The Parbuckle
When one person is handling a heavy log it is sometimes difficult, even with the lumberman's canthook, to roll it, but if a loop is made in a rope and placed over a stump or a heavy stone ([Fig. 360]), and the ends run under the log, even a boy can roll quite a heavy piece of timber by pulling on the ends of the rope ([Fig. 360]).
To Split a Log
The method used by all woodsmen in splitting a log is the same as used by quarrymen in splitting bluestone, with this difference: the quarryman hunts for a natural seam in the stone and drives the wedge in the seam, while the lumberman makes a seam in the form of a crack in the log by a blow from his axe. In the crack he drives the wedge ([Figs. 352] and [353]). But if the log is a long one he must lengthen the crack or seam by driving other wedges or gluts ([Fig. 353]), or he may do it by using two or more axes ([Fig. 352]).
If he wishes to split the logs up into shakes, clapboards or splits, he first halves the log, that is, splitting it across from A to B ([Fig. 356]), and then quarters it by splitting from C to D, and so on until he has the splits of the required size.
A Sawpit
In the olden times, the good old times, when people did things with their own hands, and thus acquired great skill with the use of their hands, boards were sawed out from the logs by placing the log on a scaffolding over a sawpit ([Fig. 361]).
In the good old times, the slow old times, the safe old times, a house was not built in a week or a month; the timber was well seasoned, well selected, and in many cases such houses are standing to-day! On the next block where I live and from where I am writing, and across the street, there stands a house still occupied which was built in 1661. It is the house that Fox, the Quaker, was quartered in when he was preaching under the spreading oaks on Long Island. The timbers of this house are still sound and strong, although the woodwork in nearby modern houses is decaying.
In the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee they still use the sawpit, and the logs are held in place by jacks ([Fig. 355]), which are branches of trees hooked over the log and the longest fork of the branch is then sprung under the supporting cross-piece ([Fig. 361]).
Of course, the boy readers of this book are not going to be top sawyers or make use of a sawpit; that is a real man's work, a big He man's work, but the boys of to-day should know all these things; it is part of history and they can better understand the history of our own country when they know how laboriously, cheerily and cheerfully their ancestors worked to build their own homesteads, and in the building of their own homesteads they unconsciously built that character of which their descendants are so proud; also they built up a physique that was healthy, and a sturdy body for which their descendants are particularly thankful, because good health and good physique are hereditary, that is, boys, if your parents, your grandparents and your great grandparents were all healthy, wholesome people, you started your life as a healthy, wholesome child.