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Old Growth Logging Back in the Heyday
Horse Plains Drifter
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Simpson Timber Company's
Slackline yarder #1
Camp Grisdale....Washington's Olympic Mountains
Grisdale was the last operating logging camp in the lower 48.
Slackline yarder #1
Camp Grisdale....Washington's Olympic Mountains
Grisdale was the last operating logging camp in the lower 48.
Comments
HPD, about what year was that pic taken?
HPD, about what year was that pic taken?
Since they are still using a tree for a spar, I would say early to mid 60s. By the late 60s they were starting to use a steel tower.
https://tinyurl.com/griswald-timber
Simpson Timber Company's
Slackline yarder #1
Camp Grisdale....Washington's Olympic Mountains
Grisdale was the last operating logging camp in the lower 48.
I sent you an e-mail via GB some time back. I assume you didn't get it. I know/knew some people in the Forks and Port Angeles area, and just wanted to compare notes, as I recall that is your stomping ground. Do the names Addleman and Winters (both Sr. & Jr.) ring a bell? I went to school with Roger Addleman (Forks). Emory Winters Jr. (Pt Angeles) was my brother in law. He retired a couple of years ago. Drove into his 80's. Fell off the top of a load on his head at about 80, took a year off to recuperate, then went back to driving.
My wife and I used to camp at Brown Creek and Church Creek, as well as Spider lake on the Skokomish river. To get there we went thru Camp Govey, which was operational into the 60's and 70's, though it was not a residential camp. They off-loaded logs from trucks to rail cars there for the trip to Shelton
I sent you an e-mail via GB some time back. I assume you didn't get it. I know/knew some people in the Forks and Port Angeles area, and just wanted to compare notes, as I recall that is your stomping ground. Do the names Addleman and Winters (both Sr. & Jr.) ring a bell? I went to school with Roger Addleman (Forks). Emory Winters Jr. (Pt Angeles) was my brother in law. He retired a couple of years ago. Drove into his 80's. Fell off the top of a load on his head at about 80, took a year off to recuperate, then went back to driving.
My wife and I used to camp at Brown Creek and Church Creek, as well as Spider lake on the Skokomish river. To get there we went thru Camp Govey, which was operational into the 60's and 70's, though it was not a residential camp. They off-loaded logs from trucks to rail cars there for the trip to Shelton
No sorry Brian, I never got an email. I always check my junk folder too. It seems the GB mail system is thoroughly fouled up.
I live on Grays Harbor, and my "stomping grounds" pretty much end at Quinault, which is still an hour south of Forks. So no, I don't know anybody up that way.
As you probably know Grisdale, where this picture was taken, is just over the mountains to the west from Govey.
Can you tell me what "setting chokers" is.....and the significance of steel vs wood "spar". I'm a city boy.....don't understand but would like to know more. Thank you. DD
I've never worked on the kind of rig they're talking about here, but I have cut alot of wood in WI back when the skidder was the way it was done , you had a main line steel cable coming off the back of the skidder with about 6 choker coming off the main line, if you click on this link and look at the center picture that was the kind we used ,
https://www.westechrigging.com/wire-rope-logging-chokers.html
one end attaches too the main line the other end goes around the butt of the tree after its been drop , limbed and topped , (you take end of the choker ( the nub ) slide it under the butt and bring it up around and hook it back into whats called a choker hook, which forms a noose around the tree butt) the main line pulls tight, it chokes up on the butt and pulls the tree up tight to the machine , so it can be pull out to the the landing where its cut into logs and stacked until the log truck loads them up and hauls them to the saw mill
here's a utube link showing different skidders
Can you tell me what "setting chokers" is.....and the significance of steel vs wood "spar". I'm a city boy.....don't understand but would like to know more. Thank you. DD
Yep redhawk knows what a choker is.
Choker:
The red piece is the bell. It slides up and down the cable . The end of the choker with the knob or button, will unlatch from the bell. The chokersetter will push the button end under a log and then wrap it around the log, and latch it in the bell. You now have the log in a choke hold.
There would have been 3-4 chokers on this machine. They would have been 1" diameter cable, and 16'-20', even 24' long. The bell would have weighted around 4 pounds. One man/chokersetter/choker dog per choker. Hard, dangerous, physical, grueling work.
