Rustic River Creations – Built by Hand, from the Heart

Born and raised in Chapel Hill, Tennessee, 29 year old Matt Akin grew up in a family of entrepreneurs and small business owners. Matt’s parents ran a gas station and convenience store and over the years, demonstrated the value of a strong work ethic to their children.

Inspired by his parents dedication to providing for their family, Matt studied entrepreneurship in college and after graduating, worked in a corporate role with a rental car company.

This was followed by Matt starting his own business renting canoes and kayaks, and woodworking in his spare time.

Together with his father and brother, in 2014 Matt started Rustic River Creations, a full-time woodworking business producing artistic pieces of furniture, custom exterior shutters and decorative brackets for houses. Rustic River Creations pride themselves on incorporating discarded materials found at scrapyards, into their functional works of art.

Originally Rustic River Creations used a Woodmizer bandsaw to mill their lumber, but upon discovering the benefits of a swingblade mill, they decided to sell their old unit and invest in a Peterson.
“As our Woodmizer aged, we started to realise that the downtime for maintenance and repairs was higher than the uptime. We were running in to problems that just don’t occur with a swingblade mill,” said Matt. “One of the biggest issues were the bandsaw blades, which required a lot of sharpening and would become damaged.” “I can sharpen the blade in 10 minutes, whereas with the bandsaw I would easily spend a day sharpening several bandsaws.”

Peterson’s swingblade design utilises a pivoting circular blade which cuts in the horizontal position down the log, and is returned in the vertical position, immediately producing one board or slab. The blade only has up to eight teeth which can be sharpened directly on the sawmill without removing any guard to do so.

A craftsman that prides himself on his work, Matt had also been unhappy with the quality of lumber that was cut with his bandsaw mill.

“I love the straight boards that come off my Peterson Sawmill, it gives me a higher quality cut with less work and in turn, more production!”

As somewhat of a salvage revivalist, Matt often comes upon odd-shaped or extra-large logs which can’t be cut with most bandsaw mills. With a bandsaw’s style of cutting, large logs require turning many times, whereas Peterson’s design allow the sawyer to tackle large logs head-on.

During extensive sawmill research, Rustic River Creations investigated the Lucas Mill brand as well, comparing it with the original swingblade, Peterson Sawmill. But Matt and his family were sold on Peterson as a fellow family business and producer of high-quality products which are “superior to other brands.”

While Peterson have a range of sawmill options to suit different applications, in August 2018 Matt chose the 10” Winch Production Frame (WPF) model which he felt best suited Rustic River Creations’ needs.

The WPF has been designed for productive sawmilling, cutting high quality, extremely accurate timber with portable or fixed-site milling. As its name suggests, the WPF enables high production with Matt cutting around 4,000 to 5,000 board feet with the mill so far. The wood is now drying for later use in custom furniture manufacture; a specialty service of Rustic River Creations.

There are many features and optional extras available for the WPF, one of which is the Hi/Lo track setup which has enabled Matt to work at a much quicker pace. With Hi/Lo tracks, the operator can either load logs over the track on the low side, or roll logs under the high track depending on their application.

“The WPF is noticeably faster and much more accurate than our old bandsaw mill and is a better unit overall,” said Matt.