Small Sawmills: Their Equipment, Construction, and Operation (1918)
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Small Sawmills: Their Equipment, Construction, and Operation (1918)
Daniel F. Seerey was a logging engineer who wrote the 1918 publication "Small Sawmills."
Reports issued by the government are seldom interesting reading though they may be valuable as sources of information. The Forest Service had done the unusual thing in 1918 by publishing bulletin 718—dealing with small sawmills. It was written by Daniel F. Seerey, logging engineer, and it is readable. It contains human interest which is a rare thing in any government report.
Mr. Seerey has evidently been through the mill himself, for he speaks with too much understanding to have acquired his knowledge from hearsay. He gives fatherly advice to those who contemplate going into the small sawmill business, pointing out the dangerous places. Some of his maxims and aphorisms sound like Emerson’s philosophy or Franklin's “Poor Richard‘s Almanack." His commentary on the unprofitableness of green hands is very pointed, and he does not hesitate to say that many of them do not do enough to pay their board. His advice on the subject of kinspeople who tag around after the proprietor of a portable mill is full of pep. “Do not," Mr. Seerey advises the operator in a calm, fatherly way, “do not make your camp a dumping ground for all your male relatives. You are supposed to be running a sawmill, not a rest care."
Mr. Seerey says there is no money in sour dough grub although it may be all right in novels. Some of the highbrow experts on “cost finding," may think the author of the. bulletin too primitive in his plans for keeping the books in a small sawmill; but he shows some ways of doing it which sound a little like the old bookkeeping with chalk on the barn door; nevertheless, he says, “Do not keep your accounts on a shingle."
Mr. Seerey is very strong on little maxims and suggestions for the small millman. “If you are financially unable," he says, “to make more than $300 in advance payments, do not sign a contract to pay $500." Similarly he suggests that a man whose mill can cut only 500,000 feet a year, should not sign a government contract to cut 5,000,000 feet in three years.
“Do not try to keep axes sharp with a rusty file. Try a grindstone." “Do not try to manufacture merchantable lumber with a dirty, rusty engine set on a rotten foundation with a shaky mandrel, rotten belting. a saw out of true and running at half speed under insnfilclent steam from a leaky boiler. It can't be done." “Blow your whistle at seven every morning and go to work at seven, not nine."
All operators of small mills will find it interesting reading and doubtless many a large mill owner, who passed through the small-mill stage long ago, will find it a. stimulation to his early recollections when he “used to be so happy and so Poor."
Seerey writes:
"Running a portable sawmill is no longer an easy occupation. The more accessible timber in the West has mostly been cut out or burned, and to-day the principal stands are far back in the hills, making logging and milling expensive as well as strenuous work. Profitable operation calls for first-class logging equipment and modern mills, and for good business ability, skill, and hardihood on the part of the operator. Physical weaklings are more out of place in logging work than in any other kind of virile employment. Mere physical strength, however, is not in itself sufficient. A successful logger needs to be "strong" in the head as well as in the muscles. This bulletin offers to portable sawmill operators suggestions regarding methods of organization, milling, and logging which have been_ proved by experience to give the best results. It is meant particularly for operators in National Forest timber, but should be useful to other owners of portable mills where conditions are like those in the National Forests."
