A Portrait of Southeast Alaska's Sawmills: Despite challenges family-owned, boutique sawmills remain devoted to timber life.

AuthorBohi, Heidi
PositionSPECIAL SECTION Resource Development

It's that one log. From that one tree. Slice it open and it cuts like butter. Straight grain, pointed right to the sky, and an even texture from the honey and gray skin to the heart of the trunk that says, "We are going to make beautiful music together."

"You can have a whole pile of logs," Brent Cole says from his home on Prince of Wales Island, "and then you find that one--so straight and so even--that's what turns me on about what I get to do every day."

Cole is founder, owner, and president of Alaska Specialty Woods, a boutique sawmill in Craig that specializes in producing acoustical soundboards from 100 percent salvaged, dead, downed, and previously-used wood that is purchased from the Tongass National Forest micro-sale program and private parties. He only cuts standing trees if they are dead, he says, and this practice is a part of his brand he intends to always keep.

From Asia to the Middle East; throughout Europe, Australia, and New Zealand; and across the United States, Cole says he has shipped his products to customers in more than seventy-five countries worldwide.

"If it's acoustic, we've produced a soundboard for it," including wooden instruments that range from guitars, violins, and pianos to hammered and mountain dulcimers, Native American flutes, Swedish nyckelharpas, and European lutes and Greek bouzoukis.

Originally from the Midwest (and after deciding he did not want to buy his father's turkey farm), Cole worked his way west with plans of becoming a taxidermist in Alaska before settling on Prince of Wales Island in 1987. With some trade school and on-the-job-training, he worked stints in the oil patch, as a physical therapist, and then running a restaurant.

When Cole went to look at a house for rent, he began talking to the owner who was moving south. He had a shop where he would split out old Spruce and make guitar-binding wooden billets that he called "music wood." Cole was intrigued with the concept and the product but needed to make a living and spent the next nine years working for the Phoenix Logging Company in Klawock, until he decided he wanted to work for himself. He had property with a tree on it, a mallet, a worn out chainsaw, and an old pickup truck.

And that's where it started. A family-owned business since its inception, from the onset Cole completely involved his wife and kids in Alaska Specialty Woods as officers, owners, and employees. Everyone did everything from carrying wood to splitting guitar blocks. After their first month in business, they shipped a cord of wood to their first customer and received a check--for $127. It was a huge disappointment, Cole says, but they got a quick lesson in the tonewood timber sector and started to learn what makes sellable material.

Politics, Industry Changes Lead to Uncertainty for Small Operations

Since then, Cole has grown the company slowly, eventually buying a log truck, upgrading equipment as market demands dictated the need, taking a few steps forward, and then a few steps back. Two years ago, he began operating out of a 15,000-square-foot facility, a measure of success he attributes to patience, hard work, word of mouth, and repeat customers. Producing a custom retail product has also been an advantage, resulting in steadier work than those sawmills that target high-production manufacturers. Along the way, he has added some of the biggest names in the wood music instrument to his...

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