Sawmill

“ Phil, you watch the cookee closely and see if there are any more midnight appointments to be made. Dick, you look out for the sawmill, and see if there is any funny business being done with the saw. You know enough about machinery to be able to detect if it is working properly, and your common sense will tell you if there seems to be a slackening up of production. It stands to reason that the boss of the sawmill must be in on this scheme, for more delay can be caused here than anywhere else. It is unlikely that there are many men in on this plot. ”

“ She ought never to get over it. Then what would become of the farm and the sawmill? And instantly everything was unreal again; he could hear the hum of the driving-wheel and the screech of the saw tearing through a log; how fragrant the fresh planks were, and the great heaps of sawdust—but the noise made his head ache; and—and the fire didn’t seem hot....
It was in one of those moments when the mists thinned, and he knew that he was shivering over the stove instead of basking in the sunshine in his mother’s room that smelled of rose-geranium leaves, that Athalia came in. ”

“ Sometimes the valley, suddenly widening, spreads out a soft irregularly-shaped carpet of grass before the eyes; a meadow constantly watered by the mountain streams that keep it fresh and green at all seasons of the year. Sometimes a roughly-built sawmill appears in a picturesque position, with its stacks of long pine trunks with the bark peeled off, and its mill stream, brought from the bed of the torrent in great square wooden pipes, with masses of dripping filament issuing from every crack. ”

“ While the whirling blades of the sawmill screamed through green logs, these care-free innocents used to sit round a large vat where the juice of fresh apples came trickling through some sort of burlap squeezing coils, and where fat and groggy wasps buzzed and tottered and expired in rapture. ”

“ At one place was seen what the men called a "petrified sawmill", consisting of what appeared like a pile of lumber and slabs under the edge of a hill and, close by it, a large tree, cut up into logs of exact length, such as might be found around any sawmill, but all of stone as hard as granite. ”

“ The task of keeping them true is an accomplishment of great delicacy, it is one man’s work; he corrects deviations in the metal with a hammer, judging them entirely by eye.
In the neighbourhood of the sawmill all the air is filled with flying sawdust, and the sweet scent of the freshly sawn wood. The dust falls to the ground in deep red masses, the flying chips look like scraps of raw meat, but the rich colour fades when they dry. The process of preparing the karri wood for use is at present a very expensive one. ”

“ Flossie and Freddie were too small to think much about the missing Christmas trees, which their father had come to camp to see about. All they were anxious for was to have some fun, and going to the sawmill was part of this.
The sawmill was farther down on Pine Brook, where that stream widened out and was dammed up to make a waterfall. Part of the waterfall went through a flume, or sort of wooden canal, and the water, falling down a shaft, or wooden tunnel standing on end, turned a turbine wheel.
A turbine wheel is quite different from the ordinary mill wheel you may have seen. ”

“ The great Tacoma sawmill does a very large and successful business, finding its motor in a steam engine of fourteen hundred horse-power, and having over seven hundred men on its pay-roll. This number includes mill-hands, dock-men, choppers, and watermen, the latter being the hands who bring the logs by rafts from different parts of the sound. There are a dozen other sawmills in and about the city. The lumber business of this region is fast assuming gigantic proportions, shipments being regularly made to China, Japan, Australia, and even to Atlantic ports. ”

“ The shops and manufacturing plants of ten states use as much tupelo as is cut by all the sawmills in the United States. These states are Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, and Texas. The reason for factory use exceeding the sawmill cut is that much reaches factories, in the form of veneer, which does not pass through a sawmill. The lumber output of most of the timber trees of this country is from one-third to one-half greater than the factory use. ”

“ Fig. 70. The Circular Saw—Interior of Sawmill
[58]
The sawmill of to-day is a mass of automatic machinery, and after the log enters it is not touched by human hands until it comes out as lumber of various sizes ready to be loaded on boats or cars.
Logs are sawed into timber, planks, or boards, and these forms are called lumber.
Fig. 71. A Large Band Saw
Timber refers to all of the largest sizes, such as beams and joists. ”

“ Lumber workers are, by nature of their employment, divided into two categories--the saw-mill hand and the logger. The former, like his brothers in the Eastern factories, is an indoor type while the latter is essentially a man of the open air. Both types are necessary to the production of finished lumber, and to both union organization is an imperative necessity.
Sawmill work is machine work--rapid, tedious and often dangerous. There is the uninteresting repetition of the same act of motions day in and day out. The sights, sounds and smells of the mill are never varied. ”

“ And when you are cutting timber on a time contract with a penalty for every day’s delay overtime that you take, a half an hour or so lost through trouble with your sawmill means a big thing. Then there are two other dangers. One is that the saw will fly off and hurt the millmen when it hits the spikes, and the other is that it sometimes will cause serious defects in the entire machinery, so that instead of just a few minutes’ delay to change saws, you waste a day or maybe two in repairing the machinery. ”

“ But as one lad has remarked: “Two boys cannot remain mad with each other long: there’s always too much doing!”
And everybody knows that sawdust smothers smouldering fire! It did in this instance. After about ten minutes of “grouchy” but uneventful tramping, the forest explorers came to a logging camp, a rude shanty, flanked by a yellow mountain of sawdust where a portable sawmill had been set up during the preceding winter and taken down in spring. ”

“ Folks must have paper even if they don't get boards," and Philip Sommers gave a short laugh.
"I don't think I'd care to work in a pulp mill," answered Dale. "I like a sawmill or else being out in a lumber camp. But I'd rather work in a pulp mill than be idle." ”

