Urban Wood Stars in Free IWF Seminar

For the first time ever, the Urban Wood Movement will make its presence felt at the International Woodworking Fair in Atlanta.

The Full Circle Urban Forestry Network is organizing a free 90-minute seminar, “Urban Wood Utilization: Making Wood Products and Profits from Landscape Trees.” The session is scheduled for 1:00 p.m. Friday, Aug. 26 at the Georgia World Congress Center.

Attendees of this free session will learn:

• How to find sources of urban wood;
• The unique source local/buy local marketing appeal of urban wood products and the interesting stories they tell;
• The environmental advantages of utilizing urban wood; and
• An opportunity to get answers to their questions posed to a panel of seasoned urban wood product experts.

Rich Christianson, communications director of the Illinois Wood Utilization Team and former long-time editor of Woodworking Network, will moderate a panel of three urban wood entrepreneurs. They will discuss their personal passions and experiences of creating products and profits by using landscape and community trees felled by disease, storm damage, old age and other causes. Each of their presentations will shed light on opportunities to repurpose urban wood otherwise destined for the chipper or landfill to make high-quality lumber, slabs, furniture, flooring and other wood products.
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Panelists include:

• Jennifer Alger of Far West Forest Products of Sheridan, CA, helps market the family business that specializes in reclaimed wood including lumber the company mills from the area’s urban forest. Ninety percent of the lumber sold by the company comes from within a 500-mile radius of its Sheridan facility. Far West Forest Products also serves as a dealer for Wood-Mizer portable sawmills and blades and offers blade re-sharpening services.
  
• Rick Siewert, who along with his wife, Cindy, owns Wood from the Hood of Minneapolis, MN. Wood from the Hood. Siewert also is the owner of Siewert Cabinet & Fixture, a high-tech, 35-man architectural millwork company. Siewert Cabinet is a past winner of the Woodworking Machinery Industry Association’s coveted Innovator of the Year Award and a long-time active member of the Architectural Woodwork Institute including past member of the AWI Board of Directors.
• Dwayne Sperber, owner of Wudeward Urban Forest Products of Milwaukee, WI, has worked tirelessly to build awareness and markets for the abundance of wood from urban trees. Sperber is a founding partner of Wisconsin Urban Wood, a nonprofit focused on building networks of people and businesses that links material streams and availability of quality urban wood products and services across the state. He also is an appointed member of the Wisconsin Urban Forestry Council.

Wood-Mizer LLC of Indianapolis, IN, a manufacturer of portable sawmills, sawblades and other wood processing equipment and accessories, has signed on as a major sponsor of the program.
Darryl Floyd, COO of Wood-Mizer, noted that his company was a pioneer in the urban wood movement. “Since 1982 Wood-Mizer portable sawmill owners have turned their logs into lumber for woodworking projects and business profits. With Wood-Mizer’s thin-kerf blade technology, diseased and dying city trees can find new life in a piece of furniture that could have otherwise gone to waste. Throughout the past decade, Wood-Mizer has seen a major influx of successful businesses who are utilizing urban sourced wood for their sawmilling operations and we are proud to manufacture a product that enables small businesses to be profitable with an underutilized resource. While Wood-Mizer has been educating woodworkers about the positive environmental and economic impact of urban wood for years, the Urban Wood Seminar at IWF 2016 will be another step forward in saving more trees from going into the waste stream.”
 
While the seminar is being presented free of charge, attendees must register to guarantee a seat at the program. Learn more and register at www.IWFAtlanta.com/Education/nbs6.
 
For information about becoming a seminar sponsor and general inquiries, contact Rich Christianson at 773-822-6750; richc.illinoisurbanwood@gmail.com.

About the International Woodworking Fair
The International Woodworking Fair, owned by the Woodworking Machinery Industry Association and the Wood Machinery Manufacturers of America, is North America’s largest woodworking event. IWF 2016 is scheduled for August 24-27, 2016 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta. It is the “must attend” show for supplies, manufacturing and processing of materials for the furniture, cabinetry, flooring, door and window, plastics, solid surfacing and machine tooling industries. IWF 2014 attracted more than 23,000 woodworking professionals and industry suppliers from the U.S., Canada and beyond. Learn more at iwfatlanta.com.

About the Full Circle Urban Forestry Network
The Full Circle Urban Forestry Network operates from funding provided by the USDA Forest Service Northeastern, State and Private Forestry Landscape Scale Restoration Grant Program. The four state partners include:

• Illinois Wood Utilization Team;
• Southeast Michigan Resource Conservation and Development Council;
• Missouri Department of Conservation; and
• Wisconsin Urban Wood and Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

 
About the USDA Forest Service
The Full Circle Urban Forestry Network’s IWF urban wood seminar is made possible through grant funding by the Northeastern Area State and Private Forestry, U.S. Forest Service. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) prohibits discrimination in all its programs and activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, and where applicable, sex, marital status, familial status, parental status, religion, sexual orientation, genetic information, political beliefs, reprisal, or because all or part of an individual’s income is derived from any public assistance program. (Not all prohibited bases apply to all programs.) Persons with disabilities who require alternative means for communication of program information (Braille, large print, audiotape, etc.) should contact USDA’s TARGET Center at (202) 720-2600 (voice and TDD). To file a complaint of discrimination, write to USDA, Director, Office of Civil Rights, 1400 Independence Avenue, S.W., Washington, DC 20250-9410, or call (800) 795-3272 (voice) or (202) 720-6382 (TDD). USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer.