Couple's Sawmill Cuts Up Old Logs For Premium Products

The Tampa Tribune, Jim Tunstall, October 19, 2003

FLOORING, FURNITURE MADE FROM LUMBER
MICANOPY - George Goodwin drives this town's ultimate muscle machine.

His McDonough band saw has the power of 100 horses, a laser-guided cutting sight and a 7-inch-wide, 30-foot-long blade. It also boasts a sound-resistant cabin, air conditioning, tinted windows, a CD player and a cushy captain's chair.

"The old one was a lot more physical" to use, Goodwin says, mouthing a silent "whooo-eee."

Arguably, he earned the creature comforts after a quarter-century in the wood business. He and his wife of 20 years, Carol, own Goodwin Heart Pine Co., which mills floors, handrails, molding and furniture, among other things.

They use the heartwood of virgin longleaf pine and bald cypress logs that sank in north Florida rivers more than a century ago. The heart, or center, contains dead cells in the oldest part of the tree. Its heavy resin content gives it strength and resistance to rot, even when submerged.

The Goodwins buy their logs from salvage divers who work the Suwannee and St. Marys rivers. They also deal in reclaimed wood - heart pine or cypress salvaged from old buildings that were demolished.

"Some people want their wood to have genuine nail holes in it," Carol Goodwin says.

Her husband started dabbling with "sinkers," as the logs are called, when he left the antiques business in 1978.

"A friend of mine who was a diver introduced me to a fella who logged the Suwannee," he says. "A light went off ... and I teamed up with the logger."

He started small, but today the Goodwins have 24 employees and buy from a half-dozen suppliers. Each shipment has four to six truckloads of about two dozen 24-foot logs.

"We unload, scale and store them when they arrive," George Goodwin says.

A log's diameter tells a lot about its age.

"A log that's 10 inches thick probably is 150 years old," Carol Goodwin says. One that measures 18 inches is 300 to 500.

The logs' quality determines value and what will be made from them. Flooring is 80 percent of the couple's business.

And business has been good enough that the couple toy with the idea of semiretirement, Carol Goodwin says. At the same time, they're expanding their operation, including adding new work areas.

"We're also tripling our showroom size and working on a new line of furniture," she says.

Hard Wood Takes Toll Heart pine is hard enough that the mill has a stack of 30 spare saw blades, each with a $400 price tag.

"They only last an hour, an hour and a half," George Goodwin says. "Then we send some of them to Valdosta to flatten and re-true them."

Bald cypress is softer and therefore less expensive.

"We use it for doors, ceilings and furniture, but not floors," Carol Goodwin says.

The saw's support mechanisms guide the logs through the blade and repeat the process until as many pieces as possible are cut from them.

It's All In The Grain As each board is cut, it's moved along a conveyor and graded by quality before beginning several weeks of air and kiln drying.

"We cut 1-by-3s up to 1-by-12s," mill foreman Charles Johnson says, shouting over the band saw's scream. "As he's cutting, I'm grading."

The best, he says, is called "vertical" and has a tight, straight grain. "Flat" has a wider grain and "select" has some knots.

"There's also "legacy,' which comes from old buildings and has nail holes," Johnson says.

Then there are special logs. Curly pine, which has bumps on the outside and a wavy grain inside, is popular and pricier.

"One out of every 400 or 500 logs we get has curly in it," Carol Goodwin says. And "pecky cypress, which is created by a fungus, is getting hot again, too."

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