John Van Vliet and Amanda McDaniel, the father and daughter team running the Shenandoah Planing Mill, have weathered the pandemic and are eager to continue expanding their vision to build a sustainable-scale manufacturing hub for a local woodworking industry. After two years of operation, the mill has grown to host several other businesses that fit into the collaborative model that takes in raw logs at the back of the building and can deliver finished furniture, molding, and other wood products out the front loading docks.
Van Vliet started out his career in construction sweeping floors, then trained as a carpenter, and eventually retired as a vice president of operations for a large commercial construction company. Somewhere along the way he had a dream of opening a lumber mill. Looking at the mill operations today at the old Winchester Cold Storage property just outside of Charles Town, the dream has come to life.
McDaniel oversees the business side of the mill. For her, the vision extends beyond just processing wood. “I want to see Jefferson County grow in a healthy way, to add sustainable jobs so the people who grow up here can thrive and not get pushed out. My passion is the people we work with. We see this as an incubator space for small business owners with big plans. When we all work together, we all do better.”
SPM has a timberland license and works with local tree services to harvest logs sustainably from local woodlots – mostly walnut, cherry, soft maple, and poplar which are common in the area. They also purchase pine, hard maple and other wood from suppliers. 
S&K Enterprises runs an independent saw mill operation at SPM cutting logs into rough lumber (called a “cant”). They can process between 5 to 20 logs a day. 
The mill has plenty of indoor space to store the rough lumber while it “pre-dries” before being planed into dimensional lumber. 
The mill’s computer-controlled vacuum drying kiln operates at a relatively low temperature. In addition to being energy-efficient, the process produces very straight boards with little checking (the small cracks that appear when wood is dried quickly under high heat). 
The glue press holds multiple strips of wood under high pressure to create tabletops and stair treads. After the operator loads the loose wood, the press will automatically align and compress each piece and then flip up, ready for the operator to load the next set of wood pieces. 
After assembly on the glue press and a drying period, the tabletop is ready for finishing (glued top shown here on a custom sawhorses created in-house on the mill’s computerized cutting machine). 
After kiln-drying, lumber is stacked and ready for sale or a variety of uses at the mill. 
The mill acquired an extensive library of molding shapes and can also match a customer’s samples. The molding machine has multiple blade stations that can create complex shapes. 
Mill co-owner John Van Vliet has become an expert at restoring vintage equipment. Shown here, a belt-driven nineteenth century shutter-making machine restored for use on the shop floor.