Early-day loggers helped build community

Part 1 — "Falling and bucking trees into logs by a two man team with a crosscut saw."

The late Robert "Bob" Selle was a great teller of stories. I had the pleasure of visiting Bob and hearing him tell of his life in Bonner County. He had the unique gift of transporting the listener to the time, and the place, he was remembering. The joy he felt in revisiting old memories, be it people or places, was contagious. After hearing one of his stories, one would feel as if they had walked along with him, and shared a part of his life.

Bob Selle was born in 1916 and did his logging in the late 1930s and early 1940s. In the year 2000, Bob related a story he called, "Falling and bucking trees into logs by a two-man team with a crosscut saw." His story below, in his own words, takes us back to a time that has been replaced by machines and technology. Here is his story:

"In the days of logging with crosscut saw, men hired out in "teams" of two. Both men on the team were given the same amount of pay, based on the number of board feet of logs that the team sawed in a day. These were "gypo" loggers working for the company that had the logging contract. Theoretically, the more logs that the team sawed, the more money that they were paid — based on the scale. However, it was commonly felt that the company scaler would not put down more than a certain amount per day — no matter the actual scale of the logs cut — least the gypos earn so much money that the hourly employees would become discontent with their pay. So, when each team of gypo loggers cut what they judged to be the maximum scale that they would be credited for no matter what they did, they sort of slacked off for the rest of the day."

"A company scaler was in charge of a crew of several teams of fallers, the teamsters doing the skidding, the men "swamping" for the teams, etc. This scaler had the authority to give orders, to hire, and to fire anyone on the crew. The scaler also marked out the strips of timber for the falling teams.

"When laying out the cutting strips, he took into consideration the terrain, density of timber, etc., so that the strips were fairly equal in terms of difficulty and productivity. This meant that strips varied in width and shape."

"Each team of fallers was assigned a strip of timber — marked with blazes — that was theirs alone to cut. The two men, one on each end of a crosscut saw, always fell the trees with their tops uphill so that the teams of horses doing the skidding would not have to turn the logs to pull them down the hill.

"The fallers rarely hung one tree up on another tree because they started falling at the top of the hill and worked their way down, falling each tree into the trees that had already been felled.

"Falling wedges (broad, fairly flat wedges) were sometimes driven into the saw cut to insure that the tree would fall in the desired direction. Falling was a fairly precision art because, not only did they not want to hang a tree up, they did not want the tree to fall across a previously sawed stump and break. A broken tree meant trimming on both sides of the break, which was an extra cut without more pay."

"However, no matter how much care was taken, sometimes when a tree was nearly cut off it rocked back on the stump; then the crosscut saw would become hopelessly stuck. If it was feared that this might happen, two "pinch wedges" (which were normally used for bucking) would be put into the cut as soon as there was enough room in the cut behind the saw. This prevented the tree, if it did rock back, from closing the cut so that a falling wedge could not be driven into the cut.

"If the cut was pinched tightly shut, the falling wedge could not pick the tree up; it would merely compress the wood." (Here are a few terms that may be of help:

Buck — To saw a felled tree into short cuts

Bucker — One who saws felled trees into required lengths.

Cross-cut saw — A saw designed to cut wood across the grain.

Faller — One who fells trees.

Falling wedge — Wedge used to throw a tree in the desired direction.

Felling — Cutting standing trees, causing them to fall as a result of the cutting.

Gyppo (gypo) — Independent logger — -personnel paid on piecework basis.

Skidding — Transporting trees, or parts of trees.)