Now the tree: in the earliest days of cable yarding, 1890s theough the 1960s yarders used a tree to hang their blocks in to gain lift. You can see the 2 dark blobs on the tree in the picture. The top one is the mainline block which would have about a 36" sheave.
The lower block is the haulback block, and is a bit smaller.
You can also see some dark lines running out and down from the tree. Those are guy lines to keep the tree from pulling over.
In later years, there wasn't always a tree standing in the perfect spot. So the answer became a steel spar, or tower attached to the yarding machine itself. The yarder is to the right of the spar tree in the picture.
Just a tidbit: My old timber cutting partner's dad run the first mobile steel tower on the face of the planet.
More modern yarder with steel tower. The tower telescopes down, and lays back over the machine for moving. The machine is known as a yarder, or a tower. either term works:
I'd just like to know how they anchored those guy lines to withstand the turning moment from the torque of the winches and the weight of the timber plus the resistance of the ground. (?) Must have been some hellacious spikes driven into the dirt by Gawd himself! That dirt was pretty soft I imagine, so the anchors must have had to be driven in a long, long, ways.
Ones I have seen are anchored to stumps.
quote:Originally posted by Dads3040
Ones I have seen are anchored to stumps.
Okay, with what? A choker? No eye-bolt is going to hold that force!
Makes sense though.
edit...just a quick (very rough) calculation...the turning moment must be something like 75x the load or more. So, if the load is say 5 tons, the anchor would have to withstand 375+ tons of tension to keep the boom upright.
Yes. Cable wrapped around stumps. Still find stumps with the cables around them near old deck sites.
http://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/Classroom%20Materials/Curriculum%20Packets/High%20Lead%20Logging/I.html
I don't know if it's still there, but 30 yrs. ago there was a mock-up of a logging camp, and a complete spar-tree set up with a steam donkey, at Point Defiance Park near Tacoma. Really showed how it was in the old days.
quote:Originally posted by Flying Clay Disk
quote:Originally posted by Dads3040
Ones I have seen are anchored to stumps.
Okay, with what? A choker? No eye-bolt is going to hold that force!
Makes sense though.
edit...just a quick (very rough) calculation...the turning moment must be something like 75x the load or more. So, if the load is say 5 tons, the anchor would have to withstand 375+ tons of tension to keep the boom upright.
Yes. Cable wrapped around stumps. Still find stumps with the cables around them near old deck sites.
Big stumps and big cable! And they didn't always hold. That's a sound you'll never forget when a 2" cable snaps and comes through the air like a bullwhip, cut a man in half before you can blink.
DirtyDawg, setting chokers is more than just wrapping one around a log. Trees were usually dropped downhill with a stump between the log and yarder, so you had to know how to wrap the choker to roll the log out around the stump. If you didn't, it could result in snapped lines, and the yarder operator looking to beat your * with a Marlin spike.
I had a couple of friends that would limb and top those spar trees. They made more doing one of those than I did in a month. If you ever saw them top a tree, you would know why. They couldn't pay me enough to try that!
Big stumps and big cable! And they didn't always hold.
Man, that's for sure. I have a neighbor just up the road who was a yarder operator. Yarder Engineer is the term used for those guys. He is retired now and 83(I think) years old. Anyway, some years ago he was badly injured when a guy line stump pulled, and the tube(tower)was pulled down over the yarder cab.
I climbed communication towers in my younger years, rigging antennas, tower lights, transmissions lines, and climbing power poles with spikes, but I would not want any part of the logging industry. That logging is really tough and dangerous work plus ticks and snakes. You don't see any Pansies, slackers, * draggers and Nancys in these types of jobs.[;)]
I climbed communication towers in my younger years, rigging antennas, tower lights, transmissions lines, and climbing power poles with spikes, but I would not want any part of the logging industry. That logging is really tough and dangerous work plus ticks and snakes. You don't see any Pansies and Nancys in these types of jobs.[;)]
The tree, which you can't see the top of yet in my original picture, required some guy with huge bronze testes to climb up that 100'-125'+, and cut the top off.
