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The Old Sawmill

the_jersey_lilly_2000

Well-known member
The sawmill here in our small town was owned by Mr Lilly's grandad and his brothers and ran by them from the 20's up until the mid 70s when it was handed down to one of the great uncles son's. He ran it until the early 80s. Shut it down when he had changed it over from Diesel motor power to Electricity, three phase minimum on his electric bill back then was $500. So keepin it goin wasn't really an option.
Before this sawmill was moved to town, it sat on our place. There's still concrete bases in the ground that supported the engines in the pasture now. It was put into use in the 1850s when Mr Lilly's ancestors moved to Texas.
Now the 2nd cousin that has it is gonna move it out to on of the places that belonged to Mr Lilly's great great grandfather. I think what he has in mind, he's got a grandson that seems to be interested in the sawmill. Looks like maybe one day it'll get fired back up and runnin again.

I stopped by there Friday mornin and took a few pictures.

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4 ft saw mill blades and a view to the back of the buildin.

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control room (where grandpa sat and controlled the carriage)

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I don't know what this lil thing is..but it's cute...not really all that little either...it's down at the end of the carriage.

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Lookin back towards the front, where the first picture was taken.

Back in the day this was about the only sawmill around between the two towns we are between. It's about 50 miles between them. So this lil sawmill stayed real busy.

I remember hearin grandpa tell a story about the end cuts and slabs...they sold them for fire wood out of a big truck bed. They got to noticin that the wood was disappearin and weren't no one comin to buy any.....so he started goin up in the evenin and watchin from the office window. Was a colored person, comin in after dark stealin the wood. So grandpa decided he'd fix them right up. He took and bored a hole in one of the logs closest to the back of the trailer, poured it full of black powder, and plugged it with the piece of wood he'd bored out with a hole saw....plugged er up, n went home. Few days later, they heard tell of this fellas wood heater blowin up. Wern't no more wood stole from the sawmill either LOL
 

Mike

Well-known member
That looks exactly like an old mill (Even down to the "Sawyer's Cabin") where I used to work in the 60's.

Back before that around here there were several "Peckerwood Mills" that were driven off a pulley from an old tractor. They would set those mills up on site where they were harvesting timber.

Milking a 100-150 cow's twice a day, and working in the mill kept me out of trouble....................Most of the time.
 

the_jersey_lilly_2000

Well-known member
Mr Lilly's dad has a portable sawmill that he built back in the 80s that runs off the PTO on the tractor. It also has a motor on it if he don't want to hook it up to a tractor. He built it while still in West Texas, then moved it 525 miles draggin it with an old 46 Chevy pickup....Everywhere he stopped he had people wantin to chit chat about the truck or the sawmill....took him 14 hours to get here LOL when it normally only takes about 9 hours.
 

HAY MAKER

Well-known member
Neat pictures of days gone bye Lilly,looks like a lot of work to restore the ole mill to workin condition,there are several here in the hill country along the Guadalupe river that are in the same shape as yours,only one that I know of has been kept up and is still working.
He cuts cypress along the river bottoms and some oak that has died from the oak wilt disease that is killing live oaks here abouts............good luck
 

Mike

Well-known member
I don't know what this lil thing is..but it's cute...not really all that little either...it's down at the end of the carriage.

It looks like what we used to call a "Re-Saw".

When you cut a board off the log and it had bark on both sides, you would run it through the re-saw to take the bark edges off and square it up.

Most of the time one blade would be adjustable on them and you could cut 4", 6", 8" etc. width boards and not run them through the main "Headsaw" again.

Circular mills were not very efficient because they wasted too much lumber because they cut a "kerf" of 5/16" or 3/8" and up. Wasted sawdust was the result.

The newer "Band" mills are much thinner and cut much faster.
 

the_jersey_lilly_2000

Well-known member
Yeap the bandsaw mills don't have near the waste. Mr Lilly and his dad have talked about buildin one of those too. They just don't have time for all their "projects" LOL
 

Jassy

Well-known member
It's sure a good thing for Mr. Lilly's family to have you keep track of all the history that family has..from the land, to the church, the recipes, this saw mill,,and most of all the stories...so keep taking the pictures..and jotting down the stories...and someday lil lilly can pass it on to her family. Just one thing????How do you ever find time to do it all???
 

the_jersey_lilly_2000

Well-known member
Jassy, I only get real serious about the family history stuff about once ever six months....Winter time is great for doin research. What I REALLY need to do now that I have a scanner again, is go borrow all his family's pictures and scan them. Most of them there's only one photo, no one has copies. So that'd be a smart thing to do. LOL now...lets see if I can "get smart" this winter and do that.
When you do research online, it gets pretty fruitless if you keep at it constantly. So if you wait and do it twice a year, you find the new stuff that's been added to websites on the internet, or things that have been added to online libraries. It's almost like Christmas when I find somethin new. LOL As for the local history, you'd think after bein here for 17 years that I'd perdy much have it all covered. But I find out new thangs all the time, their family was so big and had so many different pieces of property with different things on them...it's neat to listen to the older members of the family tell stories, and add that to my history book.
 
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