Sawing Heavy Timbers for Movie Sets in Alberta

The Leonardo DiCaprio movie, ‘The Revenant’ was filmed in southern Alberta, Canada. Its set designers purchased a lot of wood products manufactured by Brooks Sawmill, and this is one of several Western movies that the sawmill has supplied in addition to its highly eclectic client list.

The businesses’ website, which is really the only public profile the company has besides supporting a number of community groups in nearby Cochrane, says that they are ‘easy to talk to’. And they are, which is why customers keep coming back.

While it has maintained a relatively low profile because business through word-of-mouth has served it well, Brooks Sawmill has a long and storied history. It is a five generation sawmill nestled among million-dollar ranches and oil money mansions located in the picturesque Rocky Mountain foothills west of Cochrane, many of whom they have supplied. Chances are the lumber for the corrals and out buildings, the beautifully-knotted and burled gate posts leading to ranch houses, peeled logs for log homes, and even wood for furniture was supplied by the Brooks Sawmill.

Business at the sawmill, which features both a Wood-Mizer LT40 bandsaw and a circular sawmill, is steady. Owned by David and Marcie Brooks, Marcie says that their current website is probably the highest profile the company has ever had, even though it is almost 100 years old. A custom sawing operation, Brooks Sawmill aims for high quality and has shipped wood products as far as Texas. The lumber sawn at the sawmill helped build Cochrane and the surrounding area.

The sawmill derives its income from both solid wood products and firewood, with just over half coming from the solid wood side of the business. Their product mix extends from as small as 1” x 4” lumber as short as 8’ to as large at 14” x 14” timbers as long as 32’. They also produce rough dimension lumber in popular sizes from 2” x 4” to 2” x 10” for non-structural applications, and aim for high quality, removing all lumber with red rot indication from their lifts, and sending it for firewood.

“We’ve shipped material, such as heavy timbers as far as Texas, and we’ve done a lot of movie sets,” says David. “Pretty much every movie that has been filmed here that is a Western, we’ve supplied most, if not all their timber.”

Brooks Sawmill purchases its 5000 cubic meters of wood fiber from surplus oversized spruce and pine logs sold typically by large dimension sawmills in the province.

For custom jobs that take a little longer and are more suited for a bandsaw, Brooks Sawmill operates its Wood-Mizer LT40 bandsaw with one operator, in tandem with a circular saw operation to produce commodity dimension lumber. “We use the bandsaw for doing heavy and long timbers up to 32 feet long, and a lot of one inch material due to the small kerf on the band,” says David.