Reclaiming wood is a fairly straightforward process. However, to effectively reclaim wood, thought and care are required. Reclaimed wood must be touched and considered at every step. Reclaiming wood is not an automated process, like the cutting and processing of new trees. When a new tree is cut, it is possible for it to be made into an end product having never touched human hands. Conversely, we often call our products “hand crafted” because of the attention and labor that go into every piece.

Deconstruction: To buy raw stock we hunt down wood structures slated for demolition and gain or purchase the rights to salvage them. Then a deconstruction team carefully dismantles the structure and brings the wood to a TerraMai mill facility.

Metal removal: Regardless of what continent we are on, the first step in our remanufacturing process is metal removal. We use metal detectors and an extensive collection of cat’s paws, pry bars, drills, spike pullers and a few custom tools created especially for removing stubborn metal from old timbers. Once the metal is removed, the wood is then ready for milling into final form.

Milling: We process our rough wood stock with small band-saws that prevent unnecessary waste. This produces rough sawn lumber, timbers and flooring stock. Raw materials are processed into finished products as close to the source as possible - either overseas or here in McCloud. This minimizes energy costs and allows us to create jobs within the communities where we purchase our woods.

Drying: All of our exotic flooring stock and some of our domestic stock is kiln dried to National Hardwood Flooring Association standards. This serves two purposes. It ensures stability and minimizes the movement of our flooring once it is installed. It also eliminates insects in an environmentally sound way. Our remaining softwood lumber stock is air dried in our alpine climate to a low ambient moisture content of 6-15%, depending on the season.

Finishing: Our finishing mill equipment ranges from custom hand planing tools to state of the art four-sided molders. We can take a Douglas fir beam and give it a rustic sandblasted finish or turn the hardest woods in the world into perfectly fitted, pre-sanded flooring. This wide range of possibilities helps us assist innovative architects, designers, builders and homeowners find the perfect product for their project.