SMALL SAWMILLS, THEIR EQUIPMENT, ETC. 47 



way at all if logs can not be handled from it faster and with less 

 effort than they can be loaded among the brush on the dray road. 

 The purpose of a skidway is to expedite the work. A poor skidway 

 will retard it. 



Chaining or tonging logs onto a skidway, except on a close haul, 

 is not recommended. A tonged or chained log, unless turned on the 

 chain or tongs before it strikes the skids, will tear up the approach 

 and make hard hauling. A dray is much better, for besides hauling 

 more logs to a trip it is not so hard on the approach to the skids. 



A skidway should be 4 feet wide or wider, if the logs are double 

 length, and long enough to hold at least one day's haul without deck- 

 ing. The skids should be tolerably straight, of equal height, and 

 free from knots. If the skids are unusually long they should be 

 blocked up in the center to prevent them from sagging or breaking. 

 If possible, it is a good plan to embed the hind end of the skids in 

 the ground. If the logs are small and light, a light-built skidway 

 will answer the purpose ; if heavy logs are to be loaded, make it solid. 



I have seen four men with two teams struggle for two hours to load 

 an 800 board-foot log on a truck from smooth skids and fail, while 

 all the time the teams stood idle. Yet with an improvised parbuckle 

 (a rope spliced to a logging chain) the same log was loaded with the 

 aid of a team in five minutes. In thig instance the haul to the mill 

 was a quarter of a mile, and it took four men and two teams one-half 

 a day to land that log on the mill yard, and cost the operator $7, or 

 at the rate of $9 per 1,000 for loading and hauling alone. The log 

 was the butt cut of a five-log tree and not entirely severed from the 

 next log. Instead of skidding the five logs to the main road where 

 there was a good skidway chance, and where that log and another 

 one could have been loaded by hand upon the truck, the operator 

 attempted to load the log at the stump. The heaviest part of the 

 haul was from the stump to the main road. Owing to the position of 

 the logs, only one could be loaded on the truck, even though the four 

 horses might have handled more than one. The men had no cant 

 hook or swamp hook with which to roll the log over and no loading 

 line or parbuckle by which to load it. Handspikes and an old peevy 

 and a piece of a logging chain were the only equipment available. 

 The operator, on being asked how he expected to load logs with such 

 equipment, replied : " Oh, all our logs are not as big as this one ; the 

 boys usually breast them up." If this man had had a dray or go- 

 devil, a swamp hook, cant hook, and loading line, with a skidway 

 close by on the main road, his teamster could have loaded this log 

 on the dray, hauled it to the skidway with the other logs in the tree, 

 and loaded two logs on the truck very easily. The hauling team 

 could have made six trips a clay instead of two, and the loading and 

 hauling would have cost $1.80 per 1,000 instead of $9. 



