Photo of the Week: Portable Sawmill at Nichols Arboretum

For the past few months, our local birding group has seen piles of large felled tree trunks in Nichols Arboretum in Ann Arbor, Michigan, near the Magnolia Collection. As we walked by last week, we saw piles of lengthwise wood planks finished on two sides. This week we saw a portable sawmill in action, as workers cut logs into lumber, repositioning the cant (unfinished log) on the machine for the cut. From my photo, you can see a cloud of sawdust rising from the sawmill as the log is cut horizontally. I had no idea of all the terms used for sawmills and lumber (cant, bucking, decking, flitches, and more), but learned about the sawmill process from Wikipedia. Amazing to see and learn how the sawmill process has changed over the years. And how portable sawmills brought to remote locations helped communities rebuild after natural disasters. The post Photo of the Week: Portable Sawmill at Nichols Arboretum first appeared on Lireo Designs.