Katrina Amaral: Timberdoodle Sawmill

September 1, 2022

Katrina Amaral: Timberdoodle Sawmill

“They’ll put us in touch with the landowner if they’re like ‘Well, I’ve never thought of this. We could use it’”

Katrina Amaral

Welcome to a brand new episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast. Today your host Steve Larosiliere sits down with Katrina from Timberdoodle Sawmill. Katrina and Miles began custom sawmilling with a homemade chainsaw mill way back in 2010. Since then, the business has grown enough for both of them to focus their time and energy heavily on the business, and what a journey it has been!

“We have a nonsensical origin story: Miles built a sawmill, it snowballed aggressively, and that’s what we’re doing now. So we are currently a vertically integrated sawmill business in rural New Hampshire. We have the capacity to cut down trees and handle the chain of custody all the way through milling and post-processing, which means that we do like a very geographically circular product.

When we were still sawmilling out of the duplex apartment that we were renting near the college town that we went to. I came home from my day job, I do conservation work, and miles had been milling. I was coming home early to help him, and I was like, ‘Oh, I can tell by the smell of the sawdust that you’ve been milling a lot of red oak today.’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, we were doing boards.’ I was like, ‘Okay, if I am deep in this enough to identify wood species by the smell of its sawdust, it feels like we’ve been doing a lot of it.’”

Katrina Amaral

A Shifting of the Business

Whenever Woodpreneurs develop their woodworking businesses, there always comes a time when a decision has to be made. How much time will I devote to this project relative to my existing career? For some, that’s an easy decision if they’re not in a line of work they love; for others, such as Katrina and Miles, it can be a bit more complex.

“We initially intended for it to be a filler business. I was doing seasonal bird research, and Miles worked at an engineering startup. This was our way to fill in the gaps if we ever had breaks financially. But we were both doing the logging and sawmilling full time for about two years. Then a couple of years ago, I went back to working a day job and conservation again. So it fluctuates.

We’re busy enough that I could probably go back, but I also love my job. So there’s a bit of work tension there. We’ve intended to keep it flexible because we don’t know what the world is going to do. So keeping it small and flexible enough means we can take advantage of other personal opportunities.”

Katrina Amaral

Steve’s Advice Corner

“Right now, we’re definitely struggling with where the economy is going. We don’t have big projects lined up for next year yet, which is new for us. We’re also trying to start working with more of the architect and design side of the process, to start doing some chain of custody sourcing and helping that process.”

Katrina Amaral

The question of what is coming next, economically speaking, is on a lot of people’s minds right now, Steve’s included. He has been working a lot on developing plans to handle a recession from the perspective of a wood business and provides a lot of vital information to Katrina for her business.

“You said that you have five home projects that you’re working on. Those people came to you for those projects specifically; whoever they are, there are probably more people like that. So now you need to start investing in building your brand and getting your name out there.

I haven’t met too many people like yourself, but the fact that you work with landowners to help them repurpose their lumber in their own projects that’s a unique sort of value proposition. I would build a marketing campaign strictly on that and create a marketing package for your ideal target audience.”