Making high-end wood floors in Britain -- Wood-Mizer Sawmill Owner Series LT40

http://www.woodmizer.co.uk -- A high-end British engineered flooring manufacturer uses a Wood-Mizer LT40 sawmill to process flooring from the round oak log to the final finished plank. Silvan Floors had a dream to end their reliance on a foreign primary processing mill, and set up a completely self-contained mill in Leicestershire that would allow them to have full control over their high-end niche engineered flooring planks they produce in up to 15.5 metres lengths. "We sometimes have to pinch ourselves, to see how far we've come in such a short space of time," Richard says. "Britain's had a rough time. I'm not saying that Silvan is going to be able to solve the UK's economy problems, but it's something that we're very proud of, that we're a British manufacturer. Retaining profits within the country is really important." "On the wonderful thing called the internet, we just started researching machinery that we wanted," says Richard. "We looked at many varieties of bandsaws. On the great site called YouTube, we found that Wood-Mizer was really quite well represented and we learned a lot about the machines." Originally started in the USA more than 30 years ago, Wood-Mizer manufactures a range of portable, stationary, and industrial sawmills that run on thin-kerf bandsaw blades that delivers benefits that have won worldwide acclaim. According to Wood-Mizer's UK branch manager, Dave Biggs, their sawmills are quite popular in the UK, with several hundred units operating for businesses ranging from farms producing lumber for their daily projects to mills exporting grade timber on an industrial scale. Attracted to Wood-Mizer's offering of narrow bandblade sawmills that would give them maximum log yield, they initially remained hesitant, concerned that the narrow blade would not be able to stand up to the rigors of sawing oak logs in one metre girths for 8-10 hours a day. "We went up to an agricultural show, where we actually saw the mill cutting a log," Richard recalls. "And to demonstrate how simple the operation was and how gentle this saw could be, the guys cut a millimetre thick veneer for us and it was absolutely pinpoint perfect. That really sold it to us that this was the correct piece of equipment for our initial processing. We felt that the big, humongous bandsaws were going to be too bulky, we needed something with a little finer touch for cutting the oak that we require."