sawmilling

operator's perspective

loading a log

jay

stacked

clark

michel

mckim

the blade

last weekend i headed down to the faerie camp to oversee the sawing of about 40 logs that had been cleared from the faerie land last fall. mckim mitchell, a sawyer from new hampshire, brought his portable saw mill up and parked it near the log pile. saturday and sunday a crew of faeries helped load, unload and stack the timber. it was amazing watching each cut reveal a new pattern and it dawned on me, as it has many times when opening up anything that grows, that i'm the first person to ever see this specific pattern (and i am the first human it is to see!). it happens all the time and i have to remind myself of the mystery and beauty being revealed to me. some of the cuts exposed spectacular patterns which we kept as wide slabs to be used for benches or some other large flat surface. it was hard work and we all sweated up a storm in the summer sun which has arrived finally after weeks of rain. in all we got about 3500 board feet of timber out of our logs. a refrigerator is about 20 cubic feet, to give you an idea. the saw mill itself is an impressive machine which can lift logs onto its bed, slide them forward and back, roll them, and lift and level them. the largest beam we sawed was 12" tall by 6" wide by 14-1/2 feet long. all of our logs were eastern hemlock and carry a great deal of water in them. the 6x12 weighed about 400 pounds, by my calculations. i did a lot of "one-two-threeing" to coordinate the crew lifting.