In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with Luke Gaskin of Good Old Wood in Vancouver, BC. Luke shares how his business evolved from a full-service salvage operation called Salvage Vancouver into a focused reclaimed wood company. The name change wasn't just branding. It was a turning point. Dropping the salvage identity and committing to Good Old Wood meant letting go of the junkyard mentality and zeroing in on what he actually loved: working with the wood itself and turning it into something new.

Luke talks honestly about the growing pains that came with building a self-taught business from scratch. He had no woodworking background, learned everything from YouTube, and operated on a fake-it-till-you-make-it approach for years. He tried partnerships that didn't work out, scaled up to a big shop with four employees before COVID forced him to scale back down, and spent the better part of seven years scraping by before the business started gaining real traction. Through all of it, he grew organically without big loans, slowly building his understanding of the craft and the market.

The conversation covers the practical realities of working with reclaimed material. Luke explains why he stopped doing the demolitions himself, how free wood started coming to him once word got out, and why Vancouver's salvage mandate for older homes created a natural pipeline of material. He breaks down the economics of selling individual mantles and floating shelves versus landing larger commercial projects like feature walls and flooring installs, and why the bigger volumes are where the real money lives. He also talks about the challenge of staying true to the DIY customers who supported him early on while building a business that can actually sustain itself.

One of the standout stories in this episode is Luke's current project with Aesop, the skincare brand recently acquired by L'Oreal. He's building out an entire flagship store in Richmond Mall using over five thousand board feet of reclaimed wood. The material is coming from large timbers salvaged from a deconstructed Dairyland facility in Burnaby, and the design was inspired by an earlier project using wood from a wooden roller coaster at Vancouver's Playland at the PNE. The whole store will be reclaimed wood, designed around Luke and his story, and he describes it as the kind of project where, if it were the last thing he ever built, he'd feel successful.

Jennifer and Luke also dig into the marketing side of the business. Luke admits he hasn't done much formal marketing, relying mostly on word of mouth, Instagram, and Google searches. He talks about the love-hate relationship with social media, the challenge of documenting your own work while you're in the middle of building it, and why he's bringing someone on to handle content creation, especially heading into the Aesop project. Jennifer emphasizes the importance of professional photography and long-term storytelling, reminding Luke that this one project could fuel his marketing for years.

The Woodpreneur Podcast brings stories of woodworkers, makers, and entrepreneurs turning their passion for wood into successful businesses - from inspiration to education to actionable advice. Hosted by Steve Larosiliere and Jennifer Alger

For blog posts and updates: woodpreneur.com

See how we helped woodworkers, furniture-makers, millwork and lumber businesses grow to the next level: woodpreneurnetwork.com

Empowering woodpreneurs and building companies to grow and scale: buildergrowth.io

Connect with us at:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sawmillsnearme/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/woodpreneurnetwork/

Join Our Facebook Group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/woodpreneurnetwork

Join our newsletter: https://substack.com/@woodpreneurnetwork

You can connect with Luke at:

https://www.goodoldwood.ca/

https://www.instagram.com/goodoldwoodco/

In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger sits down with Joshua Morvant of Revival Timberworks in Louisiana. Joshua shares how his journey through woodworking started with taking apart pawn shop guitars as a teenager, moved into cabinet making to pay the bills, and eventually led him to an apprenticeship with a luthier just outside Quebec City. Living among some of the oldest colonial architecture in North America, buildings constructed in the 1600s that were still standing strong, something clicked. The idea of building something with your hands that could outlast you by centuries became the driving force behind everything he's done since.

What makes Joshua's path unique is that he had no formal apprenticeship in timber framing. He taught himself by visiting historic buildings across the East Coast over a five-year period, studying joints, reading failures, and building a mental toolbox of what works and what doesn't. He talks about how broken braces, undersized members, and insufficient relish behind pins taught him as much as the structures that survived, and how those observations now inform every project Revival Timberworks takes on.

The conversation covers the real-world complexity of integrating timber framing into modern light-frame construction, why the phrase "it's just decorative" has become a trigger for Joshua, and how working closely with engineers from day one leads to smoother, more cost-effective projects. Joshua breaks down how Revival Timberworks operates across multiple client channels, from partner builders and architect relationships to homeowners who find them on Google, and how customizable pergola and timber frame kits have found an unexpected niche with landscape companies looking for turnkey outdoor structures.

Jennifer and Joshua also explore the supply side of the business. Joshua talks about watching Douglas fir log sizes shrink over the past 15 years, the disappearance of old growth material, and why he's become a strong advocate for mass timber and glue-lam as ways to use younger trees more effectively with less waste. He shares his perspective on the 200-year growth cycle needed to produce quality timber and why the conversation about sustainability in the Southeast needs to go deeper, especially on smaller private woodlots where education and attention don't always follow.

