Starting from Scratch with Ruben Custom Sawmill

There are numerous ways to start a business. Some people are handed the reins of an existing business, and the challenge becomes how to keep that business running and growing in years to come. Others go into business with other people, where multiple perspectives and shared experiences make for a stable starting point.

But some just jump in with both feet, which is the method that Matt Ruben of Ruben Custom Sawmill used when he started his company just under five years ago. Matt didn't have a family business or a long-standing tree service company to build upon; he was just fascinated by wood and the process of milling trees.

"It seemed like a fun thing to do. I knew there was a business side to it, but I didn't really get into that until I was comfortable milling and understanding wood. Just getting to know how it is and the different species and all that sort of thing."

-Matt Ruben

Inspiration is Everything

On the surface, Matt's reason for getting into the wood industry is because he owned land and was not a lazy worker. But as he dug deeper into his motivations, he remembered learning about the waste of trees and lumber from the Amazon in elementary school. That memory stuck with him as the years went by.

Matt went on a field trip to the Louisville bat factory in tenth grade, which inspired him further. He went and got a lathe at that young age and started making baseball bats to use because he played the game at the time. In the years that followed, Matt went to college but decided that his studies weren't for him, which led him to work at a steel mill, where he picked up a lot of knowledge that he would use for his endeavors later.

"It's kind of funny how similar a steel mill is to a sawmill. In a steel mill, you're taking recycled scrap, melting it down, and turning it into a semi-finished product. And then it goes through another process, another process, and another process."

-Matt Ruben

From Steel Mill to Sawmill and Beyond

After buying his first sawmill, Matt progressed in his newfound activity very quickly. He and his family had recently moved out to their new property in the country and spent the first year building his inventory. However, all of Matt's lumber was green at the time, and while he was selling his lumber quickly, he felt bad that his clients couldn't use it right away. They would need to wait for it to dry.

At first, with his standard' jump right in' attitude, Matt started to build a solar kiln to dry his lumber. But halfway through the build, in about 2018-2019, he came across the iDRY kiln and, after doing some research, decided that it was the right option for him. Although he had plenty of success selling his undried lumber previously, owning an iDRY has allowed Matt to propel his business forward while still educating customers about the process and necessity of drying lumber properly.

"They don't fully understand what it takes to get wood dried even to this day. I'm still educating people on what it takes to dry something properly, which still blows their minds. I'll say that my kiln can dry something in four weeks. And they're like, 'It's that long?' I'm like, 'No, that's really fast.'"

-Matt Ruben

A New Age of Drying

When Matt acquired his iDRY, his careful and detailed research meant that he could jump right in and get things going quickly. When purchased, the iDRY kilns are just about plug-and-play, and Matt found that he didn't need to fuss with settings very much at all. The first load he dried in his new kiln, he stuffed everything he could fit in there, including some ten-foot-long, twenty-inch wide, two-inch-thick walnut slabs. 

Despite filling it to absolute capacity right away, the iDRY performed flawlessly for Matt on that inaugural use, and every single piece dried perfectly for him. He then sold every piece he had and continued to fill up and empty his new iDRY every weekend as his hobby began to transition into a side hustle and continues to grow even to today, where he now works full time. 

The iDRY kiln was such a massive part of what has allowed Matt's business to develop and take leaps and bounds over the relatively short time he has been in operation. To really highlight just how big an impact this machine has had for Matt, see what he has to say about it himself.

"It's a fun business to be in. It's a lot of work, but it doesn't seem like work. The only reason I'm where I'm at today is that I just quit my full-time job two weeks ago to do this full-time. I wouldn't have been able to do it without iDRY giving me the capability to do so."

-Matt Ruben

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Instagram: @rubencustomsawmill

Website: www.rubencustomsawmill.com