Celebrating our First Birthday at Logie Timber Supplies by looking back at how far we’ve come..
Logie Timber – We Started With a Sawmill
Logie Timber opened in 2017 on the site of the long-gone original tree nursery and estate sawmill established in the early 1900’s. The business is the brainchild of Mark Councill and Alec Laing who had a vision for a new sawmill dedicated to making the most of the amazing Scottish timber resource that is so sadly underused in this country. They believe that so much more can be done with our own homegrown timber rather than relying on timber from abroad. Astoundingly, in a country so covered in trees, over 80% of the timber used in the UK is imported from abroad. We want to do our bit to change that statistic.
We started pretty small, with our Trakmet mill, operated outside with a little corrugated ‘roof’ moving forward and back with the saw being the only shelter!
The timber we cut was popular and we soon needed a big shed. We wanted to live the talk and commissioned Henry Fosbrooke to build the incredible roundwood timber framed original sawmill shed you see at Logie Timber today. No steel beams needed at all – just local timber!
From those days and with a great and expanding team of people, Logie Timber has grown from strength to strength and now has a second, larger shed (also timber framed, this time designed by Makar and built by Gaspard Meric of EcoFrame) housing an array of powerful Mebor sawmilling machines brought all the way from Slovenia. We can now mill more finished product, cutting to our customers’ requirements and we are expanding our kilns to increase our offering of planed internal timber.
To date we’ve been privileged to supply local timber for an incredible range of projects from untreated larch cladding in various profiles for local building projects and architect-designed homes by Scottish companies such as Makar and R house, to hand made musical instruments, and even dining tables for two siblings’ families and a coffin for their granny (at her request) made from one beautiful Elm taken down by Mark outside the family’s house, dried and milled here and returned ‘home’. It’s pretty inspiring to drive around Scotland and see ‘our’ timber in so many exciting projects – you can read more about some of these on our Inspiration blog.
The Boardroom, the precursor to Logie Timber Supplies: celebrating with the first Logie Timber Festival
We wanted to spread the word further about the wonderful local Scottish timber available and bring people from all across the timber world together with families and the public. With this in mind, the first Logie Timber Festival sprung to life in 2018 with a weekend packed with activities, demos and displays designed to celebrate all things wood, and in amongst it all we held the opening of The Boardroom. The Boardroom was the precursor to Logie Timber Supplies, tucked away at the back of the Farm and Garden Shop here at Logie Steading. By this point, we felt we needed a shop front away from the workings of the sawmill to better display the most unusual and interesting hardwood boards and wood-people’s paraphernalia in a more public-facing setting and Logie Steading was the natural location. At this point, we were really dipping our toe in the water, wanting to test whether there was an appetite for a shop of this type in the area. Happily, there very much was!
When a larger prime unit became vacant at Logie Steading, more space to display the beautiful hardwood boards and the chance to expand our offering felt exciting and so LTS was born. Being new to retail, we had design help from Claire and Dave of Yellowbroom and we are delighted with the look and feel of the shop. This new space gives a brilliant opportunity to be able to offer the kit we use and love in sawmill life, and some other products we caught a taste for too (whisky matured in wood is surely a good enough excuse!).
By 2023 we had all moved past the peak Covid years and an appetite for bringing people together was tangible in the team. The second Logie Timber Festival in 2024 celebrating all things wood was born of this desire. Once again, the festival brought people from a hugely diverse range of woody interests together, as well as many people of all generations from the wider community. Bringing attention to the Scottish timber industry, makers, foresters, craftspeople, conservationists and all those who enjoy these environments together, with music, food & drink, displays and activities made for a seriously interesting and enjoyable weekend – you can see more pictures and video from the weekend here.
Logie Timber Supplies (LTS)
In a neat echo of 2018, the second Logie Timber Festival marked our official opening at Logie Timber Supplies (although we’d had a ‘soft’ opening a few months before and had been testing the waters with different products). We were excited to see that hardwood boards quickly became our top seller in the new shop, despite not having the lion’s share of the floor area and being tucked away at the back behind clothing and paraphernalia. So to celebrate our first birthday at LTS, we are once again planning to expand and open a new and bigger Boardroom, where we can display even more of these beautiful boards for your perusal. A new and bigger space, opening at the end of March 2025, will be dedicated to hardwood boards. So if spalting, grains, and centuries-old timber sounds like something you like to oo-and-ah over or see in your house or your next project why not pop down and have a browse (and a sniff, the smell of the boardroom is something that keeps people wandering back from the front of the shop time and again). You can find all sorts of inspiration of past projects from our timber here; we’ve seen everything from houses to furniture to musical instruments and even a coffin.
And finally, here’s a sneak peak of the works going on at the new Boardroom at Logie Timber Supplies with new wooden floor being laid and new racks being built to display all those hardwood boards – all from Logie TImber of course!
We have a first birthday event to launch the new Boardroom at Logie TImber Supplies, Logie Steading on 29th March 2025 with demos, makers, whisky & gin tastings, discounts & more so do come down and see us.
We hope you enjoy continuing on this woody journey with us.
Jo Laing, March 2025
