SAWMILLS

SAWMILLS. In 1634 a sawmill was in operation on the Piscataqua River between Maine and New Hampshire. By 1706 there were seventy operating in the colonies. A primitive type had a single sash saw pulled downward by a waterwheel and upward by an elastic pole, but more usually waterpower moved the saw both up and down. A few colonial mills had gangs, or parallel saws, set in one frame so as to cut several boards simultaneously. Muley saws, with a lighter guiding mechanism, were also used. Sawmills multiplied, but their technology did not greatly improve in colonial times. They handled principally soft timber of moderate dimensions, and operators were satisfied if a sawmill cut one thousand board feet a day.

Shortly before 1810 Oliver Evans's wood-burning, high-pressure steam engines began to appear in sawmills. These engines made it possible to manufacture lumber where waterpower was not available, as in the forested flatlands of the southern United States. Indeed, the portable engine owes its development in the United States partly to its usefulness for sawing timber. Circular saws, introduced about the middle of the nineteenth century, increased mill capacity because of their higher speed, but they were wasteful because they turned too much of the log into sawdust. Band saws, though invented earlier, did not become widespread in the United States until after the Civil War. They are now highly popular because they are faster, create less sawdust and more usable wood with their narrower kerf, or cut, and can handle logs of the largest size.

The giant sawmills developed for the most part in the great forest regions west of the Appalachia: in the white-pine belt of the Great Lakes Basin, in the yellow-pine area of the southern United States, and in the fir and redwood forests of the Pacific Northwest. By the end of the twentieth century, the South had nearly caught up with the West as a producer of lumber, largely because of falling production in the West. New technologies, such as optical scanners to ensure a clean cutting edge, had increased the production capacity of American sawmills, which produced an average of 7.6 million board feet per factory.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Andrews, Ralph. This Was Sawmilling. New York: Bonanza Books, 1957.

Cox, Thomas R. Mills and Markets: A History of the Pacific Coast Lumber Industry to 1900. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974.

Smith, Kenneth L. Sawmill: The Story of Cutting the Last Great Virgin Forest East of the Rockies. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1986.

Victor S.Clark/a. e.

See alsoLumber Industry .