Chapters

00:00 Origin Story: From Cabinet Shops to Guitar Building to Timber Framing

04:07 Learning from Old Buildings: What Lasts, What Fails, and Why

09:31 Structural vs. Decorative: Integrating Timber Frames into Modern Construction

12:44 Client Relationships: Builders, Architects, and Homeowners

16:03 Customizable Kits and the Landscape Company Niche

19:36 Marketing Through Relationships and a 15-Year-Old Website

21:41 Bonsai, Yamadori, and the Parallel Path of Working with Living Trees

27:29 Material Sourcing: Shrinking Logs, Thermal Modification, and Mass Timber

34:20 Sustainability, 200-Year Growth Cycles, and the Future of Wood

40:04 What's Next for Revival Timberworks

44:29 Legacy, Mentorship, and Where to Find Revival Timberworks

The Woodpreneur Podcast brings stories of woodworkers, makers, and entrepreneurs turning their passion for wood into successful businesses - from inspiration to education to actionable advice. Hosted by Steve Larosiliere and Jennifer Alger

For blog posts and updates: woodpreneur.com

See how we helped woodworkers, furniture-makers, millwork and lumber businesses grow to the next level: woodpreneurnetwork.com

Empowering woodpreneurs and building companies to grow and scale: buildergrowth.io

Connect with us at:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sawmillsnearme/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/woodpreneurnetwork/

Join Our Facebook Group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/woodpreneurnetwork

Join our newsletter: https://substack.com/@woodpreneurnetwork

You can connect with Joshua at:

https://revivaltimberworks.com/

https://www.instagram.com/revivaltimberworks/

In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger welcomes back returning guest Mike McGarry of Urban Lumber in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. What started as a one-man pilot project to prove to three levels of government that diseased urban trees could be safely salvaged has grown into what may be one of the largest urban tree recycling and hardwood production operations in the country, processing three to four thousand trees per year with a team of eleven employees.

Mike walks through the early days of navigating government roadblocks, building chain of custody tracking, and developing disease mitigation protocols for working with Dutch elm disease wood. He explains how the elm bark beetle carries the fungal spores, why getting the bark off within five days is critical, and how Winnipeg's brutal winters actually work in his favor.

The conversation shifts to how Urban Lumber evolved from a sawmill operation selling raw lumber into a fully vertically integrated company. Today, ninety percent of the lumber they produce stays in-house for custom furniture, architectural millwork, boardroom tables, and floating shelves sold online across Canada. Mike talks about the equipment upgrades that made this possible, including a modified Wood-Mizer LT40 extended to handle massive urban logs and an iDry Turbo vacuum kiln that finally solved the challenge of drying American elm without excessive degradation.

Jennifer and Mike also dig into the business side: why your next hire should be a dedicated marketing person, how to build a company culture that keeps people around, the economics of smaller bandsaw blades when you're hitting metal every day, and why staying nimble keeps Urban Lumber insulated from market volatility. They close with a candid conversation about the economic climate between Canada and the US, cross-border tariffs on blade prices and shipping, and shifting species trends from maple to walnut to white oak.

Chapters

00:00 The Origin Story: From Forestry Student to Urban Lumber Founder

02:29 Government Roadblocks and the Pilot Project

04:19 Disease Mitigation: Dutch Elm, Bark Beetles, and Chain of Custody

08:03 Scaling Up: Equipment, Employees, and Closing the Waste Loop

13:46 Kiln Drying Breakthroughs with the iDry Turbo

15:05 From Sawmill to Fully Vertically Integrated Operation

19:01 Custom Furniture, Architectural Millwork, and the Shaper Origin

21:04 Building a Team and Keeping the Culture

25:20 Marketing, Inventory, and the Business of Running It All

29:01 AI in the Shop: Time Savings and Cautionary Tales

30:56 What Keeps Mike Coming Back Every Morning

33:15 Economic Fears, Tariffs, and Staying Nimble

35:38 Species Trends: Elm, White Oak, and Shipping Challenges

The Woodpreneur Podcast brings stories of woodworkers, makers, and entrepreneurs turning their passion for wood into successful businesses - from inspiration to education to actionable advice. Hosted by Steve Larosiliere and Jennifer Alger

For blog posts and updates: woodpreneur.com

See how we helped woodworkers, furniture-makers, millwork and lumber businesses grow to the next level: woodpreneurnetwork.com

Empowering woodpreneurs and building companies to grow and scale: buildergrowth.io

Connect with us at:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sawmillsnearme/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/woodpreneurnetwork/

Join Our Facebook Group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/woodpreneurnetwork

Join our newsletter: https://substack.com/@woodpreneurnetwork

You can connect with Mike at:

https://www.urban-lumber.ca/

https://www.instagram.com/urban_lumber_mb/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-mcgarry-967152166?originalSubdomain=ca