From lumber Rebecca Watson photo
Logs turn into high-end homes in Fraser Lake By Rebecca Watson
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ustic, beautiful and wooden, Rocky Mountain Log Homes are known for offering people one-of-a-kind places to live. They’re built all over the world, but the magic starts right here in northern British Columbia. Rocky Mountain Log Homes have been personalizing cabin-style homes for over 40 years. They’re one of the leading log-home manufacturers in the United States offering Swedish-cope, handcrafted and panel-wood homes in partnership with Pioneer Log Homes of Montana and Whisper Creek Log Homes. Some of these dwellings can cost upward of $1 million and although they are mainly sold in the United States, about 80 per cent of the logs come directly from a small operation in Fraser Lake, B.C. “We do some really fancy homes with some quite intricate truss systems, but it all starts right here with the wood being collected, cut to proper length and roughly profiled,” said Richard Burkholder, manager of the Rocky Mountain operation in Fraser Lake. At peak times, Burkholder manages about six or seven employees. Contractors get their licence to cut through the provincial small scale salvage program, so the trees they use are dead and dry from either Mountain Pine Beetle or from forest fire. “This wood we’re salvaging no one else really wants,”
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“We do some really fancy homes with some quite intricate truss systems.” - Richard Burkholder said Burkholder. “Bigger plants don’t take the chance of having charcoal because even a small amount can ruin their final paper product.” Once collected and cut, the logs are profiled (rounded) through a Bezner log profiler, a machine that moves each log through rollers that whittle the wood down like a pencil sharpener until it comes out finished on the other side. Approximately 40 per cent of the stand becomes waste through profiling and tapering. While unused wood is sent to Pinnacle Pellet in Burns Lake to make wood pellets, the finished raw-wood logs are then sent to the Hamilton, Montana plant to be further finished and/or handcrafted at the Rocky Mountain Log Home headquarters. See Page 25