TIME TRAVEL INSIDE A LUMBER BARN

It’s just a barn, a lumber barn in the middle of nowhere, but so much more.

It’s an historical record, an archive of sawdust, splinters, slivers, and work. Hard work.

The main attraction is a train engine used to move big logs out of the woods, along with other man-killing machinery.

For me the big deal was the barn itself.

What a barn:

Built in 2008-2009 to exhibit the museum’s extensive collection of large logging and sawmilling related artifacts, this towering building was designed to replicate the look, feel and scale of the locomotive shop that originally served the Polson Logging Company’s Railroad Camp, 15 miles north of Hoquiam between 1902 and 1967.

 

Towering building? Yes, towering:

 

 

Today we pick up lumber from a store and think nothing of it.

The biggest deal is getting it loaded and taking it home.

Back in the day were there lumber stores, lumber yards, or did you have to cut your own?

 

 

A quick review on getting your own lumber pre-1902:

1. Find a tree.

2. Cut it down.

3. Saw the limbs off.

4. Saw planks off the tree.

5. Flatten the broad side with a draw knife.

6. Smooth the edgers with a plane.

7. Repeat.

 

A Lumber Barn Lesson

I was raised around trees, big trees.

And lumber mills. Lots of them.

A high school kid a few years older than me went to work in the woods, out on some landing on a hill.

A year earlier he’d been playing high school sports with his classmates. He had younger brothers.

Instead of going to college right away he decided to save his money working and figure out what he wanted to do before going off on the wrong track for six years.

Something happened out in the woods and a log rolled.

The message for me, and I think others at the time, was the preciousness of life.

It’s some lesson at fourteen when the older brothers of other kids were dying over in Vietnam.

A kid a year younger than me in high school worked in the woods as an adult where he lassoed big logs with a choker cable attached to a higher cable circulating above.

Click this link for a job application.

Something happened out in the woods and a cable snapped.

I got a feelings about wood and the dangers at every step.

Making lumber was dangerous in the old days and still dangerous.

There was a trench in the cement floor at the Georgia-Pacific plywood mill in Coos Bay with metal plates over it.

Inside the trench a huge metal screw called a hog carried wood scraps away.

During safety class before going out on the mill floor we heard it could grab your pant leg and pull you in and grind you up before anyone could hit the kill switch.

 

The Speeder

 

What’s a lumber barn about forest harvest and logging without a speeder?

It looks like something out of Star Wars.

Imagine seeing this coming out of the woods.

 

 

PS:

The next time you shop for big wood, think about where it came from and the steps taken before it got to you.

 

PSS:

My lumber barn take away?

The bigger the tree, the harder they fall, so be careful with wood.

In a similar vein, be careful with yourself. The bigger you are, the harder you’ll fall.

So don’t fall in the lumber barn, or anywhere else.

If you want to be a faller, find a tree.