remember the days...

[northwoods1]

When if you were back in the sticks off the beaten path somewhere, and you slipped off the road or got stuck, it could mean a very long and lonely walk? i.e., pre-cellphone days boy have I been there.

How about when if you had a 2-way radio in your pickup to keep in touch with the trucker to know his ETA, that you must have been on a big crew! Big time operator :D

How about the days when if you knew of a little patch of wood on Federal land, you could go down to the local Forest Service office and ask the forester if you could buy it? And they would actually just go out and tally it and sell it to you?

Or the days when knowing how to put a track back on a little cat that pulled a dray was very important knowledge to have. A person got real good at that after a while :D

When if you had a new chainsaw, boy you just couldn't wait to get out to your  piece cutting job and have at it. And you got paid by the stick you would just tally it all up every day?

[SwampDonkey]

When if you had a new chainsaw, boy you just couldn't wait to get out to your  piece cutting job and have at it. And you got paid by the stick you would just tally it all up every day?

There was an opening here in the job bank for $23/tree as a feller. :D

[Autocar]

We laugh about it now but at the time it didn't seem so funny  ;D I use to have a R model Mack that had a lift axle behind the drive axle. It would get you hung up on a about any kind of dip or rise. I remember a hand shake was better then a contract , and all the times I went to the woods with one old chain saw [ Remington Log Master ] because it was all I could afford. And if you want to go back further then that,my wife and I would load logs by laying timbers on the trailer and I would get a chain under the log and she would back the pickup back real slow , I would be blocking the butt end every now and then because it would get out ahead of the tail end. Stacking three on the bottom two next then one on top. There were days a big one would roll to fast and would roll off the back side  ;D then we would start all over  ;D. I hate a cant hook to this day  ;D Iam afraid grapple skidders and knoukle booms have me spoiled. Theres alot of things I would like to back to but some of the old logging days arn't one of them  ;D

[northwoods1]

We laugh about it now but at the time it didn't seem so funny  and all the times I went to the woods with one old chain saw [ Remington Log Master ]

I started out in the woods by borrowing an old Partner chainsaw. It had aluminum covers and of course never had any kind of newfangled thing like a chain brake. Never even met the guy I started cutting for, buddy of mine just said come on out to the job and start thinning this pine plantation and piling it up by had between the rows. Hit my shin with the pick axe very 1st day, that was the beginning of a very long learning process. Finally made enough $$ to buy my very own brand spanking new saw. I thought I was the luckiest guy in the world. No bosses to order me around and come and go as you please.

[Maine372]

remember entire loads a 4foot wood stick scaled and unloaded with cable slings?

remember leather straps on the back handle of a saw, so that from the tip of the strap to the tip of the bar was 4ft.?

i can remember the wood buyer stopping by the house and giving us paper tickets for each load we would be allowed to haul.

[dsgsr]

When I was about 9 or 10 I use to move brush for my older brother. He was cutting spruce and hemlock logs and twitching them out with a Big white horse. I wasn't allowed back by the whiffle tree (sp) I was told to follow out a logs length behind the log. I think the saw he had was a lombard, it was blue and had a flat top. I didn't get paid, it was helping put food on the table. Later in my mid teens I got $5.00 a day for driving the skipjack skidding logs to the landing.

David

[Autocar]

That remington I had ,had a spark plug that sat right close to your hand and every now and then I would put the back of my hand up against it. ;D Man it woke you up right now,man I don't miss them days :D Log tongs Ive got a pair thats probably fout feet high and it weights a ton. I remember hooking them on a log they would pull free you would rehook them. Thank goodness for grapple skidders  ;D

[thecfarm]

I was too young,but didn't any of you peel your pulp? Load trucks with a cant dog,peavey?

[SwampDonkey]

They were peeling and driving on rivers here until 65 or so, because of hydro dams they had to stop. Up on the Gatineau (Hull/Ottawa area) they were driving until 1996 if I recall. Marcel would know. My father cut, peeled and loaded pulp by hand onto rail cars all for $20 a cord.  : Grandfather cut, bucked by hand and peeled for $2 a cord in the woods. He could put up 2 cord a day by hand. It was 12 hour days, including travel to and from camp.

