I have NEVER seen anything like this.

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

Me and Kirk (my off bearer) took a trip this morning to a circle mill up close to Kingsmountain, N.C.

We were basically just site seeing and boy I got my eyes full.
Used to be 2 brothers sawing and selling together, then they split years ago.

The first set of pics is from the brother who just saws lumber with his HIS circle mill.


 

Here I am beside his planer.


 

Random pics of equipment


  

  height=480]https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/24625/IMG_4525.JPG[/img] 

  

 

I was amazed how he stacked and stickered.


  

  

  

 

    

  

  

  

 

This feller was sawing some slab wood for his stove.


  

  

 

The guy that owns the mill, I'll bet still has his first dollar and his first vehicle. There were old cars and trucks every where.


  

  

 

This guy's name is Tom AND George. Some call him Tom...some call him George. I asked him....why all the lumber that has gone to waste. Well, he's in his 80's, big chew in his mouth...he spits and says, WELL...I have slow days and not so slow days in selling......but I have to keep sawing or my logs will go bad. 

Now.....his brother Ken saws a little but is more of a carving guy. He has some pretty neat stuff he takes to shows and sells his crafts.

Here's an old Goat walking stick.


  

  

  

  

  

 

I could have literally took hundreds of pic at this place.....it was like going back in time.
I really enjoyed the morning and will go back.
He sells pine for 40 cents....Oak for 60 cents......and Cedar for 80 cents. I'll go back and buy a trailer load of Oak, Red and White with the circle marks on it. 

[terrifictimbersllc]

Really cool.  Liked the camo wood piles.   Did you get the goat walking stick?

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

Really cool.  Liked the camo wood piles.   Did you get the goat walking stick?

$700.00......NO!  :D

[Joe Hillmann]

What a shame to see all that lumber and work just rot.

[terrifictimbersllc]

Really cool.  Liked the camo wood piles.   Did you get the goat walking stick?

$700.00......NO!  :D

DanG! >:( Should have tried to trade for two or three of your $300 items.

[RM Farm]

Great pictures! Real craftsmanship on  those carvings

[SPD748]

Looks to be Hagan's mill off 161 south near the battleground. Am I close?

-lee

[Alligator]

This is what happens when someone has a great plan to make lumber, and a not so great plan of how to do something with it. I'm not a tree huggerbut a lot of those trees should still be standing. Great pics! You need that cane, But I don't know about $700 worth.

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

Looks to be Hagan's mill off 161 south near the battleground. Am I close?

-lee

You're within a board foot. I thought you might know about this place. 

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

There were 1000's of BF of lumber, stacked, rotten and had trees growing up through the stacks.  smiley_cry

[Joe Hillmann]

There were 1000's of BF of lumber, stacked, rotten and had trees growing up through the stacks.  smiley_cry

It looks like the smallest stacks have around 500bdft in them and the larger ones about 1500.

[47sawdust]

That circular saw is some scary.Do those folks still have fingers?

[thecfarm]

Let me know where that place is. I'll pack a couple peanut butter sandwiches so I can spend the day there.  :D

[Ugly Tree]

Freakin' awesome!

[red oaks lumber]

dosen't know much about stickering lumber come to think of it, dosen't seem to be very good at being a wood salesman either

[fishfighter]

Looks like the mill my grandpaw had. It took his life. Blade tip came off and hit him in the head.

[Dave Shepard]

Let me know where that place is. I'll pack a couple peanut butter sandwiches so I can spend the day there.  :D

You know there's no meat in peanut butter, right? :D

[Dave Shepard]

That is really hard to see. Would have been better to have let the logs rot than to saw them and let them rot. :(

[beenthere]

That circular saw is some scary.Do those folks still have fingers?

You serious?  I've known many circular saw sawyers that still have all their fingers. Don't know of any that have lost them from a circular saw mill like in the pic.  Not that it cannot happen in a "pinch" some where.

[Sixacresand]

Good job with the photos.

[thecfarm]

Peanut butter I do like. I really like all nuts. My Father had no teeth,so there was no nuts in the Crane household.  ;)

[WH_Conley]

I think he is talking about the slab saw and the fingers. Definitely want to pay attention to what you are doing.

[hackberry jake]

Theres still hope for some of that lumber. "Perfectly spalted" or "aged for 25 years". They sell rotten wood stabilizer at lowes :-)

[WDH]

At $.40/BF, a lot of that lumber is priced way too high  . 

[drobertson]

  sheltered you are,, seen it, sad, anyone can make lumber stacks, the question is how useable?
this is a good example of a bad example of a mill and the product.

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

I think its a HIDDEN GOLD MINE.

Oak at 60 cents? We are going back to get a trailer load of mixed Red and White Oak. I sell it for $1.50 and with the circle marks, maybe more to hobby builders.

