My name is Les McMillan, and the following lesson took place in 1951.
I was a 20 year old greenhorn logger, working at a camp on Vancouver Island. I had been promoted to be the 'bullgang chaser' the first day on the job. (See my story 'The Rigger and the Greenhorn'). It was only a few days later that Bill, the rigger, hollered out " Hey boys, any of you assholes know how to do an eye splice?" The rest of the crew were greener than me, so no one responded.
I said "I've watched the guys doing an eye splice a couple of times. It's 'over one and under two', isn't it?"
"By God", he said, "yes it is. Let's see how much you learned!" With Bill's help, we took railway spikes and spiked the 3/4 inch line (steel cable) to a stump. He handed me a marlin spike and a small sledge hammer and showed me where to start.
Bill gathered the crew around and told them to watch what we were doing because being able to splice a line separated a logger from a greenhorn. I made a few mistakes, easily corrected by Bill, and eventually had the eye splice done. It's a bit tricky because you must go over one strand and under two strands three times. The first time is easy, but the second and third time can be difficult. The finished eye met Bill's expectations, so he clapped me on the back and said, " By God, we'll make a logger out of you yet! I'm going to promote you to be the bullgang 'hooker'!"
I was pretty excited because that's about as far as you can go. Next step would be a rigger, and I was a long way from climbing and topping a 135 foot spar tree. As well, it meant a big raise in pay for me, so I was a happy guy.
We had been coiling lines into the back of a dump truck and taking them to the site of the next setting to be logged. I noticed that there was no spar tree where the landing was to be, and asked Bill what we would do about that. He told me that there was a good standing spar tree at a setting that had just been logged, and we would use that. He explained that we would fall that tree, drag it to our setting and raise it here. I was flabbergasted!
"Do you mean to tell me that you can lift a huge tree like that up and make it stand there and be a spar tree? "Sure, ." he replied. "It's a piece of cake. We do it all the time." To prove his point, we drove to where this tree was standing and had a look. Bill had arranged for a bulldozer to smooth out the area where the tree was to fall.
He had two old Swedish hand fallers there to drop the tree. I asked them if they were sure they could drop the tree in the bulldozed area, and one of them told me to jam a stick in the ground about 100 feet out from the base of the tree. That was to be their target!
It was a huge fir tree, about 4 feet or more in diameter and about 135 feet tall. The Swedes sawed where the undercut was to be with a two man crosscut handsaw and then chopped out the undercut with double-bitted axes that were sharp as a razor. They used the axe handle as a sighting tool to be sure the undercut was exactly where they wanted it. They then proceeded to saw the backcut, using steel wedges to prevent the saw from being pinched and to wedge the tree in the right direction.
"Timber!", they hollered, and the tree started down. Since there were no limbs to slow it's fall, that tree landed with a terrific thump, right on the stick I had placed in the ground. One old Swede looked at me with a huge grin on his face, and said " Ya, young feller, we do okay, you think?" I was impressed, and told them so, but I had misgivings about the way the tree landed.
I told Bill that it landed pretty heavily and probably cracked or broke upon impact. "That's easy to check out, " he says, "have you got a pocket watch?" Most loggers carried a "Pocket Ben" watch in their watch pocket, so I took mine out and handed it to Bill. He told me to put my ear up against the butt of the tree while he walked to the top end, 135 feet away, and held the watch against the wood. I could hear that watch going "tick, tock, tick, tock" as if it were right next to my ear!
I was amazed! Bill explained that if the tree was cracked or broken, the sound of the watch would veer off at the crack and wouldn't be heard at the other end. Pretty smart for an old bush logger!
The bulldozer dragged the tree to the other setting and we proceeded to raise and rig it. It was a 'piece of cake' to Bill, but a huge lesson for this greenhorn logger. Raising a 135 foot spar tree is something most loggers would have no idea what to do, but I was there, I watched and learned, and became a better logger for it.
If I could go back and do it again, I'd be there in a heartbeat!!!
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