BEGINNINGS ARE A
FUNNY THING

I started a tree service in 1996 after the first major ice storm in the Pacific Northwest.  Fourteen years later, in 2010, an attorney called for an estimate to remove an eight-foot diameter Coastal Redwood in North Tacoma.  After the parties settled on terms, we were hired by an insurance company to remove the tree with a crane.

In the meantime, a woodworker named Larry Blackshaw saw the beast and let us know what was held inside... a rare grain pattern commonly referred to as flame curl.  

Consequently, we were determined to get the log into the right hands so that it wouldn’t get wasted and we could make some extra money from this windfall.  Try as we might, no one in the area was buying figured logs of any kind, let alone ginormous ones.  A local pulp mill offered to buy it for a few hundred dollars and chip it into paper pulp for concrete bags.  Larry obviously found this unacceptable and thus our insane endeavor began… meet the team.

LARRY BLACKSHAW

Larry became our sawyer and from that first big Redwood log, and he has provided the skills needed to read the grain and contours of logs in order to maximize the yield and beauty of the material.  As it turns out, most of the trees in our area are as beautiful on the inside as they are on the outside.  

Of course, cutting a log into usable pieces is only the beginning of the process.  Next is drying, surfacing, and all downstream machinery.  So next, let’s meet Matt.

MATT COUCH

We got that wood shop going in 2020 and I think I speak for everyone when I say that Covid was not well timed.  But we survived and Matt made good on his word. 

As a team, Larry Matt and I survived the proverbial Fire Swamp of getting this Project Of Unusual Size up and running.  We feel that we’ve created a wood shop that can process any log, large or small into the widest variety of wooden beauty for modern living. 
 
And then there’s me. 

MICAH GLASTETTER