Tom Hamilton: Lumbercycle

 

“I think in order to understand how urban forestry can be successful, I think it’s really important for people in the community to see what the process is like to get from a tree to lumber.”

• Tom Hamilton

 

Welcome back to a brand new episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast. Today your host Steve Larosiliere sits down with Tom Hamilton from Lumbercycle in San Diego. Steve and Tom just recently hosted a Woodpreneur meet-up at Tom’s shop in National City, which allowed so many familiar and new faces to get a chance to meet up, network, and share ideas!

 

“We do things a little bit differently from most sawmills because we are a 501C3 non-profit. We started back in 2016 down here in San Diego, and we have a community college called Palomar College, which has one of the greatest woodworking programs in the nation. You can learn to make anything you want there, and they have so much community and staff ready to help you with any project you want.

 

They also have a sawmill urban forestry program, where they accept logs, and they’ll cut and dry the wood and then sell it to their students for a super crazy discount. After I volunteered with them for a couple of years, when I was getting out of the program, I wanted to try and continue the mission that they were doing by salvaging logs and finding ways to affect people’s lives with them by making the logs affordable and accessible for as many people as possible. I want to try and do that for the public.

 

In San Diego, trying to find urban wood in this area is expensive because there are not a lot of people that are doing it. I know the goal is to try and save as many trees from going into landfills as possible, but it seemed like it would make more sense to save more trees if we could do more volume. And by doing more volume, you can lower your costs. Suppose you can make it accessible and affordable for low-income and disadvantaged communities. In that case, you can make that more systemic organic movement on the working man’s level to make long-term changes for urban forestry sustainability.”

• Tom Hamilton

 

 

 

 

Steve’s Advice Corner

 

“We’re working on something right now, and I need some advice. Here in San Diego, we are one of the hubs. There are breweries, all kinds of restaurants in the downtown area, and now expanding into North Park and all these different neighborhoods, lots of really classy stuff. Many are interested in sustainable materials when making things in their restaurants and businesses. We’re hoping that the future of being able to market this stuff is going to be reaching out to restaurants, businesses and we need to find a way that we can put what the idea is of lumber cycle and Urban Wood into a small enough package that I can start distributing.”

• Tom Hamilton

 

Finding ways to work with larger businesses and expand the reach of your operation is a challenging feat but one that Steve has a lot of practical experience with. Fortunately, thanks to running the Woodpreneur meet-up at his location, Tom has hands-on experience creating the event he needs to make this change happen.

 

“So invite them or go and take pictures of the wood in their location, get a testimonial and maybe take your best samples and throw an event at Lumbercycle. Maybe bring your mobile mill down to your place in National City and have a cocktail party similar to what we did with our Woodpreneur meet-up.

 

Then you invite all those people to come, and then you do a panel discussion with the three or four restaurants that have used urban wood, and then you just do a panel discussion on the top concerns in restaurant design. You could have a conversation about restaurant design and in your invite talk about how to decrease costs in the age of inflation while designing your restaurant or something similar. There’s a recession coming up, and people are going to be looking for ways to save money.”

• Steve Larosiliere

 

Website: https://www.lumbercycle.org

 

Instagram: @lumbercycle