Pics of old sawmill equipment in my own backyard (almost!)

OK so here's the backstory. 50-60 years ago, there used to be an old bush sawmill set up on a small lake about half a mile behind my house down an old logging road. My property, along with a few adjacent neighbors, used to be the personal property and home of the mill owners, and when the mill was finally shut down (still trying to find out from some old-timers when that was exactly) most of the equipment ended up here spread out over our properties, with the old mill site now housing the local rod & gun club. The two brothers that live across the road own the main piece, from which many of our places were subdivided decades ago. A couple years ago, before I knew all this, I was out on a ride on my quad down below their house, on what I thought at the time was public land (they don't mind people riding on it, at any rate) and happened upon heaps and heaps of old mill equipment just rusting away in the trees. Yesterday I decided to take my camera back there to take some inventory and see if it was worth asking my neighbor about the idea of removing some of the stuff, at least for preservation if not to get running again.


As you can see there isn't much left of the carriage itself, but the steel parts are still all there. In the foreground of this shot is the main flyback (there may be another term for it) carriage drive spool with cable still on it. The shaft a few feet farther back is the main saw arbor with the big drive pulley obscured by the pine tree in the foreground. It's in really good shape other than some surface rust. Not bad for ~60 years out in the elements. The big stabilizer washers and arbor nut are still on the arbor end of the shaft, too. I'm not sure what the big shaft/wheel at the back of the shot is. Carriage drive maybe? There are also a couple hundred feet of heavy Duncan waste chain lying around here too.


Here's what I think are the carriage drive works assembly pieces (no longer assembled!). I think the big gear is from something else, but maybe not. It's all kind-of a jumbled mess.


Another carriage drive piece, I think.


This looks like what's left of the engine that was being used at the time. Some sort of lever that hooks into the clutch on it.


There's the old head saw, pushed into a jumbled mess that's seen a fire or two. I don't think it'll ever be resurrected. I wouldn't mind having it around though just as a showpiece leaning up against the barn or something.

More pics


Here's the main saw deck. The high cribbed portion at the far right is the main support for the saw arbor; you can see the steel splitter knife attached to the left edge of this part. The offbearer(s) would have worked on the flat platform in the foreground, with the carriage riding on the higher rails beyond that. The sawyer would have stood on the other side of the arbor from the offbearer.


Here's what's left of the carriage guide rails, I think. There's 1" angle iron inverted and attached to long 5X5" timbers that are largely rotted away now.


This is some sort of old steel sled under all that junk. At first I thought it part of the carriage, but after looking at it, I can't see how anything mechanical has ever been attached to it - it's just some I-beam that's been upturned and connected at each end from the looks of it. Maybe it was for moving logs in the winter? It would be interesting to have, though. Also, the blower "pipe" in the rear-right of the photo is made from an assortment of old 5-gal. oil pails etc. welded together. No waste here!



An old 1-1/4" arbor buzz/trim saw. I dug up the arbor that this saw probably came off of, also complete with washers and arbor nut. A bit rusty though. I had no idea they were still using scratcher saw teeth that late; I figured people had converted to hook teeth by the 50s. It looks neat though.


An old Webb & Clifford planer. I have the bottom head/shaft from this thing up in my shop. It would be a good solid frame to build a planer or edger/ripsaw around. It's still nice and square but the wide-angle lens distorted it in the photo.

Other random stuff...


Some sort of old planer or resaw unit upside-down. I can't tell which because the guts are all gone; just a couple feedrolls left. Shame to leave it to rot away like this though...


Here's the manufacturer info on the above unit. Looks like"American Saw Mill Machinery Co., Hackettstown, NJ, USA". I am unsure of the "Hackettstown" because it's obscured and I couldn't get low enough to see without laying down on the ground. I'm unaware if that's a real town or not; I'm sure someone here will know.


You know how much fun it can be to sort through a knotted mess of chain? How about trying this pile out? It's big enough to fill a few pickup trucks and contains more types of deck/roller/drive/waste/flat/box chains than you can shake a stick at. Some neat really old antique chain types I'd never seen before there too.


Aren't you glad we have sheet metal blower ducting now? I can't imagine trying to work with this 1/4" sidewall stuff. I can maneuver an entire modern blower cyclone around by myself if I have to now; it's all I can do to pick up a few feet of this pipe! In the background to the left are various pieces of old conveyor troughing and chain runs. A lot is pretty bent up.


Another big blower manifold and one of the big blowers. The blower fan itself is cast iron and looks more like a flywheel than a blower, compared to today's stuff.

More...


There are probably half a dozen to ten old double-cut 10" or 12" bands down there all folded up. I thought this made a neat picture, and I swear the chain was like that when I found it.


A big deck chain drive sprocket. There are a few various ones kicking around in the different piles.


This spool of cable's probably worth a few bucks. It looks like 1-1/4" diameter. I can't begin to move it.


