Sawmill for Hire

When you are building a house, you need some way to turn Cunninghamia lanceolata trees into boards. Not everyone has the means to do this.  In the Miao village of Wudong (see Miao Still Life and Miao Decor), there is one man (shown below) who has a portable sawmill and who will set it up behind the house you are building and make boards for you. He designed and built the decidedly simple sawmill himself.  He works on about three houses/year, and does jobs in several different villages in the area. [NOTE: The rough, dimension stock he cuts is carefully planed and fitted by the crew of carpenters working inside the house].

Village Sawmill in PNG

This is the log landing at a village sawmill in the Kikori River delta of Papua New Guinea (see Living on a Log Raft and Palms of Kikori, PNG).  The logs with the reddish heartwood are mangrove cedar (Xylocarpus granatum). The portable Lucas Mill is set up in the palm thatch buildings to the left.  That's me in the baseball cap in front of the mill with a video camera. [NOTE: No idea who took this picture; it was scanned from a print].