it.”
He said had to go out and buy a bigger saw to cut the log, which was 50 inches in diameter and 10 feet long.
The boom in live edge furniture has Roy considering an expansion, bringing on an additional employee and buying a second kiln, which he noted is no small commitment. The first one cost $50,000.
“Once we bought that kiln, that made all the difference, and that was a leap of faith buying that,” he said.
The kiln is used to dry wood, which helps guard against warping, splitting and twisting.
“If you saw that piece of wood and sell it green, they’re not going to have a good time with it,” Roy said.
The majority of the slabs for sale at the Redgate Sawmill are walnut, which usually has an interesting grain, according to Cassius.
The sawmill also has slabs of other common trees in the area, but Roy said 75{911ea05452e114f1778c76ca86733b6032c246f8f651bb1f01d12abf04b54efb} of the wood they cut is walnut.
Most of the sawmill’s customers are one-time customers, but some come back when they see another need for a live-edge piece of furniture. They usually buy the wood and make the furniture on their own.
There are some regulars who create furniture to buy, but most are do-it-yourselfers wanting to create their own furniture.
One of the most interesting uses Roy said he’s seen for his wood is live edge river tables, which involve inserting a “river” of epoxy or some other type of filler in the middle of a slab.
Roy has been running the sawmill for about 20 years but only as a hobby for the first seven or eight years. At that point, he was blinded in an accident, which he said ended his house-building career.
Cassius started helping when he was in college and just never left.
“I asked him if he wanted to try it and he said he’d give it a try,” said Roy. “He said he’d give it a year, and so I bought the kiln and we’ve been going strong ever since.”
Reporter Bob Gaetjens can be reached at 330-541-9440, [email protected] or @bobgaetjens_rc.
Reporter Bob Gaetjens can be reached at 330-541-9440, [email protected] and @bobgaetjens_rc.
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