Rick Thaler – Corrales Wood Source! 11-2020
My name is Rick Thaler and I’ve been in the woodworking business in the Albuquerque area for over 40 years. I started out in a 450 square foot shop in Corrales, making custom furniture and cabinets. I was one of the founding members of the Albuquerque Woodworkers Association, along with my friends Scott Taylor, Nick Klaus, Skip Hansen and Michael Mocho.
I ended up owning a large, highly automated architectural woodworking business called OGB Architectural Millwork, with 90 full time employees.
I sold OGB in October of 2019 and started retiring but I had bought a WoodMizer bandsaw mill as a hobby about a year earlier, and when my son Jacob and his sweetheart returned from Colorado to have their first baby near us, it seemed just right to start a business together. The saw is at 4404 Corrales Road where Jacob lives, and I live five minutes walk away. The name of our business is DendroTechnology. We harvest dead, down and unwanted trees, here in the village and in the Albuquerque area, and we turn them into live edge slab lumber for sale to professional woodworkers, hobbyists and contractors. We also buy and mill some logs from out of the area in species that that are hard to get here. In addition to live edge slabs we make turning blanks, thick veneers, “cookies” (log sections from 5” to 30” diameter, any thickness) and we do custom milling for people who bring us their logs. We also make custom furniture and we are developing a line of semi custom wood and steel garden benches.
We have two drying kilns, one solar and the other electric. A lot of our logs are cut green and we dry our planks to under 10% before we sell them. A lot of turners are looking for green blanks and we keep smaller diameter or shorter logs sealed and green for this. We currently have apricot, ash, salt cedar, hickory, walnut, cherry, Russian olive, spalted white oak, pecan, juniper and elm in either log or plank form.
Our standard cut for turning blanks is about 6” in length greater than the diameter of the log, and split down the middle through the pith, but we can cut to your specifications. At any given time we will have burls, crotches, stumps and odd bits and pieces that will inspire turners.
Prices vary but our blanks run between $8 and $25 each, depending on species, condition and size. We’d love the opportunity to show the Woodturners our operation any time you are down this way, and we can do a virtual tour for anyone who wants one.
Our website is www.dendrotsm.com and it has all kinds of pictures, links to other businesses and information and an on line store. Please visit and spread the word.
Rick Thaler 505 980 6161
SFTurners.org 