Operating steam powered saw mill

[Ray Newman]

Interesting, but a bit hazardous -- no belt guards....

http://www.pbs.org/woodwrightsshop/video/2900/2907.html

[66GTO]

That brings back memories of my childhood. My Daddy owned and operated sawmills most of his life. A mill similar to that paid my way through college.

His first mill was a "peckerwood" mill powered by a stationary diesel engine, but his second mill was an old one he bought that was steam powered like the one in the video. It was fascinating to watch in operation and pretty efficient because it was fueled with the lumber scraps, bark, and sawdust generated by sawing the logs. That mill caught fire and burned. It was replaced by an electric powered mill, not as interesting as the steam mill.

The noise and the smell is what I remember when watching the video. You couldn't hear yourself think when the mill was running and no one wore hearing protection back then. The smells would be of the machinery and of the lumber being cut. That smell varied depending on the kind of logs being cut. The pine had the best smell.

The men who worked in the mill were real men. That was hard, long, and dangerous work. I remember more than one man with missing fingers cut off while feeding boards into the gangsaw trimmers or with a bum leg from a log rolling onto him.

The most important man in the mill (and the highest paid) was the sawyer, the man running the carriage who determines how to most efficiently cut the logs. One carriage that Daddy had the sawyer rode on it as it went back and forth and it used hydraulics to position the log instead of having stop and having a helper manually turn the log like in the video. Later the carriage was operated by the sawyer while sitting in a booth using electric controls. It's probably all controlled by computers and lasers today.

The next most important man was the saw filer. There was an art to keeping those saws sharp and sharp saws wasted less wood and cut faster. Daddy's mill was bigger than the one in the video and used huge band saws instead of circle saws. His peckerwood mill used a circle saw though. One other difference from the video is his mills had debarkers so there was no bark on the wood by the time it got to the carriage to be sawn into lumber. And those were pretty puny logs in the video, more like pulpwood around here.

Every mill had to have a good all around mechanic to keep that machinery running. Between breakdowns in the mill and out in the yard (forklifts, straddle buggies, trucks, doziers, and skidders) something was always needing repair.

I never worked in the mill while it was running but I cleaned up the mill after it shut down at night (if it wasn't running double shifts) and out in the lumber yard where the lumber was graded and stacked. If the mill was running double shifts times were good and we were making money, but the sawmill business seemed to be feast or famine. I wouldn't want to be in the business today.

[Cliff]

Have to agree with 66GTO. I live in n area where cypruss was the main wood mill products. I found many old timers who worked these Mills and many of were missing fingers, had bum legs and other infirmities from their work. Most of the wood was from old virgin growth cypress trees. Heckof a way to make a living. Of course it was the only way for many. Every time a mill was shut down,lack of proper material it burned down shortly afteward in an unexplained fire. Some of these were big operations. Wonder how their insurance was before the fires.

[Pitchy]

Love it, good way to start the morning, thanks.

[bdhold]

my grandfather was a blacksmith, and most of his work was making sawmill tools.

[66GTO]

Have to agree with 66GTO. I live in n area where cypruss was the main wood mill products. I found many old timers who worked these Mills and many of were missing fingers, had bum legs and other infirmities from their work. Most of the wood was from old virgin growth cypress trees. Heckof a way to make a living. Of course it was the only way for many. Every time a mill was shut down,lack of proper material it burned down shortly afteward in an unexplained fire. Some of these were big operations. Wonder how their insurance was before the fires.

One way an abandoned mill frequently catches fire is the sawdust pile will catch fire. Most mills that don't burn the sawdust for fuel use an elevated conveyor belt to make a small mountain of sawdust. If it is left alone it will spontaneously combust from the heat generated from the decaying sawdust deep inside the pile. After the mill was converted to electric power and Daddy no longer burned his sawdust for fuel, he had his sawdust catch fire more than once, but it was caught before it got out of control.

When Daddy's mill burned he was in the middle of an attempt by the Teamsters Union to unionize his workers. They were unsuccessful in getting the workers to unionize and shortly thereafter the mill burned. The exact cause of the fire was never determined. A steam powered sawmill obviously has much fuel and many sources of ignition, but Daddy always blamed it on the Teamsters. And he had no insurance. With the help of a small town banker, he and his worker's busted their collective rear ends and the sawmill was rebuilt within a year. I hardly saw Daddy during that year because he was putting in 16-18 hour days rebuilding the mill. That mill is still operating today with different owners.

[Cimarron]

I watch The Woodrights Shop every Sunday morning. I love the show. He makes everything by hand. My sawmill is a Reeves made sometime between 1906 and 1912. We run it with steam traction engines.

[Rimfire McNutjob]

I was hesitant to open this thread at first because I fully expected to see that Pitchy had constructed a steam powered sawmill from a box of toothpicks and a paperclip. Thankfully, that wasn't the case. Not that he couldn't pull it off mind you. His endeavours remind me just how unimpressive my skills with wood and metal are, hence my hesitance to look.

Some pretty ingenious stuff going on back when they built that stuff. Very cool.

[Ben_Rumson]

I think it was somewhere within the logging/lumber business that the word cleverality got invented... it fits in with all the other tools & things they invented...

[Griff]

One of my favorite shows also.

[Pitchy]

I was hesitant to open this thread at first because I fully expected to see that Pitchy had constructed a steam powered sawmill from a box of toothpicks and a paperclip. Thankfully, that wasn't the case. Not that he couldn't pull it off mind you. His endeavours remind me just how unimpressive my skills with wood and metal are, hence my hesitance to look.

Some pretty ingenious stuff going on back when they built that stuff. Very cool.

[yooper2]

I'm with Cimarron and Griff. Roy Underhill is the man! I really enjoy how he builds things from green wood that lock together as they dry out. Super cool mill as well.

Eric

[Shasta]

The Phillips Brothers Steam Sawmill is a steam-powered mill located in Oak Run, Shasta County, California, about 20 miles east of my home in Redding. Here is a link to a series of posts on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL91D812D3A6AB9D8A

It seems there are more than just a few such mills in America, and each claims they are the last! No matter, they are all very interesting and entertaining to me.


SHASTA

[6pt-sika]

My sawmill is a Reeves made sometime between 1906 and 1912. We run it with steam traction engines.

FRICK engines , threshers and mills are better

Just joking but then thats all I ever really messed with

[6pt-sika]

Steam has an ambiance about it for lack of a better word .
And to notice this one needs to spend a bit of time firing an engine . There's nothing like the combined aroma of steam cylinder oil and coal smoke on a hot summer day !

The rocking of an engine while it's belted to a mill or thresher is almost like a rocking chair . I found it quite settling in my younger life .

[Alan Wood]

Wow now that was an interesting episode! Didn't know that they had that show online! Thank you!