The Sawmill
Shanty boys cut the trees that
helped build the nation
between 1870 and 1900.
The sawmill features a circular saw, the tools of the lumberjack, a diagram of the
lumbering process and a map of Michigan that shows its rivers and forest lands.
Woodsmen, called "shanty boys," cut the trees. "River hogs," or
river men, drove the logs down rivers to sawmills to be made into lumber. Both used tools
unique to their jobs. This photo shows some of the tools exhibited in the
gallery.
Labeled diagram of photo. The
tools with their names in bold type can be seen in the photo.
The shanty boys used axes and saws to fell the giant white pine trees. The handle on
the one-man crosscut saw allowed a man to cut down a tree alone. Two men used a
two-man crosscut saw that had a handle on each end.
Once a tree was felled, the shanty boy used a cant hook, a pole with a hook attached to its end, to roll and handle the log. They
dragged the logs to the river bank with log chains—often with swamp hooks
attached—to await the spring thaw. At the banking ground the mark of the lumber company
that owned the logs would be pounded into each log's end with a log marking hammer.
On the exterior wall of the sawmill a display of log marks shows some symbols owners
used to identify their logs. "Design
Your Own Log Marks" includes a picture of some Michigan log marks.
River hogs used a pike pole (the pole in the photograph is a fragment)—a steel
point attached to a very long handle—to push logs on the river drives. They also used the
peavy (like a cant hook, but with a point at its end) to turn and handle logs as they
floated downstream. The river hog often walked daringly from log to log over the water,
held on by his sense of balance and his calked boots—boots with spikes in the
soles. Once the logs reached the sawmill, they were kept inside a floating
"fence." The fence was made by connecting other logs together with boom
chains fastened to the logs by rafting pins.
Some men used specialized axes for particular jobs such as hewing railroad ties or
splitting shingles. A bark spud—a steel wedge—was used to strip bark off logs.
Log scalers were men who worked in the woods measuring logs to estimate how many board
feet each tree would provide. They used log scales, long tools that resemble
yardsticks. Other men, called "land lookers," searched the forests for stands of
good trees for their lumber companies. In winter they they wore snowshoes to make
their way through the snowy woods.
 A copy of a historic
photograph of a Michigan logging camp hangs behind the big wheels
in the Lumbering Gallery. Several of the tools mentioned above can be seen in this photo
from the Archives of Michigan.
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