Ribbon Cut On Yalobusha Kiln In Coffeeville

COFFEEVILLE – A ribbon cutting was held Monday morning to mark the grand opening of Yalobusha Kiln, a new lumber mill and kiln operation located in the former cotton gin building on Oak Street.

The business is owned by Water Valley residents Ryan Pierce and Andrew Chiles, who teamed up after months of planning. The two first discussed the idea while brainstorming ways to bring something new to the local economy.

“I worked in traffic safety for a while and wanted out of the white-collar world,” Chiles explained. “Ryan is an established furniture maker, and after months of talking it through, we kept saying, ‘Man, we should get a kiln.’ He already had a mill and forklift, and we finally found the right building for it in Coffeeville.”

That building — the old cotton gin and later feed store — proved to be an ideal fit. It offered space for forklifts to move logs, wide doors, and even ventilation that helps with the lumber-drying process.

But it also required a lot of sweat equity. When the partners purchased it, the building was full of clutter and even several antique cars from the former owner. After a long cleanup, they had a perfect operation.

Inside, they constructed a 12-by-24-foot insulated kiln room, essentially a large dehumidifier that can dry lumber down to the correct moisture content for furniture and interior projects. The kiln can process more than 4,000 board feet per cycle, with stacks of lumber reaching 22 feet long and eight feet deep.

Yalobusha Kiln specializes in live-edge slabs and dimensional hardwoods, with a variety of species already on hand. Popular woods such as white oak, walnut, cherry, and pecan are in stock, but the shop also offers harder-to-find species like bodock, catalpa, hackberry, persimmon, and black locust. The idea is to give both hobbyists and professional woodworkers access to wood they cannot find at big box stores.

The business also provides custom services, including milling logs up to 36 inches in diameter and 12 feet long, kiln drying for customer-supplied lumber, and buying hardwood logs from landowners or tree cutters. “We don’t cut down trees ourselves,” Chiles emphasized. “But we do work with people who remove trees and want to see them used for furniture or woodworking projects. It’s a way of giving the tree a second life.”

The ribbon cutting marked the culmination of more than a year of steady work. Pierce and Chiles purchased the building in April 2024, and since then, the work has been steady. “It’s been a leap of faith,” Chiles said. “We spent months just preparing the property and getting the kiln finished. We weren’t ready for a grand opening until now, when we had inventory ready to sell.”
That inventory includes roughly 5,000 board feet of dried lumber already processed and ready for retail.

Chiles compared the start-up to a river trip. “You spend all this time preparing, getting your gear together, and then there’s that moment where you push off from shore. That’s where we are now — we’re in it.”

Yalobusha Kiln is open Monday through Friday by appointment and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. for retail sales.

“We want to be a service business,” Chiles said. “If someone has a tree that came down in their yard and it means something to them, we can mill it and preserve it for them. That’s what makes this special.  And if you’ve got hardwood logs, call us — we may want to buy them.”
“We want this to be a long-term asset for Coffeeville and Yalobusha County,” Chiles added. “Our goal is to provide a service that keeps wood local, supports craftsmen, and helps grow new opportunities right here at home.”