Lumber Milling

Scott gazed out the picture window in the kitchen as a pickup truck pulling a strange contraption made it's way up the driveway. The contraption in question was bright red and was impossible to miss as it glided past the snowy pasture beyond the gravel drive. 

“What is that thing?” he questioned out loud, not expecting an answer.

“That's a band saw, lumber mill,” his father responded unexpectedly from behind.

Scott started slightly at the surprise response. It always amazed the children how their father could walk up on them in almost any situation without them having a single clue that he was there. They had theorized very seriously over a couple of methods their father could employ to travel so soundlessly, but they could never settle on one that made sense. It had never occurred to any of the kids that their father's ability to 'sneak' up on them probably had more to do with their tendencies to get overly absorbed in whatever they were doing than anything else.

“That's John Herger,” Dale continued despite his second son's lack of attention. “Remember those logs we didn't cut into firewood?”

“The ones we drug out by the old heifer barn?” Scott clarified.

“Yup,” the older Henning confirmed. “Those are the ones. We're sawing them into lumber today. That's what Mr. Herger is here for. Look at the clock.”

Scott glanced at the green display on the family's electric stove. The time read 9:16.

“I want you to get dressed and head out to the heifer barn at 9:45,” Dale instructed. “We should have everything set up by then. We're going to need your help loading logs onto the band saw and stacking lumber. Make sure you wear your coveralls and don't forget your gloves. It's cold out there.”

Scott nodded as he reached for his coffee cup on the kitchen table. He was a little disappointed about not being able to continue reading the Hardy Boys mystery he'd begun the day before, but was interested in seeing how the lumber mill would work. He drank deeply of the now lukewarm liquid in his plain white mug as his older brother slipped into his coveralls and followed his dad through the back porch door. Scott sat at the kitchen table for a moment until his curiosity got the better of him.

“I don't think I'm going to wait until 9:45,” he commented to himself. “I wanna know what this band saw thing looks like.”

He pulled a hooded sweatshirt over his torso and stepped into a pair of dark blue coveralls. He donned a dark blue uniform jacket and checked the pockets. Gloves in the right, hat in the left, pocket knife in my pants pocket, he went through his check list in his head. He stepped into his steel toed, rubber muck boots and began the seemingly long journey to the heifer barn. The walk past the bank barn, the shop, the sugar camp, and the old oak tree only took a few minutes. 

The pickup truck was just pulling away from the red band saw as the young man approached the long, single level, heifer barn. (The barn was referred to as a heifer barn but had sat largely unused for the duration of the young Henning's lifetime.) Dale was standing by with a chain saw while Caleb leaned somewhat awkwardly on the handle of a large cant hook. (A cant hook is a tool used for rolling logs. A large, elongated hook is attached to heavy duty handle about a foot from the end. The handle would rest on the top of the log and the hook would dig into the underside of the log giving one the leverage and control required to roll the log by oneself.)

“Why do they call that thing a cant hook?” Scott asked of his older brother. “It actually makes it so you CAN move the log.”

“I'm not sure.” Caleb puzzled for a moment before answering his brothers serious question. “Maybe they call it that because you can't move the log without it.”

“Back when they first invented the cant hook, they used a lot of different words than we do now,” an unfamiliar voice chimed in from behind. The boys turned and saw John Herger who was just returning from parking his truck. “You know the end of the log that's split or too gnarly to saw?” The boys nodded. “They used to call that a cant. That's where the tool gets it's name.”

The boys nodded to each other, satisfied by the answer. The red machine was about twenty feet long. A large band saw was mounted on a track and sat with the blade at the level of a platform that stood about three feet off the ground. John took his place at the control end of the sawmill and grabbed two of several levers and and got to work. Five curved arms folded out until the ends of them were level with the ground. He pulled another lever and several straight arms pivoted up from the opposite side of the milling platform. Another lever caused the band saw assembly to raise and lower relative to the platform.

“Okay, Dale,” he commented to the elder Henning. “We're ready for a log.”

Dale nodded and picked up another cant hook. He directed his oldest son towards one end of a large poplar log and hooked his own cant hook around the other end. The hook gripped into the underside of the log while the protruding end of the handle laid across the top. Caleb copied his father with his own long handled tool. Dale gave a crisp nod and the two Hennings pulled their respective handles from their initial position parallel to the ground to perpendicular to the ground, walking forward as the log rolled towards the band saw. Their cant hooks disengaged from the log which free-rolled until it hit against the curved arms of the saw. They reengaged the hooks, rolled the log onto the arms and stood back. 

As John pulled a lever, the arms rose and rolled the log onto the platform. He flipped a switch and the big pulleys of the saw assembly whirred to life. The pitch of the noise lowered slightly as it sliced into the end of the log. Sawdust flew from a discharge shoot on the barn side of the saw as the blade glided through the log until it emerged from the other end. The saw assembly raised and flew back to it's starting position. Dale and Caleb removed the rounded slab from the log and tossed it aside as the another arm rose up from underneath the platform. A protruding tooth from the arm pressed up against the the log. John pulled a lever and the tooth moved up the arm causing the log to roll ninety degrees. Another pair of arms rose and pushed the log against the arms on the far side of the platform. The band saw began another pass perpendicular to the first. The resulting plank was added to the brand new slab pile. 

The saw assembly dropped an inch and the blade cut into the end of the log as the arms held the log in place. Caleb and Dale pulled the resulting plank from it's place and laid it across the curved arms as the blade began another. Before long, the entire log was back on the curved arms in the form of live edge planks, minus the rounded slabs, of course. They put the planks back on the platform, on edge this time. The band saw made a pass resulting in several one inch sticks with bark edges.

“Put those aside,” John directed. “You'll need those to stick your lumber pile for drying.”

The boys did just that as their father looked on. He directed Caleb to lay them out on the slanted concrete floor of the old barn while he and Scott flipped the planks to be milled on the other edge. They removed the sticks and the planks with square edges. The boys laid out the planks on the sticks in the barn as John squared the rest of the planks. 

The continued their work through the rest of the afternoon. The boys spent most of the time sticking and stacking the lumber, sorting the boards by thickness and length as directed by their father. The long pile of sawdust beside the mill grew as the sun worked it's way across the cold, winter's sky. Fluffy white snow flakes fell gently from the sky as the four men worked. They took a break for lunch and went right back to work. Little by little, the log pile shrank and the slab pile grew. The stacks of lumber in the barn rose towards the exposed trusses as a testament to their labor. 

Finally, after hours of work, the lumber crew was finished. John pack up his mill and hooked it back up to his pickup truck. Dale got into the cab with John. The boys climbed into the bed of the pickup truck at John's direction. They sat on the tailgate of the truck with their feet dangling. They watched the the saw dust blow off the mill in the early evening breeze. An orange light washed across the snowy field hill to the east as the sun set on a fruitful day for the Henning family.