2007 05 Wyoming

2007 05 30 Saratoga LP Mill

This is my second day in this sawmill. It would be more interesting to be here 30 years after it was shut down rather than four, but is is still interesting.

This part of the mill "finished" the work. Dried rough work came in from the kilns at one end and precisely cut finished and bundled work went out the other end.

The first two shots are general views in toward all the machinery. The large empty area is where finished material was stacked waiting to be shipped. The railroad (now being torn up) is behind me.

The machine in the top two of the next four did labeling. The machine in the bottom two shots is a crosscut saw. Both of these machines must have had many many pieces per minute run through them. Maybe multiple pieces a second. The small white "shack" in the background of the second shot is the planer, which took rough dried 2x4s and planed them on all 4 sides at once. Again this machine is enclosed all round for safety reasons.

The first shot below is the "output" end of the 4 drying kilns. The second shot is the input side of the finishing building, dried rough work went in here.

A lot of the machinery at a sawmill is devoted to the collecting, moving, and burning (in the kilns) or saving of vast quantities of chips, sawdust, and bark.

The next 6 shots are outside the "rough" cutting side of the mill. These are the machines that take logs, debark them, and cut them to length. They are all big and scary. The first two are the debarking machine. (Check out "debarking concepts" there. This is a frames page, which is annoying.) The red rollers in the second shot guide logs into the debarking machine, which is really a vicious looking contraption. It was enclosed enough that it was difficult to photograph.

The bottom two shots above are the outfeed of the debarking machine and the bank of crosscut saws that took logs down to about 8 feet in length before they were run into the mill. The blades on the crosscut saws are about 6 feet in diameter.

The left shot of the two above is the input conveyor that took 8 foot debarked logs and delivered them to the two bandsaws inside the mill. The second shot is of the bank of crosscut saws, taken from the operators viewpoint.

The above two shots are general shots of the mill, taken from near the old rail line. All the tall stuff is related to chip and waste handling.

Most of the above isn't much like the film I shot, but are more intended to give a look at the function of the mill.

Back in Saratoga I was again impressed with the size of the lilacs..