[captain_crunch]

Cheese Blocks (no stakes) end hooks loading with A frame. Short logger was just a truck and if it had a trailer it was a Mule Train ;D ;D. Chokers with spliced eyes(tails ate sweatshirt per day) But best was the old Mall powersaw float carb so you had to loosen clamp and roll bar flat to sall tree. I was raised by older generation so got exposure to old ways. Hay on ranch was put up loose till I got baler(grad. Present) in 72         AH the Good Ole Days Amazeing what you gould get by with when you did not know any better : :  Wonder how primitive our ways will look 100 years from now ??? ???

[lumberjack48]

I got 5 cents a stick for peeling, Balsam, you striped the bark off, a dirty sticky job, i always tried to peel a 100 pieces a day, $5 a day was good money for a 8 yr old.

 We peeled Aspen tree length, a Model T car spring made the best peeling iron you could get, you rolled the bark off. My dad would fall the trees and i came behind, i made a mark down the top of the tree with a spud, then rolled the bark off, 200 /250 pieces a day, 5 cents a stick straight count, same with Jack Pine and Birch pulp.

 When my uncles got a big piling order from Wheeler Bridge, Cass Lake, MN. they'd get me to peel, 40' Norway poles, i got a $1.00 for each one, they liked me because i got'ter done.

  This was back in the late 50's in the early 60's i fell my own with a C5, C7, C9 or a XL12 Homelite, [my fathers saws] i got 10 cents a stick straight count, i didn't use a spud, i broke the bark with the saw, this is when we sawed everything 100" after it was peeled in the woods.

 1966 i bought a new O8S Stihl [ $160. ] i went to work for a logger up at International Falls, [Ash River] he was paying 50 cents a tree, tree length, i could cut & peel 75 to a 100 trees a day. I stayed in camp with his father, those are days you don't forget. [ man can those ole Finn's cook]
 I went home on the week end, my dad says I'll pay you $1.00 a tree, well needless to say i went to work for him.

I could go on & on, 1960 throw 1979, i cut, peeled and hauled many thro's of cords of peeled pulpwood.

Peeling season started about April, 15, and ended July 15. depended on the weather

[SwampDonkey]

Uncle back in the 60's only got $20/day to yard wood with his own horse and had to walk 5 miles to town and 5 miles up the other side and back again at night, no ride. He never had a driver's license until his mid thirties. And no money to buy a horse truck.

[beenthere]

And uphill both ways.   8)

[lumberjack48]

Off road diesel fuel , 11 cents a gal,  gas 26 cents , beer 10 cents a glass, a new pickup $3000.00  and a full time logging job, things couldn't get much better [ 1969]

[SwampDonkey]

I bet it felt like it, after walking behind the horse all day. :D

No, the guy he worked for a lot was a cheap old buzzard. He much preferred working for the natives on reserve land. More pay for less effort and they often came and hauled the horse, but was closer to home if he had to walk.

[2308500]

remember entire loads a 4foot wood stick scaled and unloaded with cable slings?

remember leather straps on the back handle of a saw, so that from the tip of the strap to the tip of the bar was 4ft.?

i can remember the wood buyer stopping by the house and giving us paper tickets for each load we would be allowed to haul.

we were delivering pulpwood with paper tickets for each load as late as 2009. Bowater mersey here in nova scotia had us on quotas.

Also loaded boats with 4 foot peeled pulpwood, lifted by cable crane off trucks. last year we did this was weymouth in1991

[plasticweld]

remember entire loads a 4foot wood stick scaled and unloaded with cable slings?

remember leather straps on the back handle of a saw, so that from the tip of the strap to the tip of the bar was 4ft.?

i can remember the wood buyer stopping by the house and giving us paper tickets for each load we would be allowed to haul.

I used a piece of plastic tubing to give me my 4 foot mark, a pulp hook was something used every day, I still miss the sound of the log truck coming back into the woods with the chains clanging against the log bunks; a sound like no other. Today my trucker uses straps

In 1977 I was cutting pulpwood in Nobleboro Maine. a cord of wood brought 28 dollars stumpage was anywhere from 3 to 5 dollars.Back then my wife and I bought groceries for the week for about $30    my first new saw was $325 a Stihl 45  gas was  .36 cents

[Maine372]

dad taught me how to run a saw with a fiberglass fencepost in one hand for a 4ft measure. unfourtunately i cannot keep the pulphook hooked over my left shoulder like the frenchmen that used to cut for my great grandfather. i swear they could do cart wheels and the hook would stay on thier shoulder. mine always falls of and it never fails to hit the moving saw chain in the way down.