Three generations of sawmill designers!

Three Generations of Sawmill Pioneers

Let’s rewind to the tropical shores of Fiji, where my dad, Carl Peterson, was playing mad scientist on 500 acres in Navutu out of pure necessity. Picture it: the northern tip of the smaller Fijian island, and there’s Carl, battling jungle humidity with his very first swing-blade sawmill prototype. Now, “swing-blade sawmill” is a bit of a stretch—it was basically a chainsaw bolted onto a circular saw blade with a homemade jig. Dad would line it up, make one horizontal cut, then shuffle the whole contraption to make a vertical cut. No swing axis yet, just good old-fashioned manual labour.

Then came the 1987 coup. While Fiji was flipping upside down, Dad stayed behind to wrangle his pig farm, and my family high-tailed it to Rotorua, New Zealand. As it turns out, being a pig farmer with a side hobby of defending neighbourhoods during political unrest wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. Not long after we arrived in NZ, we saw the news: “American Pig Farmer Detained in Fiji.” Sure enough, it was Carl. He’d stood up against the chaos, and at one point, 200 soldiers showed up at his door, threw him in a sack, beat him, and took him to jail. Thankfully, he managed to get free and make a quick exit on the next flight out, leaving his pig farm dreams—and his belongings—behind.

Fast forward to late 1987 in Rotorua, and we’re dirt poor. But Dad’s still inventing, and soon enough, he’s cobbling together his first “commercial” swing-blade sawmill using parts that would make MacGyver proud: old bike gears, scrap metal, and a glue gun. Welding wasn’t in his toolkit, so rivets and glue held it together, with a belt-driven chainsaw powering the blade. This time, he rigged it with a swing mechanism that rotated for both horizontal and vertical cuts. It was pure scrappy genius.

I was just a kid, but I remember going to our first big agricultural show. Farmers stacked up like human Jenga on anything they could climb to get a glimpse of this wild contraption. Word spread fast—this mill could handle the giant trees of New Zealand, and it was like the little engine that could! It didn’t take long before Dad scored a government grant, turning his garage tinkering into Peterson Portable Sawing Systems Ltd. Farmers loved it, and those early mills are still going strong.

An Australian company jumped on board to distribute his mills down under. But soon, they decided they wanted a slice of the sawmill pie for themselves, creating their own version of Dad’s original swing-blade design, going head-to-head with him in court. The legal battle was brutal. Dad won the case, but it drained the business. Today, my sister still sells those early models under a new company structure, while I took my own route, pushing the sawmill game even further with Turbosawmill.

I started out in Dad’s company around 2000, sweeping floors and learning the ropes. Welding, assembling, tinkering—whatever needed doing. Eventually, I started building my own “Jake special sawmills” to make some cash on the weekends, learning all the tricks of the trade. But I kept wondering: why are people still pushing these sawmills around manually? This tech had serious potential for automation. I became obsessed, and in every spare minute, I worked on new ideas to automate the whole process. Eventually my dad saw my passion and greenlit the project, backing the development under his company.

One moment that stuck with me. I was shown a picture that was placed at one of Dad’s agricultural show booths. A competitor, who made a twin-blade sawmill at the time, had posted it. It was a cartoon of a character sweating while pushing one of Dad’s early mills, with the caption: “Peter and Son – Pushing for a Living.” I thought it was hilarious, but they were right. That little jab gave me even more fuel to improve our mills, to design something that took the grunt work out of sawing.

While working with my dad, I earned a few awards and patents under my name for my inventions, but the real breakthrough came when I succeeded in creating the first commercially available automated swing-blade (ASM). I personally engineered (with the sponsorship of my dad’s company) all the automation elements that transformed the existing manual sawmill into a fully automated powerhouse. That was a huge step, but the real leap forward happened when I branched out in partnership with my dad. Together, we had a shared vision: to revolutionize the swing-blade sawmill. We crafted the Turbosawmill, featuring a straightforward monorail system, smooth, simple automation, and open access to work the logs with ease. Our first prototype introduced something else the industry had been eagerly awaiting: a model with a 12” cutting capacity. It’s not perfect—no sawmill is—but it was a true game-changer, pushing the industry forward in ways we’d only dreamed of.

And now, the Peterson family legacy rolls on to the next generation: my son, Quinn. It’s wild to think that after all this, he’s picking up the torch—or in our case, the welder. Watching him get his hands dirty in the same way I did—welding, assembling, running the mill—it’s like a full-circle moment. He’s learning the ropes, and I can already see that spark of innovation in him. He’s not just taking up the family trade; he’s ready to push it further. I couldn’t be prouder to watch him add his chapter to this story, carrying forward the Peterson name and legacy into the next frontier of sawmills.

So here we are, three generations deep in the Peterson family sawmill legacy. What started with a chainsaw, some bike parts, and a pig farm has become an entire industry. By Jake Peterson.

Please note for clarity: My dad’s company Peterson Portable Sawing Systems Ltd. Was liquidated in 2005. Turbosawmill operates independently from Peterson Global Ltd. (the current company that sells my dad’s original products), which is owned by other family connections. While we share a common family history, we are distinct companies with separate ownership and operations.