1 Business, 2 Woodworkers, and 9 WOODMASTER PLANER/MOLDERS
…building AIR-CONDITIONED DOG HOUSES! Read this couple’s remarkable business success story
Ricky and Kimberly Jones manufacture a full line of extraordinary dog (and cat) houses with optional heating and air-conditioning! Even more extraordinary is their manufacturing process using NINE WOODMASTERS!
The beauty of having NINE Woodmasters, Ricky says, is production efficiency. Each machine is set up for a specific operation – planing, ripping, or sanding. Ricky doesn’t change setups; he changes machines. And instead of running one machine all day long, each machine runs perhaps only an hour a day.
“My wife, Kimberly, and I own and operate our family business — manufacturing and marketing our unique, custom, hand-made dog houses. It’s just the two of us, with part-time help from my father-in-law. And our NINE Woodmaster planer/molders!
We bought this business from a friend 10 years ago and have built and sold over 3,000 high-end dog houses to customers in all 50 states and seven countries. Business is great. Right now, we’re working long days, seven days a week.
Do you have a little dog or a BIG, BIG, BIG dog? No problem. The Jones’ make houses for every size dog, from chihuahua to big boys like the pooch shown here.
Wait…did you say you build AIR-CONDITIONED doghouses?
We build our doghouses out of high-grade cypress with stainless steel hardware. We have many models with options including air-conditioning, heating, porches, windows, and more.
When we started, we were making dog houses out of T1-11 plywood and asphalt shingles. Since then we’ve upgraded our products significantly with our Woodmaster equipment. Today, we start with rough-cut, kiln-dried cypress and make all our materials by running the rough lumber through our Woodmaster Planer/Molders. We plane and gang-rip boards to our spec. Then we run everything back through our Woodmasters to shape our beveled roofing, log cabin siding, T&G flooring, and more.
Here are three of Ricky’s NINE Woodmasters. Front and center is his newest machine, the 4-Head Woodmaster 4000.
…and you own NINE Woodmasters?
Things got very busy during Covid and have stayed that way. To maximize our manufacturing efficiency, we bought our first Woodmaster, a 21” 721 model. Later, we added eight more; another 721 and five 18” 718’s. And we’ve recently added a Woodmaster 4000 4-head planer/molder.
Ricky and his wife make all their building materials from rough-cut lumber with their 9 Woodmaster Molder/Planers. Their Woodmaster 4000 stands front and center, ready for action!
So rather than change tooling, you change machines?
The beauty of having so many Woodmasters is we control all our manufacturing and do it all in-house. Each machine is set up for a dedicated operation. So one’s set up as a dedicated gang ripsaw, another as a dedicated drum sander, and other Woodmasters are set up with specific molding pattern knives. And our 4000 Woodmaster makes all our T&G flooring material in one pass. I knew of other 4-head machines, but I had such good experience with Woodmaster that when they came out with the 4000, I looked no further.
Here’s one of Ricky’s Woodmasters set up as a gang ripsaw
Having dedicated Woodmasters saves time in manufacturing and maintenance. Rather than spending time changing tooling on one machine, we move the workpieces through our different dedicated Woodmasters. That saves maintenance time, too: instead of running one machine eight hours a day, every day, we may run each of our nine machines only one hour each day.
You don’t advertise at all?
It’s a lucky dog who has a cozy shelter like one of Ricky’s doghouses!
We were the first doghouses on the internet and we sell exclusively online. We do no advertising, and we get many orders from friends of our customers. We manufacture all our materials ourselves so we control quality. We own this faith-based business and everything’s Made in USA.
And it’s not just doghouses! We make cat houses, too. And we’ve made custom houses for pet anteaters, kinkajous, Juliana pigs, tortoises, ducks, even a ringtail lemur.
How do you like your Woodmasters?
I love these machines. They do exactly what we want them to do. I’ve had no issues, no mechanical problems, and have done very little maintenance. And the company is great to work with. I work a lot with Mark McCandless, one of Woodmaster’s tech guys. He’s got great hands-on knowledge of their machines and we work together to figure out how I can handle the things I call him about.
I have no hesitation in recommending Woodmaster to others, from machine performance to customer service.”
— Ricky & Kimberly Jones, Blythe Wood Works , Blythewood SC
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