New England sawmillers in Scotland - Sawmill Unit No 3 - on site in Strathcarron, Ross-shire
The Images are courtesy of https://www.actonhistoricalsociety.org/ww1-sawmill-unit.html Also check out Records No 4778 – 4789 or under ‘Groups’ the ‘American sawmillers in Scotland 1917’.
The sawmill team and mascot dog posing for the camera. It is believed that this is New England Unit Number 3 team and is the mill, equipment, horses and tools that were mainly Blanchard & Gould Lumber company funded.
A Northern Times article stated that the mills have four saw blades but again it is not clear if this refers to an additional resaw system or just three spare blades. The limited view images of the saw mechanism do not indicate more than one inserted tooth saw blade and one powered rolling bench with little space in the building for anything else. Square edged timber could only have been produced by squaring the logs and then running through the saw again for each board. Side cuts could be squared edged with some work but there is mention of large quantities of waney (rounded) edged boards and batons being sent off by rail for further processing at munitions factories etc. Note that the inventory for the outfits included double saw edgers as separate units but no evidence in any images of them set up.
Up behind the mill just in view past the fitted saw blade can be seen the logs from the forest ready to be rolled down onto the saw bench. The board edge on to the ground at the feet of the two men to the right has the characteristics of a Scots pine and it looks probable that a high percentage of logs were this species. The little circular blade in line with and behind the saw blade performs the function of a riving knife. A similar saw can be seen in action by pasting the following link into your browser. Be prepared for scenes of an open unprotected blade!
https://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=zmkgBuKxbek
The sawmilling team consisted of about 10 men with millwright, sawyer, unloader/scaler, roll on man, take away man, checker, fireman, slab and fuel man, teamsters to shift sawn lumber and lumber sticker. A foreman and clerk covered the complete wood and saw team.
Note the distinctive dog which appears in several photographs and is a feature of Blanchard’s team known as Unit No 3. The PDF contains an image of probably the whole team before embarkation with suitably dressed dog sporting a team logo. There must have been several dogs in total with the teams as it is seems a temporary diversion from the days of boredom was some dogs getting into a fight. Dogs were not the only animals (other than horses) to accompany as a black bear cub also made the journey to Scotland and to the sawmill base. There is so far no record of what happened to the cub when the teams all disbanded.
Download Large Version (499kB)
Groups: American sawmillers in Scotland 1917, Forestry in Action, Groups of people, Sawmills, pulp mills, chipboard mills