SPENCER TOWNSHIP – Jerry Hatfield never planned to own a saw mill, but when his father-in-law died in 2005, it fell upon him to take it over. Now it seems it was meant to be.
The R.M. Wood Company has been around since the 1950s, tucked away on Old Mill Road among the Amish farmers' fields and woods outside the village of Spencer along the western edge of Medina County. The small, open-air mill produces more than a million board feet of lumber a year.
It is one of about 200 saw mills in the state, which range from large, modern mills that operate with machines, lasers and technological advances to one-man mills run by a guy with a portable saw.
Hatfield’s operation is on the small to medium side of an industry that collectively contributes $24 billion a year to the state’s economy. Saw mills once were plentiful in every city and town in Ohio, but these days they are relegated to rural areas. Hatfield’s mill has found a comfortable niche supplying wood for furniture, floors and interior woodwork for houses.
Hatfield’s father-in-law, Roy Murphy, worked in the steel mills in Marion but found the work not to his liking.
“It was hard work, so he started buying logs and hauling them to saw mills,” Hatfield said. “He bought this saw mill in 1997 and I started working with him about six months before he died. I learned about the business and eventually bought it from him. I had been installing Pella windows in Columbus and was getting a little tired of the long drive from my home in Mt. Gilead."
Hatfield, 56, likes to joke that the operation is much the same as it was when it opened almost 70 years ago: man-sized saws slicing 20 foot tree trunks into thick slabs which will be cut and shaped into pieces of fine furniture.
“This could end up as a fine dinner table,” Hatfield said, running his hand over hefty piece of pin oak. His workers, three young Amish men, carefully guide the large tree trunk onto a simple, but efficient, track that pulls the log into the saw. The 60-inch blade cuts so smoothly it seems effortless. The noise is not as loud as expected, thanks to the razor sharpness of the saw blade.
The blade slices through the heavy wood cleanly and smoothly, leaving no rough edges. It’s so smooth it looks like all it needs is a coat of stain to become a dining room table that would fit into the finest homes.
Despite appearances, the slab of wood is months away from being furniture.
“It’s still green,” Hatfield said.
The newly-cut slabs are carefully loaded onto a truck to be hauled to Countryside Woods in nearby Homerville where they will be carefully dried over the next three months. From there, they are sold to woodworkers and furniture craftsman who will handcraft the pieces into expensive furniture.
“Much of the wood goes to local Amish craftsmen,” Hatfield said. “There is a big demand for their work and I like the idea of local wood being used to make beautiful furniture that will be passed down through generations.”
China is another big customer, though that could change according to Brad Perkins, executive director at the Ohio Forestry Association, Zanesville.
“The new tariff war might affect that,” he said. “China may not be as willing to buy from us if the tariffs get too high.”
Still, Hatfield says Ohio wood is popular.
“China loves our wood, they don’t have the kind of trees we grow here in Ohio,” Hatfield said. “Northeast Ohio is the envy of the world for our red oak and cherry, it’s the kind of wood other countries would die for. Our wood becomes cabinets, kitchen tables, chairs, bed-frames, just about anything else.”
Hatfield buys trees from farmers and landowners throughout the area. Walnut, cherry and white oaks are prime. Willows are avoided because they are “too soft.”
Hatfield chooses the trees he wants, marks them with paint. His workers then remove the limbs from the tree, then cut down the trunk. It is loaded onto a truck and taken to the Old Mill Road property, which Hatfield leases from a local farmer. Using heavy equipment, he unloads the logs and piles them on the property until they are ready to be carried to the saw mill where his workers use hooked tools to guide the heavy logs onto the tracks to be rolled into the blades.
Once the prime slices are removed, the rough bark pieces are cut off and piled up to be sold for firewood. There may be up to 4,000 logs at a time on the property waiting to be cut. Smaller pieces are cut into uniform pieces that could be used for construction. The cheaper cuts are piled up to eventually be turned into pallets. Nothing is wasted, even the sawdust is gathered for farmers to use as bedding for their cattle.
Tony Ramey, Spencer Township trustee, said the mill is very important to local people who rely on wood to heat their homes.
“Every weekend you’ll see pick up trucks lined up along the road waiting to buy loads of wood for heating their homes,” he said. “He keeps plenty of houses supplied.”
Perkins said the biggest mills in Ohio are near Middlefield, Holmes County and the largest are the technologically advanced mills owned by Superior Hardwoods in Wellston, MacArthur and other cities.
“These are places with dozens of workers in a mill that is highly mechanized,” he said. “One guy sits in a control booth and runs the logs through band saws that cut them into the desired sizes. They have machines to cut away the bark, lasers that measure the wood other machines that grade the wood."
Perkins said there used to be more mills in Ohio, but the number has been holding steady for the last few years. The number ebbs and flows with the housing market.
Hatfield said it’s hard work, but work that he loves.
“It’s stressful,” he said. “It can be dangerous but the workers here are very good and very careful. In all the time I’ve been here we’ve only had one accident involving a man’s hand. They were able to save his hand, but the memory of that accident is always there.”
He also worries about a simple thing that most people never think about – nails.
A nail hammered into a tree to hold a hammock or birdhouse will eventually be covered by bark. It can’t be seen, but it can destroy the carbide tip of a saw blade that hits it, costing about $300 to repair. Hatfield first runs a metal detector over the trunk looking for metal, which he digs out when he locates it.
Running his hand over the smooth surface of a cut log, he muses, “The trees are alive, the wood is alive. The best maples never leave Northeast Ohio. They go from a tree to fine furniture and stay where they grew. I feel good about that.”