Eliminating the Bottleneck: A Year of Rapid Growth with Forest Through Finish

Forest Through Finish has been many years in the making and, like many businesses, was born from owner Kevin Ferdinandt’s desire to build a home with his own hands. He and his wife Carrie have been wood nuts since high school and wanted to build their house on the north shore of Lake Superior in Northern Minnesota.

Right from the start, Kevin wanted to build a timber frame, but when he began pricing the cost of getting the large timbers cut, he realized it would be in the range of $30,000, not even counting the required tools he would need. With all of that in mind, Kevin began to wonder what it would cost to get the logs himself, buy a sawmill, and cut everything himself.

“What I realized was, if someone else can do this, I can figure this out. That’s how I built my own house, and it’s how I started my first business. So I bought a sawmill, I bought the logs, and by the time I was finished, I never even got close to the $30,000.”

• Kevin Ferdinandt

From Home to Business

Although the sawmill and tool purchases started as a means to an end, to build a home for a better price, Kevin quickly realized how much he enjoys milling lumber. Since he is a teacher and has experience as a painting and drywall contractor, he figured he could create a side business and operate it during the weekends and breaks through the year without it impacting the career in education he loves.

Soon Kevin realized the biggest challenge facing his family’s burgeoning business was the time it takes for wood to dry out enough to be used properly, so he soon realized it was time to invest in a kiln. There are many different types of kilns available, some that can be built and some that can be bought, and after researching several options, Kevin met a guy who owned a vacuum kiln.

“I met a guy who had a vacuum kiln, and I looked at what he was doing, and I asked him if he had any regrets. He said, ‘Yeah, I regret that I didn’t buy a bigger one. I bought the standard instead of buying the Plus.’” 

• Kevin Ferdinandt

Investing in an iDRY Kiln

By the time Kevin started looking into kilns, he had realized that Forest Through Finish was coming very close to a full-time job for him. However, his career in education is very important to him, so he wants to make sure that the time spent on his side business is as efficient as possible. As such, Kevin reached out to Jim Parker of iDRY, who he had seen through YouTube videos, and asked what it would take to get one for himself and his business. 

Jim immediately recommended that Kevin invest in an iDRY Plus as the Standard would likely not be sufficient for his business. So Kevin ran with that, made the investment, and began advertising drying services before he even got the kiln operational.

“When people would call me, I would say, ‘Well, you’re going to have to wait till November. I can’t get you into my kiln until November. I started to get people who wanted to put things into my kiln. So when I got the kiln in November, I immediately put it to work, and I started to generate income from the thing.”

• Kevin Ferdinandt

The addition of the iDRY kiln to Kevin’s business has allowed him to branch into a top-to-bottom service for handling lumber. He had a Bobcat to move things around early on, but it wasn’t strong enough to move entire kiln loads in and out, which necessitated a bigger track loader that could handle the weight of everything.

Thanks to these investments, Kevin has reached a point where people call him to cut their logs and transport them in addition to drying, making his cutting business as large as his drying business. His iDRY Plus has allowed him to stay so busy with drying lumber for himself and customers that it has only had a week of downtime in the entire time he has owned it, and that was only because he couldn’t get enough lumber cut that one week, because it was too cold outside!

Speed and Efficiency

People are beginning to realize that there is no way to mill lumber and put it immediately into a traditional kiln without suffering significant degradation since it needs to season outside. Thankfully Kevin can bypass that need thanks to the vacuum technology of the iDRY, which sucks the moisture directly out of the center of the wood. Having that ability to take fresh wood off the saw and dry it immediately has made Kevin’s customers incredibly happy.

Since getting the iDRY Plus, every aspect of Kevin’s business has improved. Between having the ability to take on more customers, having a faster turnaround, and offering more services, Forest Through Finish has grown exponentially since then. At this point, the biggest issue for Kevin is that he is only one guy and he and his family can only tackle so much at once.

The key to Kevin overcoming this hurdle is by collaborating with others. After drying wood for customers, they often ask him if he can flatten the slabs as well, but since he doesn’t own a device to flatten lumber, he takes the products over to a friend of his who has one. Thanks to the addition of the iDRY kiln, this practice keeps expanding to the point where Forest Through Finish is quickly becoming a tree-to-table business within a year.

“It’s funny because I now have a huge sawmill that could cut up to 72-inch diameter logs, and I’ve got the track loader that can lift that log. Once I get to cutting it, I let it sit outside for as little time as possible. I’m going to strap that thing in place; I’m going to put it in the kiln; I’m going to let the kiln dry it. Then that lumber is going to be worth thousands and thousands of dollars.”

• Kevin Ferdinandt

Taking the Leap

The iDRY Plus has revolutionized how Kevin can operate his business and has expanded his possibilities well beyond what he was capable of before. His advice to anyone interested in creating or developing their wood business is to invest in the tools and machinery that will speed up your timeline.

“If you want to be in the kind of sawmill, drying, finishing business, you cannot do it without speeding up the timeline of the drying services. You can’t do it in any timeframe without having to maintain thousands and thousands of board feet of inventory that are useless until you can get them dry. 

So the iDRY vacuum kiln is the absolute way to make sure that you’re not sitting on inventory too long, which I think is the downfall of some mills; they sit on inventory too long, and that bottleneck needs to be eliminated”

• Kevin Ferdinandt

Kevin also wanted to note that Jim Parker referred him to iDRY financing specialist Jeff Coiner while he was working on getting his kiln and Kevin has nothing but excellent things to say about that experience.

For anyone with questions about financing or looking to please reach out to Jeff!

To see more work from Kevin please check out:

forestthroughfinish.com