NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNAL: A VISIT TO L'ANSE, MICHIGAN JUNE 30, 2004 continued

I have been touring Alberta Village

south of L'Anse, and the Ford sawmill located there. This is Part Two of the visit.

The sawmill in Alberta. As you enter it, you see the tool crib to your right. You see a cant hook and a peavey; the tools look so much alike I cannot discern why they'd have different names. Anyone, help me? They were used for moving logs.

There is a broad axe on display; it was used for hewing cross ties and squaring timbers. An adz, used for shaping timbers. A double-bit axe. A pickaroon for handling pulp wood. A board turner - "a quick flip with this hook," the sign says, "saved wear and tear on the lumber grader's hands." A draw-shave for peeling bark. A sling with steel cables for loading logs. A bucksaw and a two-man crosscut saw ("the woodsman's real tool - each man sharpened his own saw by hand"). A log scale stick, used to measure the lumber yield expected from logs of the standard lengths. Log tongs.

Here is the main bandsaw motor. Its one hundred horsepower drove the bandsaw upstairs where the logs were cut. The band saw was originally powered by steam but after Ford gave the Alberta mill and townsite to Michigan Technological University in 1954, the electric motor was installed. "Danger - Do Not Start" warns the yellow tag.

There is a 1925 Model T Huckster "Depot Hack" on this floor of the sawmill. All the wood of it is oak except for some decorative bird's eye maple. The vehicle was restored by Lawrence Erickson of Skanee, and donated by his wife Ansel after her husband's death. A couple of steamer trunks make the start of a load in the bed of the hack.

Running down through the building are chutes from the floor above, that drop saw dust onto a conveyor in the basement. The belt of the conveyor moves the saw dust to the fire box of the steam boiler. Ash was shipped to Kingsford to be made into charcoal.

The steam boiler created steam that was distributed throughout the plant and drove the equipment. Steam could be vented out the smokestack that extended well above the roof-line - another fifteen or twenty feet above the roof-line, in fact. Or it could be vented out a pipe coming up through the surface of the pond some twenty-five yards from the sawmill.

Slabwood and edgings were also conveyed down from upstairs into the slab bin next door. This waste was used as firewood in workers' homes.

Pay attention and you'll notice that the main timbers in the sawmill are 12" x 12". The smaller crossbeams are 4" x 12".

"This key cabinet was used to store all the keys needed in the sawmill and surrounding town," the sign says. "This cabinet once contained a key to Henry Ford's rowboat that was kept on Lake Plumbago."

On a table, three photos. Says one: "One of the first Pettibone Cary-Lifts." On the second photo: "Cary-Lift invented in Baraga County." It's a 1975 model. The third photo: "Today." It shows the clamp of the Cary-Lift holding a dozen full-size logs.

In a cabinet beyond glass, a pay envelope for John H. Heltunen, for two weeks ending August 24, 1948. Social Security tax that was withheld came to $1.02. Net pay in cash - $100.98.

A Ford log brand has been embossed onto the end of a log. "F-9" means it came from Ford's Camp #9.

Yonder hangs a lumber handler's apron, very thick leather. Several cuts have been inscribed into it deeply. You'd be glad they were left in the apron rather than in your flesh.

Sign: Ford Charcoal Briquets - "Fuel of a Hundred Uses." We find that in the 1920s Henry Ford learned of a process for turning wood scrap into charcoal briquets. E.G. Kingsford, a relative of Henry Ford, was instrumental in selecting a site for the new charcoal manufacturing plant. Later, Ford Charcoal was re-named Kingsford in E.G.'s honor.

A photograph of a stack of fifty pine logs being pulled by two horses: "This is a picture of the World's Fair load from Baraga County."

I mount the stairs to the floor above now, the sawmill proper. First, the bull chain, which brings logs from the pond up to the log deck just to my left. The logs pass through a hood where high pressure spray "removed clinging dirt and loose bark."

The log deck is where the log scaler measured each log and recorded the expected yield from it onto the daily production sheet. From here the log was moved onto chains to the carriage.

The head saw in the mill was a five-foot Clark Brothers band saw operated by the head sawyer. The band saw was preferable to a circular saw because it was thinner and hence created less sawdust. "Every ounce of saw dust represented lost income from the log," the sign says. Henry Ford said it too, I imagine.

We're told that the head sawyer was the "most prestigious and important person in the mill, second only to the sawmill foreman. The head sawyer established the pace of the entire mill. His decisions determined both the volume and quality of lumber produced from each log." Lumber is measured in board feet. A board foot is 12" long, 12" wide, 1" thick.

You can see the log pond out the window from here. A two-day supply of logs was kept there ready for use, about two hundred logs. The pond had concrete edges. It was filled from Lake Plumbago across Highway 41. Remember the steam that got vented out a pipe through the surface of the pond? That kept the pond constantly heated in winter so it wouldn't freeze; and it thawed frozen logs, making them easier to saw.

The log loader/turner put the next log from the deck onto the carriage. It was operated by the head sawyer, who manipulated the log "until the desired faced was parallel to the saw blade."

The carriage held the log securely during sawing. The head sawyer guided the log into and past the saw blade. Each pass produced either a slab or a board. A couple fellows called "setters" rode the carriage to reposition the log for each cut. "Slabs" have only one flat side and hence cannot be used for lumber.

To be continued....

Comments

[dave]

"cant hook and a peavey" - the latter has a hinged "thumb"; I think a cant hook is made from one piece

[elck]

Peavey, pickaroon, adz, draw-shave...

Very specific language, as one must have in the most successful reportage. I know nothing about logging, but the jargon of tools and techniques is beguiling.

[dave]

O.K., I looked it up in Eric Sloan's A Museum of Early American Tools. I was wrong; a peavey is simply a more sophisticated version of a cant hook with a metal tooth or teeth at the end of the pole. Sloan says, "The cant hook was made (in 1870 by a blacksmith named John Peavey) into the 'American peavey' by wedding it to the jam pike. The jam pike pried, the cant hook rolled, but the peavey did both."

[Tom Montag]

Dave--

Ah, yes - now it's obvious: the difference is that the peavey has the spike at the end of it, the cant hook doesn't. Thanks.

[Tom Montag]

"The jargon of tools and techniques is beguiling" you note. I agree. Yet, as in everything, my desire is to go beyond the jargon to what things MEAN, which is the hard task.