What does an axeman carry?

Thanks for the comments on clothing. I'm definitely a surplus and used store guy.

As for tin-cloth, sounds like it may be worth investing in if it can last a lifetime. What jacket design do you recommend? I see some of them say extra long, which is a must for me.
 
Those old SOB loggers were some real men. Work all day, come back to logging camp, probably drink a little, raise a little hell, have 1 day off per week. Life in danger all day while working like a dog, etc etc. Those guys could swing an axe all day everyday, scale logs on water, top out trees hundred or more feet up, etc etc. I would of loved to do that. Can't do that anymore with osha and laws etc but it would of been a hell of a time.
 
Operator1975 said:
Those old SOB loggers were some real men. Work all day, come back to logging camp, probably drink a little, raise a little hell, have 1 day off per week. Life in danger all day while working like a dog, etc etc. Those guys could swing an axe all day everyday, scale logs on water, top out trees hundred or more feet up, etc etc. I would of loved to do that. Can't do that anymore with osha and laws etc but it would of been a hell of a time.
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Lifespans of a lot of these guys was often short and debilitating injuries were high. There's a great summary phrase I learned from a merry bunch of helicopter logging fallers out west (Queen Charlotte Islands) 35 years ago: "There's bold loggers and there's old loggers, but there ain't no old bold loggers". Notice in old photos of the lumber trade that this was a game for the young. You really wanted to learn another trade to shoe horses/sharpen saws/construct camps/clear roads as fast as you could before something went wrong in the whole front line racket of chopping trees for lowest bidders.
 
Chignecto Woodsman said:
Thanks for the comments on clothing. I'm definitely a surplus and used store guy.

As for tin-cloth, sounds like it may be worth investing in if it can last a lifetime. What jacket design do you recommend? I see some of them say extra long, which is a must for me.
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I have their "packer coat" in extra long (as I'm 6'6") but if I was usually wearing their pants of coveralls I'd probably go with a shorter jacket. I got the longer one as it serves as my daily wear coat even when I'm wearing normal (not waterproofed) trousers. I chose the "packer" as it has a few extra layers to help the rain run off and there's some hidden pockets for a notepad, pens, lighter and a pocketknife. If I see a Tin Cloth shirt on sale I might pick one up as a work jacket for when I'm cutting brush just for the abrasion resistance. I usually find myself cutting an hauling brush in a drizzle and thorns and sharp ends tend to destroy normal raingear.
 
I agree you 300Six, axemen life was dangerous, very hard and they barely had any social life. But as I know they earned a lot of money compared to a contemporany standard farmer or sheeper/cowboy. Who most owned was who was in charge of tool manteinance, which usually was also team boss.
 
The saw sharpener was the highest paid man in camp. His work could cut the other men's work in half. Men who abused their saws got quick and dirty work from the sharpener - a few long rakers made a crosscut saw into a true 'misery whip' as they were called. But take care of your saw and he'd treat you right. An axe can be profiled and sharpened in less than 30 minutes. And any good lumberman could deal with that himself in the bunkhouse at night. But to sharpen a long crosscut or felling saw took hours, even for the experienced saw sharpener.

A faller was expected to clean the bark off the tree with his axe before ever touching it with a saw. Dirty bark dulled saws.
 
Ugaldie said:
I agree you 300Six, axemen life was dangerous, very hard and they barely had any social life. But as I know they earned a lot of money compared to a contemporany standard farmer or sheeper/cowboy. Who most owned was who was in charge of tool manteinance, which usually was also team boss.
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Logging was a traditional and seasonal way of life in the Ottawa Valley for 200 of years. During the winter some 1/4 to 1/2 of the adult male population went away from home into logging camps. They had quite the lively social life, aside from the general absence of women. Sure the front line workers achieved tolerable pay cheques (it was that or no job at all during the winter) but the requisite of cold tolerance, stamina and physical fitness ebbed as you got older. But Camps required maintenance, heating, supplies, cooks etc etc and anyone willing to work was accommodated. Come spring most of these fellows headed right straight back to their farms. Frozen water bodies/ground and snow cover were ideal for moving timber. You didn't get sand and dirt in felled or skidded material and the curse of biting insects (mosquitoes/black flies/deer flies) was entirely avoided. The Ottawa River afforded convenient transportation after spring breakup and thousands upon thousands of logs were driven or rafted to mills in Ottawa or further down river to port of Montreal to be laden on to ships headed for England.
 
It's curious whow different it could be the same job in different places, and at the same time how simmilar they were. Here, also, the sharpener was who earned one of the most, but he wasn't the only one. Who worked fixing transportation and log moving equipment (oxen gear, pulleys and so), who usually was also a blacksmith, earned as much as the sharpener. I think axemen were high performance hard workers, earning in proportion, and the other especialists, earning in proportion also.

When I was speaking about the people who had very little social life, I was speaking about the axemen who's main job was only to cut trees. They worked in low populated areas in the Pyrenees and the south of France,*
There were other similar jobs related to woodcutting, like charcoal producers. They produced a lot of it for the steel industry, they could work in isolated areas or near the factories. Or like the basozaina, ranger I think is told in english, I may be wrong, don't hesitate to correct me. His job was forests farming, to cut what wood was demanded mainly by the naval and contruction industry. He could live in the village, in isolated areas or a combination of both. We could open a thead for each one of these jobs.

It would be interesting to listen different working ways in different regions. I encourage any one who has information about it to write here.
 
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I think they estimate up to 8000-9000 calories a day for lumbermen, and some Olympic athletes will consume up to 11,000 a day.

I've trained MMA for 2-4 hours a day, five days a week, and was eating 6,000-7,000 calories or more. Even that is a lot of food.
 
rjdankert said:
For those who haven't seen this logging video titled "From stump to ship: A 1930 logging film".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIKCjQdxtO0&list=FLgV7tWl2uLukosOYiuy1J9Q&index=8

Those guys worked their butts off! At eight minutes in it tells the amount of food the loggers consumed in a day. It would be interesting to compare their caloric intake to a triathlete.
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Thank you for this! First class visual and oral history lesson about the eastern temperate forest north America logging industry almost 100 years ago. Small operations in eastern Canada wouldn't have been much different. River driving and log rafts pretty much ended on the Ottawa River by the 1950s. Much cheaper, faster, easier and safer to load logs up on to a truck!
 
I know most of yall have seen this video but i enjoyed it and for thoes who havent enjoy. :)
It still amazes me how they top these giant red woods and have their rope so close to the notch and not miss a lick.


Redwood Trees - Logging and Sawmill Operations in California - 1940s For...: http://youtu.be/3MDgxNLDR64
 
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