HOW A GIANT SAWMILL WORKS.

Evening Post, Volume LXVI, Issue 16, 18 July 1903, Page 9

HOW A GIANT SAWMILL WORKS.

At Tacoma I visited a sawmill said to have a greater capacity than any other in the United States, and, with one exception (in Norway), the greatest in the world. It is, in fact, two separate mills, covering a low flat, ivith docks on the sound where ships can be loaded at 'the door of the yards. Here the logs from the camp which we visited are sawed. They are dumped from the railroad cars into ponds of water and held until the mill- is 'ready to cut them into lumber. Mr. Royce showed me through this gieat establishment, with its devices for handling the enormous logs of fir and cedar, hemlock, and spruce, which come to it daily. Nearly every step in the long process is performed by some human-like machine. Logs weighing many tons are handled like jackstraws, pulled out of the water whirled over, lifted about, 1 gripped, slabbed off, turned again easily, aud, directed by the swift and sure judgment of the expert sawyer, driven through handsaws or great gangsaws, cutting twenty boards or more at once, and finally trimmed to certain lengths — everything moving at once, smoothly, with absolute exactitude. In fifteen minutes from the time the log enters the mill it has been reduced to lumber of several grades ; the poor parts ,have been whittled up into lath and shingles, the slabs have been shot out on a great pile for firewood, and the remaining bark, sawdust, and refuse have | been carried a,-svay to the fire heap. This mill cut* 100,000,000 feet of lumber and 90,000,000,000 shingles in a year, and its produce goes the world over — to Australia, Hawaii, China, South Africa, South America, and Europe. — Ray Stannard Baker, in The Century.