A Mobile Sawmill in the French Mountains: Sawing in Any Season!

With Wood-Mizer LT70 mobile sawmill, French sawmiller Serge Jourdan cuts local wood for carpenters, makes custom sawing, and is available at any time to help other Wood-Mizer sawmill users in the Haut-Verdon Valley in Beauvezer.

“My name is Serge Jourdan. I own a portable sawmill in the Haut-Verdon valley in Beauvezer, in the French Alps. Why did I choose the LT70 sawmill? Because it’s easy to move around. I work in a mountainous area, and when I go along the mountain passes and forest tracks at 2400 m altitude, I can always manage my sawmill. This machine is running virtually every day of the year!” 

Serge has worked with wood since he was 16, starting as a seasonal woodcutter and logger in the valley. He always wanted to work in the forest, so he graduated from a school with an advanced vocational diploma in forestry production. In 1993, he set up his woodworking and logging business, but due to the decreasing wages for these jobs, he decided to expand his services to sawmilling. “Earlier, I had worked shortly in a local stationary sawmill, but soon I realized this business was too complex to set up and run flexibly for customers. In 2000, I was the first contract mobile sawmiller in the area with a growing clientele on my record,” recalls Serge Jourdan. 

Although he pioneered portable sawmilling in the region of the Haut-Verdon valley, Serge needed to help local people believe in the value of their wood. For decades, people had claimed the local timber was not good enough for building houses, even though some old village houses are now 300 years old and are still solid. “These days, it is no longer an issue,“ says Serge. “All my customers can be divided into two groups – those that come to my warehouse and look for good-quality larch wood sourced locally and those that request my portable sawmill service to places where no other sawyers can go.” 

The LT70 Portable Sawmill in the Mountains

Serge’s success would not have been possible without an efficient, reliable, and portable tool for sawmilling. The LT70 portable sawmill is the second Wood-Mizer machine he has owned. He started his sawmilling business with a second-hand LT40 sawmill in 2000 and sold it with about 6800 hours on the clock. “I needed to change my old LT40 to get a bigger machine. The sawing diameters of the LT40 and the LT70 are similar, but with the LT70, I can work quicker. I decided on the LT70 sawmill because I remembered my LT40 as a durable machine that was easy to use and maintain, with just some parts subject to wear and tear that needed to be changed regularly. The LT40 was also ideal for pulling behind my 4x4 truck.”

The Wood-Mizer LT70 portable sawmill is a reliable sawmill that rises to the challenges of mobile sawmilling in the mountains. Serge uses his LT70 either when he works on-site or when mobile. “When I’m at the customer’s up in the mountains, I can work on my LT70 even when it’s raining. It can sometimes take quite a while to set up the machine on uneven and damp ground, but I always get the job done in the end,” says Serge. “I’d recommend the LT70 sawmill to other sawyers as it’s easy to use and move around, especially with the M-size (6,5 m long) bed, which is the best choice for tough mountainous passes and forest tracks.”

“I remember one mobile sawyer who used to supply his customers with long roof beams that he would pull behind with an army truck. Getting to these customers would take him over 3 hours, while for my car, with the LT70 towed behind, it was only a 1-hour drive. One day he called me to give him a hand in getting to some of his customers because he couldn’t get through by going along the hard tracks and taking some mountain passes. I was glad I could help him out!”

Best Investment in Wood-Mizer Equipment

Besides the LT70 portable sawmill, Serge owns other Wood-Mizer equipment to be a fully independent entrepreneur. To complement this machine, he purchased the bed extensions, which allow him to saw up to 12 m long logs. Serge also has Wood-Mizer blade maintenance equipment in his workshop – two sharpeners, a tooth setter, and a Wood-Mizer 4-sided planer/moulder for making finished wood products. In addition, he also owns a kiln for drying wood.  

“Combining the 4-sided planer/moulder and the wood kiln was a good investment,” explains Serge. “After converting logs to timber, some boards are always left over from the carpenter’s orders. Selling these boards in bulk didn’t work out well, so I thought of drying the wood and selling it as finished wood products. I bought a wood kiln with a 6m long temperature-controlled container and a planer/moulder for making larch cladding, flooring, and wide construction framing.”

A Sawmill Blade for Every Kind of Wood

Before buying a Wood-Mizer portable sawmill, Serge had worked in a local stationary sawmill for a while and gathered much experience maintaining sawmill blades. “I have always done the sharpening myself. Before buying my portable sawmill, I did a crash course on sharpening large vertical bandsaw blades, which served me well later on when it came to sharpening my Wood-Mizer sawmill blades.”

In his workshop, he has two sharpeners – one is used for 10/30 profiles, which he uses most often, and the other for 13/29 or 4/32, depending on the need. Serge always keeps three profiles in his blade box. He uses the 4/32 profile for sawing dry and hardwood and the 13/29 for softwood, such as pines or larch. “I have two types of 10/30 blade profiles – the set blade and the Stellite-tipped blade. I always use a set blade if I’m unsure about the log or whether it has any nails or metal debris. Otherwise, I go with a Stellite-tipped sawmill blade,” explains Serge.

Serge's knowledge of blade types allows him to process many different wood varieties available in the Haut-Verdon Valley. At the bottom of the valley is Scots Pine, while higher up, there is more larch, which is Serge’s favorite kind of wood. Further down the valley is Aleppo Pine, which is becoming increasingly popular in construction. Along the river, there are also deciduous trees, such as oak and ash. In Mont Ventoux, he can even come across rare species, like – cypress and cedar. “Over the past 22 years, I must have sawn nearly every kind of wood, even the trees that don’t grow in France. I have sawn Russian olive, Judas tree, box tree, pear and apricot tree …, with my LT70 sawmill and the proper Wood-Mizer sawmill blade, I can cut every kind of wood!” claims Serge. 

Extended Customer Service 

Serge Jourdan has earned his reputation in the valley not only by supplying top-quality timber to local carpenters or by contract sawmilling in hard-to-access mountainous places but also by delivering the best customer service to fellow Wood-Mizer owners. Apart from successfully running his sawmilling enterprise, he has also been a Wood-Mizer representative for over 22 years. His responsibilities include providing technical support, repairing and installing, training new sawmill users, and presenting Wood-Mizer sawmills at various exhibitions and trade shows. 

“I have always tried to be as responsive to my customers as possible. Sometimes I repair a sawmill with the customer over the phone, right on the spot. It is a significant asset to be able to deliver urgent customer support. I know how it feels when you’re in the mountains in November sawmilling, and from day to day, you’re getting around 50-60 cm of snow. Without a spare part that you need, you won’t probably survive another day out there sawmilling,” explains Serge.   

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