Michael Fortune

Our editors love visiting the expansive shop of contributing editor Michael Fortune, which sits on a quiet log-cabin homestead 100 miles outside Toronto. And everyone learns the rules. There are mandatory coffee breaks in the morning and afternoon, which include excellent cookies made by Michael’s wife, Janice. Coffee cups must be left by the shop door so they make it back to the house each night. And after all that coffee, if you need to head out the back door to the woods, you are not allowed back in without three pieces of firewood.

The latest addition to contributing editor Michael Fortune’s woodworking homestead is a portable sawmill. After seeing the Woodland Mills HM126 in action, Fortune decided that for under $3,000, the machine would pay for itself in a few years. But watching him fire it up on a snowy day, we got the sense that owning this machine is at least half about the fun of it all. Fortune didn’t stop at the basic equipment, of course, but made it permanent on a concrete platform, with a timber platform alongside for rolling logs aboard.