You know I love seeing this stuff. A bunch of people make a fuss about east coast west coast. Blah blah. I’m on the east coast and the wood is hard. You’re on the west coast and it’s soft. Our trees aren’t massive trees. Your trees are huge. But from what I have seen the ppl that run the mills and log woods are exactly the same. Good ole boys gettin the job done and trying to have fun while doing it.
Guy next to the mill is an 'off-bearer' (in the Pacific Northwest). Dangerous job. No hard hat, maybe no ear protection, maybe no safety glasses... even though in that job... probably didn't matter ! When the band saw comes off the wheel is the most dangerous time. In the 'latter days' of that job we provided Kevlar jackets. Off bearer job was mostly eliminated by better engineering. Air 'slab droppers' in the roll-case, punch bars on the carriage (kick the bottom out), then rotary chippers at the head rig took off the unworkable outside of the log. Brings back memories.
@@YESITSWILLThis set up moves cut lumber in one direction only. If you cut in two directions, two off-loading stations would be needed. Not saying it's not doable, it's just for this mill, one direction only.
Wow, that's a big headrig carriage. I was a millwright in a couple of sawmills, but they were stud mills, and 9 foot was the longest we cut. Pretty impressive.
Thank you so much for that video I've never seen it done like that in a large scale it's pretty interesting I watched the whole video so thank you Happy Thanksgiving
I worked in a mill in Northern Calif. when I was younger , it was hard work but I enjoyed it. I would say that this mill specializes in long beams and dimension lumber like rafters.
This brings back memories ! I can smell the fir from memory! My dad worked in a similar mill in Vancouver Canada for decades remember going to work with him as a kid. Headings like this are LOUD amazing they go from logs like this to dimensional lumber so fast .
I work at Canfor in Canada. Our head rig can do 24 footers so the carriage is much smaller. That guy standing there holding the slab is doing some seriously dangerous chit. Hes one wrong move away from death, one miss step, trip or the slab getting caught on a chain run will send him into those rolls. That company has a serious liability in the works
The guy in the black shirt is the tail-sawyer. I did that job at a mill in Thompson Falls Montana in the 70s. Tough dangerous job with a double cut saw when you have a slab falling on each pass of the carriage. Even so it was a great adventure!!
Why is he trying to catch the big cut pieces? It's not like he's gonna be able to lift them or literally do anything at all. That's an accident waiting to happen. The bastard is trying to lose his fingers or break them!
I think this log and a few other sixty footers and a couple of forty footers have been sitting on the ground for a long time. The cambium layer on the log looks old and dry and the wood fibre show drying also
That bit of inattention at about 5:17 is how you can get seriously hurt around the head rig. He should have seen that slab was going to be heavy because of the curvature at the butt of the log. Not being critical of the worker, just an observation of how doing something over and over can cause attention to slip.
Come on guys. I know you enjoy a good joke. But saw dust is not healthy for your lungs. I know it's a natural product but nonetheless it's bad for your lungs.
I had to fell many of these when i was a firefighter in the US Forest service. One was hit by lightning on Mt Graham Arizona. It took a whole tank of gas to make a face cut n do the back cut... i always wondered what wiuld become of trees like that...
The wood looks so smooth! My house has solid wood paneling instead of drywall. There are diagonal marks running across each board. Some are very rough with lots of tear out. Does anyone know why? Maybe the mill was using a circular blade?
From 1992 to 2016 i worked cutting and erecting morticed and tenoned timber frames. Went through a lot of west coast fir, the biggest timber i remember working on was 10 by16 inches 35 feet long. I imagine it came out of a log like this.
I’m a baker in a small commercial cookie factory- we make about 5000lbs of cookies muffins brownies a day. Visitors all say the same thing “it smells amazing in here” -- sadly the smell just ends up smelling like work after a while
@@drpoopenstein9080 they say if you love what you do you will never work a day in your life. But I hear what your saying. I worked in an a rent a center in collections and for a year and a half avatar was playing on every TV in the building. I now get irate everytime the movie is mentioned.
I had no idea anyone milled logs that long. That slab at the end must weigh 5 tons. The guy grabbing them with his hands is a for real badass. When he first started he probably weighed 100 pounds. Seriously though this is one hell of an operation. Next time I need 60 foot 5 ton slabs of douglas fir you guys are my number one and only.
All this super efficient equipment and for some reason they still need a guy with a 20 foot stick and another guy to risk crushing his hand 1000 times a day.
I had a project a few years ago where we cleared 10 acres of douglas fir a little smaller than these. Nobody would take them for free so we had to mulch them at site. A terrible waste.
When i worked in the mill we were actually not allowed to wear a mask unless you take some special test because they dont want you exerting yourself in a mask and passing out or something
This is not a modern mill by any means. I worked in sawmills in the 1970s and the Head Rig saw would cut in both directions and there wasn’t anyone to physically handled the pieces as they were cut off.
The beams you see go into the gangsaw which cuts the beam into dimensional lumber. The first two beams looked like 2x6 and 2x8 cants the last large beam looked like a 2x12 cant
Goddamn i thought i was hard for working in a veneer mill, this is a fckn whole other league. So many things to get fingers or clothes or anything stuck in, ripped off, smashed holy o'hell. The catch at 3:40 and 5:23 was 100% experience, someone less on their shit definitely comes out on the losing end of that exchange. Respect. Also 😂😂😂 dude with the pike pole has got to have the most boring effing job on the planet😂😂😂.
Nice he had a helper with the pike pole. Usually on your own. I only had 10’ diameter cedar, but the old timers told me of running the rig with trailer bunks and saw up to 100’. Became unnecessary and impractical. All high speed double cuts and quads now.
