MOSES LAKE — Erik McVay’s day job is a manager with CenturyLink, but his passion is milling and working with wood.

The former marine served in Operation Desert Storm and later did a stint in the U.S. Army. But to tell you the truth, he prefers the quiet rumble of turning fallen timber into something useful, like barn material or a nice table. That’s why he enjoys his secondary job called Manley Portable Milling, which provides people in eastern Washington and western Idaho with onsite sawmill service.

“I was born and raised in logging country down in Oregon, so I’ve always been around it,” he said. “I just love wood, the smell, the wood grain. I built a cabin in the woods with all knotty pine paneling. My experience in the service got me my job with the phone company, but the logging has been a big part of my life.”

Manley Portable Milling specializes in onsite milling. He uses a 22-foot long, LT40HDG26 Wood-Mizer portable sawmill, which he can bring right to the site whether it be in the woods or a downtown street. It loads the logs up hydraulically and runs a narrow band saw blade to saw logs into lumber, consumes very little fuel, and produces up to 30 percent more lumber than traditional sawmills. While the bulk of logs McVay mills are softwoods like ponderosa pine or Douglas fir, he's also milled cherry, walnut, larch and other species.

“I can do any type of dimensional lumber that someone would want,” he said. “I do anything from package stick board to full-sized beams, structural lumber for building a barn or fencing. I’ve made a lot of interior knotty pine paneling or deck lumber. Pretty much anything, but most of the big jobs I do are for barns.”

He has done quite a bit of work down in Richland or up in Okanogan. He spent some time over in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho where he milled a 100-year-old walnut tree that had fallen.

“The guy had a 100-year-old walnut tree that came down in a windstorm,” he said. “A lot of time when that happens, people call in a tree company to come in and take them away. So I’m always trying to tell people they have some really nice wood and you can have it milled. Why go buy black walnut for $15 bucks a board foot, when you can have it milled and sell it if you don’t want to use it yourself?”

He hasn’t milled much in the Moses Lake area, but he has done some work with the timber damaged by wildfires the past few years.

“I always tell people you don’t want it to sit too long, because the black part dries it out real fast,” he explained. “Most of what I do is softwoods because we’re not but a hundred miles in any direction from forests. Most of what I do is pine, but I have a customer up in Okanogan that has a bunch of apple. All that makes good stuff. A lot of times you see them cut it down burn it. I just cringe when I see that because there’s so much beautiful wood.”

Manley Portable Milling offers an alternative to buying building supplies at Home Depot or clearing out property and disposing wood. It might make a spectacular table or a memorable barn or that summer deck.