Found some old loggin pics...

[shelbycharger400]

nice pictures
when i seen that big white horse, reminded me of a picture of my great grandma..
somewhere is the picture of her riding the horse, then their is a clipping of the local wadena paper of the same picture, riding it in the local parade , 1920 something.
they were one of the last few people to use white horses for farming on the farm in wadena mn

[Banjo picker]

Thanks for taking the time to post the pics. for us Marcel...   Banjo

[isawlogs]

 Here's that white horse again just waiting for the log to be cut up for him to drag it out.
  ( I'll will put a little parenthese here .... That white horse at times had a mind of his own, He would every so often look back at you to see where you where at with the unhooking later in the afternoon and if you wondered off to the side a little he would step ahead a small step to see if the chain was off the wipple tree, then take another small step and if you did not give him a WOA  he would start down the trail and take the road home    Then that would make for the end of the day walk as we would have rode on the sleigh to the bush. My grand dad did not swear, but took exception for this horse in those times )
  My uncle Guy bucking the tree  with small saw 

 

[isawlogs]

 Here's my dad wrenchin' on his saw, I will call him later and find out wich one this would be. ( small memory test for him .  )  My Grand father Norman sittin' and checkin' his work.  ( Pioneer saw, he thinks it may be a '54 )

 

[isawlogs]

  Dad cutting some hardwood pulp.

 

[WDH]

I love seeing those old pics.  You come from a long line of loggers!

[isawlogs]

 I know ... I am having a ball here myself , seeing my dad and his brothers, neighbours and friends at a time I was not born yet .

  After working hard all winter in waste deep snow at times , sap collecting was almost a welcomed break. 

 



 Grand father is sitiing second from left , these are his boys , well two are his , the rest where the neighbours , but he always had time for any of them and they where always welcomed to sit at his table. Here sap/sugar sharin' was easy for him. It was story telling time , how winter was for them and where they had wintered over at.

[Coon]

Keep the pictures coming Marcel.     Love to hear and see about all the old times especially the the logging   

[thecfarm]

Thank you for the pictures. Not many cutting woods pictures in my family. My Dad was in the woods alone most of the time. I don't think they had a cameras,they did not want to waste thier money on pictures of wood,but when it came to the animals having babies,they had time and money for that. Or a new critter the camera came out.

[Magicman]

Just the thought that someone had a camera and remembered to use it amazes me.

[SwampDonkey]

My mothers uncle had a silent movie camera just after the war. Took some video of the Tobique steam engine and the blasting of the site for the hydro electric dam in Tobique Narrows in '53. Grandfather's uncle had a homestead there, and in a still picture my uncle has you can see the blasting behind the house and buildings. The old fella and wife was evicted and moved down the road to a camp they built, he died that winter. The generation before that were the first settlers and that was the old place. Some people don't like to be reminded of the past.

[customsawyer]

Great pics. A couple more and you will have us in the Christmas spirit.

[isawlogs]

 
    Hurlin' down the white spruce for pulp.

   


  I really don't think workmens compensation was near these guys with all the safety equipment they wore 

 


 
 At least one of um wore gloves .    This is my uncle Aurel, he married my dads older sister.

   


 
   My dads older brother Cecil, they where cutting down spruce and bucking it four foot for pulp.
  I still have a pile of them to go through .. if you all get tired of lookin' let me know. I will just bore you with more 

[Bill Gaiche]

As has been noted getting us in the Christmas* spirit is true. Those are some great photos. Can anyone imagine being those fellows shoes trying to make a living back when. It wasnt easy and arent we lucky to have the tools and compfort of machines to perform the work they did today. Keep up the good work isawlogs. bg

[SwampDonkey]

What is amazing to me is sawing up large log trees into 4' pulpwood.  I do see a big pitch seem, maybe that ruined the log. I think back then they could be a lot more fussy on the specs, because they had all kinds of logs. I find a lot of large spruce will get that seem like a frost crack. We cut some 3 foot butted red spruce on a town lot and most had that seem. A small number would have gone for veneer $1000/th, but the haul was far away in Maine. Hauled them to Fraser's sawmill and they exported them to their veneer mill in Maine. They wouldn't buy them as veneer though. They were way too big for their sawmill.

[Norm]

Tough is an understatement for those guys. Keep them coming Marcel, I love this thread. 

[Magicman]

Thanks for the latest batch of pictures and the narratives.  This is very interesting.   

[isawlogs]

 As much as we see this as being tuff, dad told me it was all in a days work. They worked hard and played a lot harder   

  I have three of the saws seen in those pics , I have the old McCulloch, Rocket pm one of the pioneer saws. I think the old mac still fires up , it did a few years ago. I asked dad about the weight of those saws , alls he told me was that we are lucky he and his brothers did not have the saws we have today. 
  Dad said he was about seventeen or eighteen in those pics with the spruce. He also mentioned something about having to work on them saws almost every night for them to work the next day. Took a long time for his dad to use one , he would take to the limbs with his axe while the boys cut the pulp.
  SD,
  If you look closely you will see that not one of those trees would of given up a good log , back then a log had to be almost perfect for the Company to buy it , every one of them has a big sweep or a seam or heart rot. The good logs where always cut out and the tops went into pulp. They spent end of summer and fall cutting and bunching of the pulp , when the first snows came about , then the haulin' began. They did some hauling with the wagon, but most of the time it was with the sleighs.
   I noticed that some of the names are missing to go with the pics .. I will go back and modify that .     

[thecfarm]

I can remember my Father telling me he used to start a fire and put a piece of tin on the fire and put the big old homlite on top of the tin so the saw would start easier.

[isawlogs]

 When I was not in school yet and then after on every day that school was out I fallowed my dad, he put me in charge of the fire and gave me a small axe that I wish I had today. He tought me what an Ironwood looked like and those where the only ones I could whack down. It took me forever to cut one but man I remember those days like it was yesterday. I had a big collie dog , he was a twin to Lassie his name was Stone and that dog never left my side. When dad was not sure of my where abouts he would wistle the dog and Stone would bring him straight to me and my trees to haul out, as dad hooked every one of them with his horse to pull to the landing, no matter what size, he would put me on the horse and the horse pulled my 'logs' out with me on him , I thought that horse was the strongest horse ever born    That horse I have a few pics of, that will come around in time.