The Two Rivers Heritage Museum’s newest artifact weights 700 pounds, is 9 feet wide and has 168 sharp teeth.
This isn’t some prehistoric beast. It’s an artifact representative of the heritage of the Camas paper mill.
The round saw blade was used in the paper mill’s wood mill, which was installed in 1949 on the edge of the Columbia River at the lower west end of what was then the Crown Zellerbach paper mill.
“In the wood mill a 50-ton Berger crane was used to pick up bundles of logs from log rafts in the river,” said Dick Lindstrom, museum tool curator and paper mill retiree who worked there 36 years. “Once on the deck, the logs were divided into ‘small side’ and ‘large side.’ Logs that were too big in diameter to fit into the chipper were sent to the large side to be cut to correct length to fit into the debarker by this large cut-off saw.”
After the bark was removed, the logs went to the band mill where the band saw ripped the logs down to the size that would fit into the chipper.