King Spruce

Datecirca 1940

AbstractNHF footage notes for 'King Spruce': Logging film including axe sharpening, chopping trees, horse pulling logs, Lombard log hauler, rolling logs with Peaveys, men going to lunch, cutting ice, bulldozer, boat, boom, batteaus, mill. Color film with narration and an orchestral score. Head of film is missing from this print. Assembly of an ax head and handle. Grindstone. Winter snow. Demonstration of ax felling: notching sawcut, demonstration of a kickback (careless lumberjack, 'if the lumberjack had been behind the butt he'd have been knocked caulk boots over tin cup.' Cord cutter uses a buck saw as a measuring stick for four-foot lengths, Piling logs on skids. Show how to pile and load sticks with pulphook. Yarding crew: cutter, teamster and sawyer. Cuts and piles many cords in a yard. Horses. Foreman shows area to be worked, uses horse to work a greater area. Twitches logs to sawyer in yard. Cant dogs, sawyer and teamster roll logs into sawing position. Divide dollars paid for cord. 'Chow!...roast beef, potatoes, four kinds of vegetables, four kinds of pie, three kinds of cake, donuts, cookies and buckets of tea. The men work big, eat big.' Pulpwood carried by horse and sled from woods to stream. When wood is cut on a mountain slope a chain bunch is hauled down by horse. A rope snubbed to the tree keeps bunch from running into horse. Loading sleds, logs covered with snow are usually frozen together. Pulphook CU. Scratch hook safest when frost is in the wood. Hay and branches keep sled from running away. Teamster guides 'several tons of danger, rides the safest place which is on the load.' Hauled to waterway by tractors. Lombard [log hauler] hauls a train of sleds. Dumped onto frozen river. 'The drive, the most exciting of all logging operations,' dynamite opens a channel. Big landing, men throw every stick into the water. Bulldozer shoves wood into stream. Dam: big jam, men with pick poles. Excellent jam sequence. Making sticks of dynamite. Pole to tuck charge under jam. Explosion. 'It takes a lot of know how to pick the key spot.' Tumbling logs. To cross lake, huge booms, collect logs, 3,000 to 5,000 cords of wood, up to 2,000 tons. Towboat lets out cable, power winch pulls boom close. Logs sluiced into river. Cleaning up riverbank with pickaroons. Pick poles, men in batteaux. King Spruce goes through to the mill, journey's end. 'An industry as old as our country.' 'Very few logs are lost, and very few men.' Liberty Mutual loss prevention engineers. (no credits). // Formerly 'Reel 28.'

• Victor Beaudoin

• Victor Beaudoin