Things come to a head, and in turbulent waters I can manage a breath. For how long is the question. (Wholly spontaneous and unrelated to December 6th line)
Monday, August 27, 2012
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Line 'O the day - January 12, 2010
I feel like Sisyphus near the peak, and am momentarily afraid. Then I realize I’m not in hell and I’m gonna reach the fucking top.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Line 'O the day - January 3, 2010
Corb Lund is awesome. You won’t like him, but he speaks my fucking language.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Line 'O the day - January 1, 2010
Woody’s advice from a couple weeks ago (see previous line) may be stellar for a 70 year old, but I’d say many a temporary measure may come with strings attached.
Sunday, August 5, 2012
The Old Saw Mill
So I've slipped again on my silly ass country musings. But a thing I saw the other day has prompted me to relay another little portion of my upbringing. A notice about child labor laws made me laugh, as a number of things it stated weren't proper conditions for folks under the age of 15 aren't exactly adhered to on most farms and ranches. Further if such guidelines were followed, young would be farmers would never learn a goddamned thing.
That brings me to the specifics of this post, the old saw mill. Working around a saw mill is a massive no no for kids, as far as labor laws are concerned.
So when I was a real little kid there was this old saw mill, from like the 1930s, tucked back up in the timber that was once used by dad and grandpa when they wanted lumber to build a barn or what have you. It was just this old rusted bunch of iron to me at the time. About the time I was 14 the old man wanted to resurrect the derelict contraption. And so we did. Dad hauled it out of its hole and parked it out behind our house and set about putting it all into working order.
I'll try to explain how this death trap worked. Its rather simple, not exactly easy mind you, but simple. Once you have your log you had to wrestle it up onto a sort of trolly (you get a good idea of that in the photo above). So the first danger is getting crushed by the log before you have it secured on the carriage, or just smashing a finger or 5 while hoisting it into place. Once secured to the trolly you're ready to start cutting. Now you need a tractor to run the mill, both turning the blade and trucking the trolly back and forth along its 40 foot long track. There are a myriad of little levers and pulleys and gears, all of which are just open to everything. Like I said the thing was built in the 30s or 40s and there wasn't much thought back then to protective guards to save fingers and such.
(Back then they required you to respect your equipment, now we just try to make everything idiot proof. An idiot probably couldn't run that old saw mill.)
Where was I, oh yea onto the blade. This thing is similar to like what you'd see on a circular saw or a table saw, but its like 4 feet tall. No guard on it either, its instant maiming or death if you slip up around it. And you're gonna be inches away from it while you're cutting, that's just the way you've got to do it. Now then there's one big lever that controls this whole mess. Push it forward and the trolly moves forward passed the blade, pull it back and the trolly returns to the starting position.
There's other stuff like constantly turning the log on the trolly to get your boards like you want them and getting the speed of the trolly right depending on how hard the wood is, but the basic operation is running the log back and forth along the stationary blade.
The saw worked, but it had its drawbacks too. We cut a fair amount of lumber with it to build all sorts of things, but you couldn't really aim for perfection with the machine. You might be wanting to cut some good 10 ft long 2x4s, but we'd just take into account that one end might be an inch and half wide while the other was a good bit over two inches. The blade never ran true as it were, but it still cut and as the old man would say, it was good enough for government work.
The old saw mill has since been retired permanently, and dad's got a newer homemade saw mill that is just as ridiculous for it's own reasons.
Next time I might talk a bit about something we built with the old mill's product.
That brings me to the specifics of this post, the old saw mill. Working around a saw mill is a massive no no for kids, as far as labor laws are concerned.
 |
| Witness the hipster farm boy. I was rocking the hipster sunglasses way back in the early 90s. Oh yea and notice the huge dangerous apparatus behind the old man and me. |
So when I was a real little kid there was this old saw mill, from like the 1930s, tucked back up in the timber that was once used by dad and grandpa when they wanted lumber to build a barn or what have you. It was just this old rusted bunch of iron to me at the time. About the time I was 14 the old man wanted to resurrect the derelict contraption. And so we did. Dad hauled it out of its hole and parked it out behind our house and set about putting it all into working order.
I'll try to explain how this death trap worked. Its rather simple, not exactly easy mind you, but simple. Once you have your log you had to wrestle it up onto a sort of trolly (you get a good idea of that in the photo above). So the first danger is getting crushed by the log before you have it secured on the carriage, or just smashing a finger or 5 while hoisting it into place. Once secured to the trolly you're ready to start cutting. Now you need a tractor to run the mill, both turning the blade and trucking the trolly back and forth along its 40 foot long track. There are a myriad of little levers and pulleys and gears, all of which are just open to everything. Like I said the thing was built in the 30s or 40s and there wasn't much thought back then to protective guards to save fingers and such.
(Back then they required you to respect your equipment, now we just try to make everything idiot proof. An idiot probably couldn't run that old saw mill.)
Where was I, oh yea onto the blade. This thing is similar to like what you'd see on a circular saw or a table saw, but its like 4 feet tall. No guard on it either, its instant maiming or death if you slip up around it. And you're gonna be inches away from it while you're cutting, that's just the way you've got to do it. Now then there's one big lever that controls this whole mess. Push it forward and the trolly moves forward passed the blade, pull it back and the trolly returns to the starting position.
There's other stuff like constantly turning the log on the trolly to get your boards like you want them and getting the speed of the trolly right depending on how hard the wood is, but the basic operation is running the log back and forth along the stationary blade.
 |
| Based on dad's face in this picture I reckon I made a suggestion he thought was fucking stupid and he's telling me why it was so. |
The saw worked, but it had its drawbacks too. We cut a fair amount of lumber with it to build all sorts of things, but you couldn't really aim for perfection with the machine. You might be wanting to cut some good 10 ft long 2x4s, but we'd just take into account that one end might be an inch and half wide while the other was a good bit over two inches. The blade never ran true as it were, but it still cut and as the old man would say, it was good enough for government work.
The old saw mill has since been retired permanently, and dad's got a newer homemade saw mill that is just as ridiculous for it's own reasons.
Next time I might talk a bit about something we built with the old mill's product.
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