100 years ago not many who worked in the logging industry or mills retired with all their fingers or other body parts. Today it might be better.
There are several hikes on the St. Joe Nat. Forest near me that go past old abandoned steam donkeys. All of it makes you wonder what sort of men were able to do that work.[:)]
And fiery auto crashes
Some will die in hot pursuit
While sifting through my ashes
Some will fall in love with life
And drink it from a fountain
That is pouring like an avalanche
Coming down the mountain
I think my crowning glory was while I worked on the assembly floor as an apprentice and the leadman handed me a bundle of prints on Monday morning and told me "the undercarriage is down by the big door and the machinery deck is out in the yard...put it together" I assembled a TL-6 Yarder all by myself! Greatest feeling in the world when the guy that gave the finished product it's workout and it passed muster. Then they drove it to the waterfront and sent it to Alaska !
quote:Originally posted by Okie743
I climbed communication towers in my younger years, rigging antennas, tower lights, transmissions lines, and climbing power poles with spikes, but I would not want any part of the logging industry. That logging is really tough and dangerous work plus ticks and snakes. You don't see any Pansies and Nancys in these types of jobs.[;)]
The tree, which you can't see the top of yet in my original picture, required some guy with huge bronze testes to climb up that 100'-125"+, and cut the top off.
Like this guy? Looks like it was shot on old 8mm,circa 50's/early 60's. Watch the ride he takes at the end.
Like this guy? Looks like it was shot on old 8mm,circa 50's/early 60's. Watch the ride he takes at the end.
That's the guy!
Simpson Timber Company's
Slackline yarder #1
Camp Grisdale....Washington's Olympic Mountains
Grisdale was the last operating logging camp in the lower 48.
Boy, you sure know a lot about this stuff. You must be one of those riggin men I heard about.[:D]
Boy, you sure know a lot about this stuff. You must be one of those riggin men I heard about.[:D]
Hey, quit corkin' off! Howse come you wouldn't answer your phone yesterday?
Check this out, it's about 25 miles from my house. It's dedicated as a memorial, but still has a bunch of old time stuff..
http://www.camp18restaurant.com/loggingmuseum.html
http://www.camp18restaurant.com/loggersmemorial.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Lumber_Company
We used to kayak up redwood creek past the LP log decks...there was timber stacked 20 feet high all along their decks. Log and chip trucks were always plying up and down highway 101 going from the forest decks to sawmill or pulp mill.
LP was a pretty solid operation then. I think they're now gone, but Simpson is still working up there. My old place was on top of Humboldt Hill right up from Field's Landing. That's where I got my first experience with how powerful cheap Asian labor is on the market; it was less expensive for folks to knock the bark off of a tree trunk in Eureka, load it onto a ship in Fields Landing, ship to to Asia for milling and send it back, then it would be to finish it here in the US. [V]
I haven't been there in 28 years, and I hear both the LP and Simpson paper pulp mills in Samoa are gone now. I don't know how those timber families are surviving, and I wish them well. I really loved being up on the coast, and sometimes I look back and wonder why I ever left.
Check this out, it's about 25 miles from my house. It's dedicated as a memorial, but still has a bunch of old time stuff..
http://www.camp18restaurant.com/loggingmuseum.html
http://www.camp18restaurant.com/loggersmemorial.html
Yep, we stopped in there a few years back. Ate lunch, and checked all the goodies over. I remember they had a Lamb "Tommy Moore" block. Lamb Machine Works was in Hoquiam. Camp 18 is a very cool spot.
Tough SOB's!
Here's a few cool videos on NW logging.
Tough SOB's!
Thanks for the vids!
Here's a true story:
In 2000, or 2001 I was working as a mechanic. One time I was working on this old boys shovel(see first pic for log shovel). This fella was getting on in years, and as we swapped stories, he told about the time when he was setting tongs in a loading deck. He said at that time he joined the Marine Corps. That was 1954. The tongs setting work was so grueling, he said that Marine Corps boot camp was like going on vacation.
See second pic for loading tongs. These things are huge. They are made from bar stock about 2-1/2" in diameter, and stand 4'+ tall. Probably weigh over 150 pounds.
Log Shovel:
Loading Tongs: