[AT] Swamp loggers--now sawmill

[Best, George]

I come from a sawmill family.  I'm the first generation since the 1800's to not operate a commercial sawmill.

Great grandfather and grandfather had steam powered sawmills, but failed during the depression.

My father had a few sawmills in the 50's and 60's.  The last mill was converted several times to cut different lumber and as a kid I often worked at the mill on weekends if an order needed to be ready Monday morning. 

What I can remember of my dad's mill was he started out cutting big fir trees.  Had a double circular saw setup for sawing logs 4' in diameter or so.  At first this was powered by a big GMC diesel, but later replaced with a 200hp electric motor when he switched over to all electric power.  At one time he also had a big gang saw, but that didn't last very long and was later replaced with a very large bandsaw for resawing timbers.

By the time the mill shut down he had converted it to a hardwood mill and mostly was cutting alder for furniture manufacturing.  The bad part of switching from fir to hardwood was the mill pond.  When he sawed fir the mill pond had some good size trout worth fishing for.  After switching to alder, the water turned a purplish blue and there were no more fish in it.

The mill was shut down after my uncle had a logging accident and my dad also took over the logging and road building my uncle had been doing.  Couldn't keep everything going at the same time and after hiring a couple managers to keep the mill in operation, decided to just shut the mill down.

I ended up in the Air Force in the 60's and learned about computers and have stayed in the computer field after the military.  So the sawmill owning stopped, but at least I was around them when I was young and did a fair amount of off bearing from a some of the saws.  Growing up the town we lived in was basically a sawmill town with around a dozen sawmills surrounding the town.  Now I think there are only a couple mills in operation at a much smaller size.

I love the smell of fresh cut wood, but that's a hard way to make a living today.

George





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