I am pretty sure and I'm just guessing......this old timer doesn't use the internet for marketing.......and the people with $$$$$ who like to build things out of circle wood, does not even know this place exist. Its like Kirk said after the long ride through the woods to the mill yard, "I hear Banjos!".  :D :D :D

[terrifictimbersllc]

I'll put in my vote that if you're 80 or over and sawing wood your place can look however you want it to.    Plus, Poston had a good time even if he saw a relative's head on a stick.

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

Poston had a good time even if he saw a relative's head on a stick.

That was my Uncle Woody.  :D

[scleigh]

The Hagans are good people and have been sawing longer than most of us have been alive. I grew up less than 10 miles from there and went to school with some of their children. That old mill fed many over the years.

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

The Hagans are good people and have been sawing longer than most of us have been alive. I grew up less than 10 miles from there and went to school with some of their children. That old mill fed many over the years.

Yes it has. But the brothers don't speak now. 1 was giving the other "down the road" today. If they
d work together, AGAIN....more money could be made.

[scleigh]

I know some of the smaller contractors up here still use Mr. Hagan for custom orders, many know about him.
It is a shame when siblings have a bitter split, the whole family suffers to some degree. Think cane and able....

[Peter Drouin]

Too bad they don't know about sheds or barns

[thechknhwk]

There is a cat down the road almost like that but his lumber is not going to waste.  Spare parts and wood everywhere, frankenstein machinery, kilns made out of osb, norwood lumbermate with bellies in the log bunks.  Love talkin' to that guy!

[Ron Wenrich]

I went to a pallet producer that had a sawmill.  His yard looked similar to that.  He pulled grade off the of his better logs, then stickered it, and put it out under some trees.  He wanted me to grade and sell it.  He thought he had a gold mine, but most of the stuff under trees was stained.  It came from those leaves piling up between the layers, and using green stickers.  It doesn't matter what type of mill you have, storing lumber under trees will give you pretty much the same results.

What I see in those pictures is the way mills were run back in the '50s to the early '70s in this area.  At that time, red oak was not worth that much.  We sold it to casket companies that made cheap caskets.  I worked at a mill that operated just like that until some smart guy came along and showed them how to manage a mill.  They learned and became one of the largest hardwood mills in the US.

Back then, many mills were small, doing about half to a million bf per year.  They didn't have much use for jacket boards and knew they were too good to put into pallet.  So, they put them in inventory.  Work gets hectic and those piles easily get forgotten.  I believe the age of the owners eventually catches up to them, and there everything sits.

You can also see they had limited equipment.  They didn't stack anything very high.  When stacking in a more commercial setting, you can go up 3 or 4 bundles without fear of it tipping over.  You can put 3-4 Mbf where there is only 500 bf sitting. 

This is the problem of small mills, no matter of the type.  They have an order for a small niche product and they cut it and store the rest.  Business goes okay, and things get forgotten.  Quite often production is so low that it is hard to move cut lumber to commercial outlets. Eventually they get overwhelmed with unsold inventory.  One of the problems about cutting on speculation of a later sale. 

[bandmiller2]

Ron pretty much nailed it over the years I've had to buck up old twisted oak that had stayed at the fair too long, did keep me warm though. Pine I have a hard time keeping it around. Now I don't cut on speculation if I get orders I cut them. If wood is going to rot it can do so without my labor. Frank C.

[SPD748]

The Hagans are good people and have been sawing longer than most of us have been alive. I grew up less than 10 miles from there and went to school with some of their children. That old mill fed many over the years.

Indeed. The Hagan's have been sawing lumber for the better part of 100 years. In fact, my parents house was built in the 40's from lumber sawn by the Hagan's. I agree, many children and their children have been fed by that mill.

-lee

[pineywoods]

It ain't just big old circle mills. I could show you a couple of bandmills like that. Only thing different, when things get too messy around the mill, they just move the mill 100 yards or so... ;D

[hacknchop]

Without knowing the circumstances behind other peoples situations I think it better to examine ones motives when it comes to other folks affairs my guess is that most of what you see is low grade and or less marketable species.I operated a salvage operation for many yrs with old growth wpine where I got paid by the bdft for4 com and btr all the 5 com was mine for sawing as well as anything under 6' therefore I trucked that stuff home every week for yrs not worth much but still hated to just burn it in the slab pile now to look at those lumber piles one would think I wasted my time and energy sawing for nothing whereas in reality what you are looking at is by product,does nt cost a cent to let it sit and rot.

[Ocklawahaboy]

The only thing that keeps my place from looking like that is the amount of land. 

[Ocklawahaboy]

The Hagans are good people and have been sawing longer than most of us have been alive. I grew up less than 10 miles from there and went to school with some of their children. That old mill fed many over the years.

Yes it has. But the brothers don't speak now. 1 was giving the other "down the road" today.

My cousins from the GReenwood/ware shoals area prefer to give folks "down the country" but I guess the sentiment is the same.

[M.peters]

I live right down the road from this mill and always hear it running but dont know how to get access and it doesn't look like a place you can just show up at. Is it open to the public how did you get access?? I could really use some of that wood!!

[123maxbars]

Very nice love seeing old sawmill set ups, makes me want a circle mill,