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Originally Posted by Razor
The heck with hammers. After all his years chucking wood, I want to hear Mr. Harsey's stories concerns birch hooks, cant dogs, twitcher skidders and chainsaws.  |
Razor, the wood we logged was too big for for cant hooks (refined by the Stillwater Maine Blacksmith Joseph Peavey in the late 1850's into the famous "Peavey" named for him) This tool was also known as a log wrench and was used to turn logs and break loose whole decks of logs into the water for running downstream to the mill. They are still used by the men in the mills and big rivers to position logs for the chain feed or make into a raft for loading onto ships. I've probably got too many stories about logging here in Oregon. I worked on High Lead logging sides, Skyline sides and worked logging with cats and skidders. Among the jobs I worked, setting chokers, rigging slinger, high climber and chaser. When I was trusted enough to run a cat around other men I got many hours building road, fire trailing and logging with several types of those machines. I spent quite a bit of time with a saw in my hands, used 2.5 gallon of saw gas per day on the last show I worked. For reference, that's a lot of cutting. We fell, bucked, yarded, sorted and loaded over 12 million board feet per year with an 11 man crew, not counting the truck drivers. This was done on most unfavorable ground and very long reaches. We did it because it was an old school oufit made of men who believed in pretty hard work. All this time I did all the welding I could and ran over two ton of welding rod for the logging side. This is how my interest in working steel started.