Just a few reminiscences about the woods work.
I got into it in the winter of 1920-21 up at Gleason Wisconsin. There was very little pine, white or Norway, left, most of our cuttings were mostly hardwood and hemlock, balsam or spruce. Hardwood consists of any tree with a green leaf, regardless of the hardness of the wood.
The hemlock that we cut was used mainly for pulpwood. The smaller trees were cut into four foot lengths, some into eight foot, and the larger into twelve foot lengths, and some pulp mills took it as saw logs, by the thousand feet hard measure.
One of the first things done in starting to log off a tract, is to cut and clear the logging roads and clear the places for the skid ways. A skid way is a set-up for piling up logs preparatory to loading them on a logging sleigh. More about this later.
Then the sawyer go in and start sawing the trees down and sawing them into the proper lengths, which are usually twelve, fourteen, or sixteen foot saw log lengths.
Then, about Christmas or News Years, when there is enough snow on the ground for good sleighing, hauling the logs to the mill or the railroad landing starts. A railroad landing is similar to a skid way in the woods, the main difference being in the skids laid on the ground to support the logs. In the woods, skids are two single full tree lengths, on the landing the skids are logs laid on the ground about three to four feet apart.
Then, in the spring, when the work in the woods was over, the logs were loaded on flat cars, and shipped to saw or pulp mills.
The tools used were: a double bitted ax, a six foot cross cut saw, skidding chains, a whipple tree with a staple driven through it to hold a grab hook for “grabbing” the skid chain. This grab hook on the whipple tree or evener, had a hand ring on it for easy manipulation. Then there were cant hooks used for turning and handling the logs at the skid ways.
The logging sleighs used were simple and rugged in construction. The runners were three inches thick, the beams or cross beams were about six by six, and the bunks on top of them and on which the logs rested were ten by ten, and made of rock elm or maple.
A team of horses, on a good road, could pull a load of logs which amounted to a thousand feet. A thousand feet of hardwood logs weighed eight tons, quite a load to pull. When there was a hill to climb, that was at all difficult, a tow team would be used.
It was customary for logging teamsters to take a great pride to see how big a load their teams could pull. More then once, when one teamster would ask another one for a pull, or assistance, that other man would say, “take your team off, I will pull it out”.
The run of the sleighs, or the distance between the runners, was 38 inches, that was what we used. There was another type, called the “wagon run”, or 56 inches, the same as wagon tracks, and the larger outfits had sleighs with seven foot six inch run, with the bunks eleven feet eleven inches in length. This was to circumvent a state law which prohibited twelve foot bunks, and that one inch difference in length made no difference in the width of the load.
The logs were secured to the bunks with chains called ”corner binders”, which went through a hole in the bunk and around the outside log on the tier. A similar chain but longer, called the “wrapper” went around the middle of the load. The top of the load under this was made slightly hollow and several logs placed on top of the wrapper so as to tighten it.
The logs were decked (piled) or loaded with: at first a single loading line, then as the logs became more irregular, a double line, or one with a crotch was used.
Then someone invented the “Jammer” or Yammer, as some lumberjacks called it. These jammers got to be as high as 40 feet, although most of them were only 30 feet high (for landing work or loading cars, and 20 to 25 feet high for use in the woods).
The loading and decking or “cant-hook” men were consider the tops on the woods. The most dangerous was that of the top loader who stood on top of the load and properly placed the log on the load or the deck.
Sometimes a log was so large and heavy that a makeshift similar to the old fashioned loading line had to be used.
The logs were secured on the flat cars with stakes, (car stakes) and bound across the top with a heavy wire called car wire.
It took a good teamster and a good team for the cross hauling job. A man who was slow to respond, or one who was uncooperative could make it miserable for the rest of the crew.
Two tools that I forgot to mention were the saw log wedge and the skidding tongs. A saw log wedge was a wedge that was thinner then a splitting wedge, and was used to drive into a cut made by the saw to prevent the saw pinching, or when falling a tree, to start it to fall.
In falling a tree, a sawyer would sight up the tree to see which way it leaned, and if practicable, to fell it that way, or as near to it as possible. Then a saw cut would be made into the tree from that side, for as much as eight inches, on a large tree, then an opening chopped out, this was called a kerf. When this was done, the final saw cut would be made from the opposite side of the tree. On very tall trees, or in a high wind, this could be very dangerous.
In fact, all woods work was dangerous. Chopping was very dangerous to a beginner. Even driving team could be so, in skidding or hauling.
One thing that I soon learned in hauling an ax, was to see that all brush was cleared from the path of my ax chopping. In chopping a small tree or brush, it was better to take two light cracks then one hard one. Never take a hard swing with an ax unless there was a clear space, and good solid timber to chop into.
I used a double-bitted ax, with one edge ground to a thin edge which I kept sharp, and used only for good, clean chopping, and the edge more blunt, which I used for cutting brush and limbs. On hemlock, the limbs close to the tree had knots which were very hard, and in chopping frozen timber, the knot would be glass hard, and could damage the edge of the ax.
All of the work was hard, even driving team the teamsters had to work about an hour more, morning and night then those who did not have horses to tend. Hauling logs, I found to be the hardest. As I found it quite an ordeal to just buck the cold all day. Sometimes, when hauling on a good road, the driver would walk behind the load, and let the horses follow the road. That was one way of keeping warm. When I got in at night. After a long day of hauling, I was more tired than from working in the woods, when by exercise , I could keep warm. Then too, the days on the road were longer, as there were many delays that could happen. When a man would get in late at night, other haulers would say; “Cold beans for you, mister.”
The sawyer usually worked by the thousand feet of logs sawed or by the log. The rest, except those who hauled logs with there own team, worked by the month.
One of the hazards in sawing was that flying tree limbs, caused when a tree fell. I knew of one man who was hit by a flying limb and suffered a severe skull concussion and was disabled the rest of the winter. Two others were killed in the same manner.
The large sleighs that had a 7 foot six inch run required an iced road. This was done by or with a water tank at night. It required an accessibility to water, as the road took plenty of it. Some of the big logging outfits even had a snow plow and a “rutter” for making a good rut for the sleigh runners.
The nature of the work. plus the fresh air, gave a man a good appetite.
A man would be out in the woods to start work a sunup and work till dark. In the morning the “push” or foreman would call out, “Daylight in the swamp!”, and men would get up, wash and have breakfast and then march out to their work. They would come in for dinner at eleven o'clock, and be in by five thirty in the evening.
The horses, in the woods, liked to browse on the tree branches, cedar, birch, and basswood being the most tasty to a horse. It seemed to be good for them. Acting like a tonic.
Going down a steep hill, it was necessary to shovel the road clean of snow, or even sand it, and in the most extreme cases, to heat the sand before applying it. The man whose job this was called the “road monkey.”
One winter we cut cedar posts and poles. We had a few poles that were thirty-five feet in length, with a five to eight inch diameter at the top. The posts were cut seven or eight foot long, and a few were cut ten foot long on special order. These were used for clothes line posts.
The cedar workers were called “cedar hogs”. That work was hard, also. It was hard to maneuver the poles in skidding, a clear path had to be cut for the skidding team as the cedar was brittle and would not stand any bending. We never had any time for maple sugar making in the spring as at that time we were busy in cleaning up the logging work.