A hammer is a tool, most often a hand tool, consisting of a weighted "head" fixed to a long handle that is swung to deliver an impact to a small area of an object. This can be, for example, to drive nails into wood, to shape metal, or to crush rock. Hammers are used for a wide range of driving, shaping, breaking and non-destructive striking applications. Traditional disciplines include carpentry, blacksmithing, warfare, and percussive musicianship.
Logging is the process of cutting, processing, and moving trees to a location for transport. It may include skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or logs onto trucks or skeleton cars. In forestry, the term logging is sometimes used narrowly to describe the logistics of moving wood from the stump to somewhere outside the forest, usually a sawmill or a lumber yard. In common usage, however, the term may cover a range of forestry or silviculture activities.
Lumberjacks are mostly North American workers in the logging industry who perform the initial harvesting and transport of trees for ultimate processing into forest products. The term usually refers to loggers in the era when trees were felled using hand tools and dragged by oxen to rivers.
Portable sawmills are sawmills small enough to be moved easily and set up in the field. They have existed for over 100 years but grew in popularity in the United States starting in the 1970s, when the 1973 oil crisis and the back-to-the-land movement had led to renewed interest in small woodlots and in self-sufficiency. Their popularity has grown exponentially since 1982, when the portable bandsaw mill was first commercialized.
Woodsman is a competitive, co-ed intercollegiate sport in the United States, Canada and elsewhere based on various skills traditionally part of forestry educational and technical training programs. In North America, the sport currently is organized in five regional divisions: northeastern, mid-Atlantic, southern, midwestern, and western.
A Halligan bar is a forcible entry tool used by firefighters.
A sickle, bagging hook, reaping-hook or grasshook is a single-handed agricultural tool designed with variously curved blades and typically used for harvesting, or reaping, grain crops or cutting succulent forage chiefly for feeding livestock, either freshly cut or dried as hay. Falx was a synonym but was later used to mean any of a number of tools that had a curved blade that was sharp on the inside edge such as a scythe.
Log driving is a means of moving logs from a forest to sawmills and pulp mills downstream using the current of a river. It was the main transportation method of the early logging industry in Europe and North America.
A steam donkey or donkey engine is a steam-powered winch once widely used in logging, mining, maritime, and other industrial applications.
A pike pole is a long metal-topped wooden, aluminium or fiberglass pole used for reaching, hooking and/or pulling on another object. They are variously used in boating, construction, logging, rescue and recovery, power line maintenance, and firefighting.
Lumberman's Monument is a monument dedicated to the workers of the early logging industry in Michigan. Standing at 14 feet, the bronze statue features a log surrounded by three figures: a timber cruiser holding a compass, a sawyer with his saw slung over his shoulder, and a river rat resting his peavey on the ground. The granite base of the statue is engraved with a memorial that reads "Erected to perpetuate the memory of the pioneer lumbermen of Michigan through whose labors was made possible the development of the prairie states." It is also inscribed with the names of the logging families who dedicated their time and efforts to the industry in the area. It was built in 1931, dedicated in 1932 and is managed by the USDA Forest Service. It is located in the northeastern part of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan along the Au Sable River within Huron-Manistee National Forests. Access to the park is on River Road, which intersects M-65 west of Oscoda, Michigan. Monument Road, from East Tawas, also leads directly to the monument, which is in Oscoda Township in Iosco County. The monument is part of the River Road Scenic Byway, a 22-mile (35 km) drive between Oscoda and South Branch that runs parallel with the beautiful Au Sable River. It is a designated National Scenic Byway.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and guide to forestry:
A head saw, framesaw, gang saw or head rig is the saw that makes the initial cuts in a log at a sawmill, turning a log into cants, or planks of wood.
A hook is a hand tool used for securing and moving loads. It consists of a round wooden handle with a strong metal hook about 20 cm long projecting at a right angle from the center of the handle. The appliance is held in a closed fist with the hook projecting between two fingers.
A frame saw or sash saw is a type of saw which consists of a relatively narrow and flexible blade held under tension within a rectangular frame. They are used for cutting wood or stone. The blade is held perpendicular to the plane of the frame, so that the material being cut passes through the center of the frame. Frame saws for use with wood are rip saws operated as a hand saw or powered in a sawmill. Frame saws used for cutting stone were powered saws in stone mills.
The Lombard Steam Log Hauler, patented 21 May 1901, was the first successful commercial application of a continuous track for vehicle propulsion. The concept was later used for military tanks during World War I and for agricultural tractors and construction equipment following the war.
The go-devil was a simple one-horse sled used for hauling trees in logging. Ralph C. Bryant describes it in his pioneering textbook Logging (1913) as follows:
The go-devil is a product of the camp blacksmith shop. It is a rough sled having two unshod hardwood runners, which are preferably of yellow birch, selected from timbers having a natural crook. The usual type of runner is from 6 to 7.5 feet long, 6 inches wide, and from 3 to 5 inches thick. A 6-inch by 6-inch by 4-foot or 5-foot bunk is fastened to each runner by a bolt. The bunk is placed from 2 to 2.5 feet from the rear end of the runners. A ring is attached to the center of this bunk and the logs are bound on the latter by a chain passing around the logs and bunk and through the ring. The curved, forward ends of the runners are connected by a roller which has a short chain at each end that passes through a hole in the forward end of the runner and is fastened several inches back on it.
Since the go-devil has no tongue it can be turned around in a small space. The draft rigging consists of chains fastened to either side of the bunk or to the runners. The chains are brought forward and joined directly in front of the roller by a ring to which the hook on the double-tree is attached.
Since go-devils are loosely constructed, there is considerable backward and forward play in the runners and if one of them becomes obstructed the other moves ahead and starts it.
Go-devils are seldom used for distances less than 300 feet, except under adverse snaking conditions. They may be used for a quarter of a mile on snow but are not as economical as larger sleds for this distance. Trails are required and these are cut by the swampers as they prepare the logs for skidding.
A pickaroon is a wood-handled, metal-topped log handling tool that originates from the Alpine Region where it is called "Sappie, Zapin, Sapine". It is distinguished from a pike pole by having a shorter handle, no metal point, and an opposite curve to its hook ; and from both a cant hook and peavey by having a fixed hook facing its handle rather than a pivoting one facing away.
Albert Lewis Johnson., better known as Jigger Johnson, was a legendary logging foreman, trapper, and fire warden for the U.S. Forest Service who was known throughout the American East for his many off-the-job exploits, such as catching bobcats alive barehanded, and drunken brawls.