“ And how like a pygmy it seems as the resident on the North Pacific's border recalls its littleness, and contrasts it with the mammoth mills of Oregon, the lower Columbia, and Puget Sound, which grasp in their giant arms the dead leviathans of the primeval forest, and set their teeth to work tearing to pieces the patient upbuilding of the ages gone!
The motive power of John Ranger's sawmill consisted of about a dozen superannuated horses, some spavined, some ringboned, some wind-broken, all more or less disabled in some way ”

“ Sawmills make no distinction between the different species. All that comes is buckeye, but nearly all of it is the yellow species, though doubtless a little of all the others is cut into lumber and veneer, or goes to the slack cooperage shop, or to the pulp mill. The woods of all are quite similar, and they are used for the same purposes. If one is employed in larger quantities than another, it is because it is more convenient, or of better form or larger size. ”

“ A stone arched bridge erected a great many years ago, admirably took the place of this primitive structure and so remained until 1893, a striking monument of the care with which it was built.
Solomon Martin for many years had a sawmill on this brook. It stood a short distance above the tannery site and here for many years the road came to an end. The building of this sawmill goes back of the year 1796. Solomon Martin, his store and his sawmill were long since gone. They are all forgotten to this generation. A dark stone slab marks his burial place in St. Matthew’s churchyard. ”

“ The original Filipino hand-sawyers were ultimately replaced by small portable mills, and these in turn by large modern mills to which logs are brought by skidding engines or overhead cables, yet it is true to-day, as it has always been true, that no sawmill has ever been able to furnish dry lumber, for the simple reason that the green output is purchased as fast as it can be sawed. ”

“ The Columbian of Olympia in 1853 reported: "There are now no less than fourteen sawmills run by water power, and one steam sawmill in process of construction on Puget Sound ... a large number of our citizens are . . . getting out cargoes of hewed timber, piles, shingles, and
cordwood . . . faster . . . than the number of vessels engaged in that business can carry them to market."
Henry Yesler completed the first steam mill on Puget Sound in 1853, and, as lumber was selling from $200 to $500 a thousand feet, more mills soon appeared: J. J. Fell built one on Appletree Cove in 1853 ”

“ For example, in cutting four boards of one-inch lumber, an ordinary circular saw wastes enough material to make a fifth board, because it cuts an opening that is one-quarter of an inch in width. Band saws, although they do not work at such high speed, are replacing circular saws in many mills because they are less wasteful of lumber. Although sawmills try to prevent waste of wood by converting slabs and short pieces into laths and shingles, large amounts of refuse, such as sawdust, slabs and edgings, are burned each season. ”

“ Suppose that the mischief maker does not drive his spikes in the tree where the cut will be made, but climbs up twenty or thirty feet or so, and drives a dozen or two in different parts of the trunk of the tree. The tree trunk is cut safely and then it is drawn to the sawmill where it is sawed into planks. What happens when one of the big, expensive circular saws rips through a dozen spikes? It’s just goodbye to the saw and goodbye to a lot of money, and means a delay of several minutes until the saw can be replaced with another. ”

“ Aside from a few boards and the sawdust that had been burned, the loss was small. There was no loss in the sawdust, for it was of no use. Some farmers living near by used to come to get a load or two to fill their ice houses, but the remainder was allowed to rot in the forest.
After the fire was over Mr. Martin and Tod Everett, the foreman, began asking how it had started. No one had really seen the first tiny blaze begin, but it was thought that sparks from the smoke stack of the sawmill must have started it. ”

“ The statistics of sawmill cut in the United States do not mention hornbeam even among such minor species as holly, Osage orange, alder, and apple. However, it is known that an occasional log goes to sawmills in the Lake States, and doubtless in other regions, and in some instances the wood is kept separate from others and is sold to fill special orders. Manufacturers of farm tools consider it the best wood for rake teeth. That use has come down from the time when farmers made their own rakes and pitchforks. They learned the wood’s value by experience, and manufacturers cater to the trade. ”

“ Nature herself, by her heaps of vegetation, had foreshown the immense productiveness of the soil.
In the river valleys were quite extensive prairies, which afforded superior stock range, but the main dependence of the people was in the timber.
In 1852 H. L. Yesler came, who built the first steam sawmill on Puget Sound, at Seattle. Other mills sprang up at Port Ludlow, Port Gamble, Port Madison and Port Blakely, making the names of Meigs, Pope, Talbot, Keller, Renton, Walker, Blinn and others, great in the annals of sawmilling on Puget Sound. ”

“ Twenty-five years ago the school children used to chant their lessons. The manner of their delivery was a singsong recitative between the utterance of an Episcopal minister and the drone of a tired sawmill. I mean no disrespect. We must have lumber and sawdust. ”

“ By this time a gang of the lumbermen were starting to put out the fire. There was a short length of hose from which a small stream of water spurted, and, for a time, Ted wondered where it came from, as he knew there were no fire engines in the woods.
“How did it start, Mother?” asked Janet.
“By sparks from the sawmill engine smoke stack, I think,” was the answer.
“Will it burn the store?” asked Trouble.
“I think not,” his mother replied. “And see, the men are pulling the sawdust pile [213] apart to get the burning side away from that which hasn’t yet started to burn.” ”

“ The fact that the mill is permanently located tends to keep mill workers grouped about the place of their employment. Many of them, especially in the shingle mills, have lost fingers or hands in feeding the lumber to the screaming saws. It has been estimated that fully a half of these men are married and remain settled in the mill communities. The other half, however, are not nearly so migratory as the lumberjack. Sawmill workers are not the "rough-necks" of the industry. They are of the more conservative "home-guard" element and characterized by the psychology of all factory workers. ”

“ There are different types of sawmills, in which the logs are worked into commercial shapes. The small enterprises use portable mills, which are moved into the woods and located upon a tract of land, remaining until all the desirable timber in the vicinity has been sawed, and then moved to another locality and the process repeated. ”