Vagabond Editorials

By Jack Dionne

For we are the same that our fathers have been, We see the same sights that our fathers have seen, We drink the same stream and we view the sanne sun, And we run the same course that our fathers have run.

(Abraham Lincoln's Favorite Poem)

***

I thought of those lines the other day as I stood at the tail end of a big sawmill and watched the saws turning logs into lumber. Forty years ago I stood in that same location in a mill that a generation ago,went the way of all temporary things, and saw practically the same process and operation. The logs came up the bull chain, were cut into lengths by a circular saw that dropped down on them, were rolled off the log chain in the same manner, kicked onto the carriage by the same sort of steam "nigger," held in place on the carriage much as they are today, and then pushed against the whirling saw in about the same fashion. There was little difference that I can recall between what I saw forty years, and one week ago. rt**

Lumber is certainly NOT a changeable business. And I presume that the actual cutting of the log into lumber has been attended with less change than any other department of the lumber business. Many minor changes, variations, modernizations, and improvements have been made. But the fundamentals, themselves, have been little changed.

*rf* f cannot recall whether that first sawmill that I watched operate forty years ago was equipped with band or circular saws. Circulars preceded band mills in the sawmill business. The band came in as a refinement, cutting with less "kerf," less sawdust, wasting less wood in the slicing process, and doing a smoother job of board-making. Later I watched the double-cutting bands come into vogue in many lumber districts, saws with teeth on both edges that sawed one slice off the log as the carriage moved forward and another as it came back. (The ordinary mill cuts only as the carriage moves forward.) These mills did not remain popular, and there are few of them left that I know of. Too difficult to properly file and set the saw teeth on both edges.

*rl.*

But I DO remember the first time I ever saw a "piano" trimmer. And I recall the kind of trimmers they used to use before these lever-set trimmers came in. A man stood at the end of the old timey trimmer, and the saws were set by a crank that he whirled round and round, and back and forth. The trimmerman sitting in his coop today and pulling the levers that drop the saws into place, little knows what a snap he has. Not long since I watched a one-armed negro operating an air-set piano trimmer in a big mill, and doing a very good job of it.

Of course there have been tremendous and vital changes in the sawmill "carriage" on which the logs ride backward and forward to and from the saw, as they are sliced into boards, planks, and timbers. There have been many changes and improvements in the equipping and the powering of the "carriage." Yet, as f have sald before, the fundamentals are unchanged. The logs are placed in the same position, and the carriage runs forward and back just as it did when milling was young. *r<* with one of these ,"*,"1" in" i.*r", handles the steam "nigger," that giant robot that sweeps the log onto the carriage, rolls it into proper place, turns it at will as though it were a dry toothpick, and acts for all the world like an intelligent giant of limitless power having a good time slapping big timbers aro'und like featherweights. The other lever sends the carriage on its merry way, backward and forward, backward and fo'rward, just the right distance,

There has been little change made in the actual equipment and activity of the sawyer. The visitor green to the ways of sawmills, watching a mill operate, naturally thinks that the man riding the "carriage" must be the captain of the job, and the one who decides how and when to turn the log, how thick or thin it must be sliced, and all the other lightning-like decisions that are manifest as a powerful mill, screams of its activity. ft is something of a shock and surprise to discover that the man who stands rather quietly just back of the u'hirling saw, quietly working with both hands two wooden-handled levers sticking up waist-high from the floor, is the real major-domo of the operation. These levers work easily on a very short radius of just a few inches, and it hardly seems possible that these two insignifigant wooden handles with their apparently effortless handling are really directing the entire proceedings with enormous demonstrations of power.

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