There are more than a couple old vehicles too! Old log truck cabs and frames, even old classic cars half-wrecked.


I don't think this ol' boy is going anywhere anytime soon...

Cool pics. Nature sure has a way to reclaim the past. It's hard to imagine that that was an open mill yard at one time.

Thanks for the pics, Brad.

A lot of good metal there. Shafting, channel, angle.

Surprise it didn't get hauled off a couple years ago when scrap iron was bringing good money ?

Wonderful pictures, thanks. Reminds me of the remains of old cars I found in middle of an Ontario forest - surrounded by 24" dia hardwood. Takes a while for the forest to absorb an engine block, but it'll happen.

mtngun said:

Thanks for the pics, Brad.

A lot of good metal there. Shafting, channel, angle.

Surprise it didn't get hauled off a couple years ago when scrap iron was bringing good money ?

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Nobody pays for mangled steel around here, even if you have a couple tons of it. Brass, copper, and aluminum only pretty much. They'll come and pick up steel for free, say if you have an old wrecked car or something, which saves you the cost of trucking it down to the scrapyard yourself.

Just had to look it up... and there is a real town called Hackettstown

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackettstown,_New_Jersey

Hey Brad, great pictures. Looks to me that everything of value was taken when they wrapped operations up. Torching marks are often a sign of that, still happens today, cheaper to torch the 'scrap' stuff off the good salvageable equipment then to pay someone to turn wrenches.

Woodsurfer said:

Wonderful pictures, thanks. Reminds me of the remains of old cars I found in middle of an Ontario forest - surrounded by 24" dia hardwood. Takes a while for the forest to absorb an engine block, but it'll happen.

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Yeah there's plenty of those around here too. A couple hours' drive south of here, I saw an old '40s truck with a 12"+ tree growing up through the engine compartment (engine was gone). It ain't going anywhere!

Cool pics!

How thick are those bands? They might make good knife blade stock.

cowtipper said:

Just had to look it up... and there is a real town called Hackettstown

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackettstown,_New_Jersey

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Hacketstown is about 30 min n/e of me. Its a blue collar town like alot of the towns in this area and it's got the closest white castle to me. I never heard of a mill equipment company being there but there were quite a few mills in this area years ago so it makes sense that there was a manufacturer close by. There are two closed paper mills within 6 miles of my house. Most people don't realize how rural parts of NJ still are. It's amazing the type of industries that used to be in this state that no longer are.

Those are high quality pictures and what a good job of digging around and then explaining them to us. rep sent!

Coalsmoke said:

Hey Brad, great pictures. Looks to me that everything of value was taken when they wrapped operations up. Torching marks are often a sign of that, still happens today, cheaper to torch the 'scrap' stuff off the good salvageable equipment then to pay someone to turn wrenches.

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It's entirely probable that the better equipment was put into one of the big mills in town. Up until the early '60s, there were only planer mill operations right in town here. They essentially just bought rough lumber from the dozens of "bush mills" that littered the landscape around here at the time. These bush mills could range from just a handful of guys operating a headrig carriage (such operations were common for milling railroad ties; offcuts got sold to the planers) to some much larger ones that were essentially their own little town out in the middle of nowhere. I know a few folks who spent a large portion of their childhood growing up in such camps; some were large enough to support their own schools.

Anyway in the late '50s into the '60s, road infrastructure improved to the point that it was more practical to truck logs to town than to run ever larger mills miles away from town and its services. This resulted in most of the remote mills shutting down and consolidating in town or merging with the planer mills. The mill that was here was one of the closer ones to town - I'm only about 6-7 miles from downtown, which today is a 5 minute drive, but 60 years ago would have been a much larger affair getting up and down the hill and 1000' elevation change. And to give an idea of how many of these mills there were, there was one one about 3/4 mile down the road closer to town (I know one of the guys with property on the old mill site), and there was another one maybe a mile and a half farther down the road past my place. All owned by different folks apparently. A mile and a half past that is a small family-owned mill that's still operating; 4-5 miles farther is the site of one of the larger camp-style mills that a family I know operated years back. Not much left but some old boards and garbage heaps. I found some neat stuff there. And a couple miles further up the road is another small private mill that's still operating. Lots of competition around here!



Back to the old mill parts here though - are the headrig / carriage parts worth saving? I hate to see them just rusting away like they are. There are numerous sprockets, rollers/cylinders, lengths of bulk shaft, etc. that should still be plenty usable, though I doubt I'll find myself needing a big box-chain star drive or the like anytime soon!



Aggie, those bands are +/- 1/8" thick. There are a couple old circulars lying around that are thicker. I can get an endless supply of saw and chipper/planer knife steel for practically nothing, between the sawmill and the scrapyard. I already have more than I know what to do with, really.

