The following videos feature sawmills in Belize, Australia, and the United States, and each is interesting for a different reason.
The first video, shot in Belize (Central America), shows an 8-horsepower bandsawmill; you can spot it by counting the horses that drive it. The factory is run by members of the Old Order Mennonite community who traveled from the United States to Mexico and then Belize in the 1950s. Like the conservative Amish community, they eschew multiple modern technologies.
The sawmill in the second video is owned by fourth-generation Australian lumberjack Ralph Affleck who decided he needed a sawmill after “retiring” in his 60s – so he started from zero Started building one. The plant is unique, with parts removed from an old steam engine, a 1912 truck and remaining military aircraft. It was powered by a Leyland tank engine. Also worth a look is the homemade timber tractor (01:30) which has 12 forward and 8 reverse gears and 3 gears.
The final video was edited from leftover footage from my visit to the Big Creek Lumber in Davenport, CA, the last operating redwood mill on the California Central Coast. More modern than the other two factories in this story, it’s still quite dated. For more information on this mill, see Sawmill Tour.
Leave a Reply