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Posted by Sherman in Idaho [24.32.202.166] on Friday, February 08, 2013 at 23:14:36 :
In Reply to: US made snatch blocks posted by Jerry in Idaho [24.223.94.244] on Friday, February 08, 2013 at 19:28:51 :
It's good to know Skookum is still in business. If you drive around timber country on the wet side of the mountains, you'll still see huge Skookum blocks propped up against garages or sitting out front of a small store. Not much chance of anybody making off with one, as they weigh upwards of 500 lbs. They were used for high-lead logging in the days of the big timber, when they'd hoist a log 40' long and 6-8' in diameter clear off the ground and fly it half a mile through the air to the landing. I don't know what the tonnage rating on the big blocks is -- maybe 50 ton?. To hoist them up the spar tree, the high-climber would first hang a light block as high as he could, run a light rope through that, use that to pull up a steel rope, then use that to pull up the big Skookum block. He'd also hang a smaller block for the haul-back line (to run the chokers back out into the woods), and set a number of guy wires that would be spiked to convenient stumps to brace the spar tree against side loads. He's doing all this maybe 150' up in the air, with his climbing irons dug into the bark, leaning back against his 1" hemp climbing rope.
He's gotten to that point by climbing the tree, chopping off the branches on the way up by using a razor-sharp short-handled axe (many climbers died from accidentally chopping their climbing rope, until the state started requiring a steel core in the rope), and then when he'd gotten to where the tree was only 3' or so in diameter sawing off the top with a hand saw that he hauled up with a rope, and then hanging on while the spar whipped back and forth. If he really wanted to prove he had balls of steel, he might climb up on top of the spar and wave.
So when I see a big old Skookum block propped up against some old guy's house or garage, I think of my grand-dad high-climbing, back in the day when nobody could ever imagine they'd eventually log all the big timber out of Oregon. It just seems like those old Skookum high lead blocks are just sitting there waiting for the day when the tall timber is back and the choker setter signals the whistle punk to blow the whistle to tell the man on the donkey to open her up and bring another turn of the finest old growth doug fir God ever made up to the landing. There would be single logs that scaled out to 50,000 board feet, much of it totally clear. The log yards in Astoria, Aberdeen, Raymond, Coos Bay, Roseburg, and dozens of other places would be piled 20 or 30 feet deep over 10 acres or more with the logs. It took maybe 50 years of serious work to saw through that forest, and if we went away and came back in 1000 years, we could do it again.
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