2007 05 Wyoming

2007 05 29 Saratoga LP Mill, Weather

This is the sawmill side of the Louisiana Pacific Mill in Saratoga WY. The mill was closed about closed 4 years ago. There are now multiple caretakers. Someone is on site 24 hours a day since it is so new and obviously very valuable. One of the caretakers was quite good to me and gave me a thorough tour. I learned that the mill made basically one product, 2x4 studs for home construction. Logs came in one end, 2x4 studs went out the other.

I didn't take photos in the work flow order, but I will try to explain things to the best of my understanding.

The next two shots are of one of the drying kilns. These were filled with rough cut material and heated using radiant heat. The walls and ceiling are basically one large radiator. The water is heated with wood chips and and bark produced earlier in the process. The first shot is a kiln, the second shot is in one a room full of steam distribution.

The left shot below is the main entrance to the rough sawmill. The right shot is of the giant bandsaw that ripped debarked logs into roughly 4 inch thick boards called "cants". The bandsaw is in the green structure, and the control booth is the green box in the rear of the shot. The operator sat in that booth and watched the saw on TV monitors and moved a log back and forth with robotic equipment.

The left shot below is taken on the outfeed from a second (giant) bandsaw that also took logs and made cants. This secondary bandsaw was used on oversize or irregular logs. The primary bandsaw structure is on the right. This saw was enclosed due to the danger posed by broken blades or lumber being kicked back during cutting. The right photo is the machinery that moved cants into the area where they were sawed into rough 2x4s.

Here is that secondary bandsaw again. The right photo shows a large grinder that is used to get irregular logs into a shape that can be put through the machinery.

The left shot below is the secondary bandsaw again, the right shot is the control booth for the primary bandsaw.

The primary bandsaw control booth again and another view of the primary bandsaw itself. The inside of this box was too dark for photos without lots of added light. All of these bandsaws had blades that were about 8" wide and made loops about 10 feet tall and 2 feet wide. They were sharpened daily (I think blades were rotated.) and were used until they were about 4" wide.

After shooting this all day I drove north on US287 from Rawlins to look at the weather. I shot a lot of panoramic of these thunderstorms. It was very cold. The temperature was about 38 and the wind was blowing hard from the northwest. I froze. When it did start to rain that was very cold as well.