Wow you're not kidding when you said you were well populated with mills 50 years ago. Most of our history is tied to a water course of some way or another, as that was of course our means of log transportation.

As for the headrig, well, anything can be resurrected with enjoy gumption, from a non-emotional attachment perspective, no its not worth saving. However, if you ever wanted a project it would make a heck of a good one, if you could find enough of the bits to put together the headrig and carriage. The carriage and drive system with the setworks is going to be the more valuable and "must save" item here, if much of it is left.

Coalsmoke said:

Wow you're not kidding when you said you were well populated with mills 50 years ago. Most of our history is tied to a water course of some way or another, as that was of course our means of log transportation.

As for the headrig, well, anything can be resurrected with enjoy gumption, from a non-emotional attachment perspective, no its not worth saving. However, if you ever wanted a project it would make a heck of a good one, if you could find enough of the bits to put together the headrig and carriage. The carriage and drive system with the setworks is going to be the more valuable and "must save" item here, if much of it is left.

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The setworks are one thing I never did see. That doesn't mean much though as there's plenty of stuff obscured by other junk, not to mention i wasn't really specifically looking for them.

Brmorgan said:

The setworks are one thing I never did see. That doesn't mean much though as there's plenty of stuff obscured by other junk, not to mention i wasn't really specifically looking for them.

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Brad,

Not to be stupid here, but isn't "setworks" a modern term used for the blade adjustment on a movable head sawmill, like a bandmill? You might try to get advice from someone that is not blowing smoke up your you know what...

Many of the old sawmills merely have a movable bed on them, which allows you to secure the log and make a cut. You adjust the log, that's your setworks! Set your log and cut it!

On bandmills people refer to the setworks as what moves and operates the adjustment of the blade, because the log is stationary while cutting.

To understand if it would be worth it for you to fix up, it seems you would need to understand what is actually needed to assemble and run the sawmill, and then determine what parts you have. There's pieces of winches in there, and other stuff. Try to figure out what the basic components are, how the saw head would attach to the bed.

There's a picture of the bed portion in the first pic of the "more pics" post. That part looks like it might be pretty complete.

Not clear to me if there's more parts than is what is needed, there could be not only parts from more than one mill, but other machinery also. Looks like a lot of various stuff.

I would look at that bed and see if it is operational at all. You could replace the wood easily.

That said, let's say there's nothing worth restoring, I agree that taking some of the parts would be cool.

That big @$$ gear would be cool, as would the circular blades. I've actually seen the old large circular blades priced high on ebay. One auction now where there are 5, priced BIN, for $200. Another for $700.

Not sure they are worth that price, but for someone with a sawmill it might be worth...so, even though the sawmill might not be worth saving, you might be able to turn some of the parts.

Seriously, I would check that bed and rail system out, you could get another head rig pretty cheap actually, it's more common for the bed/rails to be missing.

OTOH, have fun looking for the setworks...

The setworks were on the carriage and adjusted the horizontal position of the log/cant relative to the blade. You can see the sawyer adjusting the set in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2-SVfRP8_g

I never did find any of the log holding/positioning stuff, just the saw arbor and carriage drive works, so who knows where that all ended up. I'll take a closer look, but unless it was buried, I don't think it's there.

TraditionalTool said:

Brad,

Not to be stupid here, but isn't "setworks" a modern term used for the blade adjustment on a movable head sawmill, like a bandmill? You might try to get advice from someone that is not blowing smoke up your you know what...

Many of the old sawmills merely have a movable bed on them, which allows you to secure the log and make a cut. You adjust the log, that's your setworks! Set your log and cut it!

On bandmills people refer to the setworks as what moves and operates the adjustment of the blade, because the log is stationary while cutting.

To understand if it would be worth it for you to fix up, it seems you would need to understand what is actually needed to assemble and run the sawmill, and then determine what parts you have. There's pieces of winches in there, and other stuff. Try to figure out what the basic components are, how the saw head would attach to the bed.

There's a picture of the bed portion in the first pic of the "more pics" post. That part looks like it might be pretty complete.

Not clear to me if there's more parts than is what is needed, there could be not only parts from more than one mill, but other machinery also. Looks like a lot of various stuff.

I would look at that bed and see if it is operational at all. You could replace the wood easily.

That said, let's say there's nothing worth restoring, I agree that taking some of the parts would be cool.

That big @$$ gear would be cool, as would the circular blades. I've actually seen the old large circular blades priced high on ebay. One auction now where there are 5, priced BIN, for $200. Another for $700.

Not sure they are worth that price, but for someone with a sawmill it might be worth...so, even though the sawmill might not be worth saving, you might be able to turn some of the parts.

Seriously, I would check that bed and rail system out, you could get another head rig pretty cheap actually, it's more common for the bed/rails to be missing.

OTOH, have fun looking for the setworks...

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What's that saying, ... its better to look a fool than to open your mouth and prove everyone right.