Mother Earth News Puts on a Fantastic Fair

Reader Contribution by Dave Boyt
1 / 3
2 / 3
3 / 3

Mother Earth News put on some fantastic fairs this year!  It was my pleasure to represent Norwood portable sawmills at Seven Springs, Penn., and Lawrence, Kan.  This was our second year to display at Seven Springs, so everything went a lot smoother than last year.  The organizers must have decided to create a “Sawmill Alley”, as three different manufacturers set up in the same area.  For me, it was a real bonus to be next to the Energy seminar tent.  We shut down the mill so during the seminars, so I had the chance to listen in.  Of particular interest was the seminar on using wood gasification to run an internal combustion engine.  It has long been my goal to run my sawmill on its own scraps, and this would be the ideal way to do it.  I even have a set of plans, drawn up by Mother Earth News back in the 1980s (boy, that seems like a long time ago… no, wait… that WAS a long time ago!  The cold rain on Saturday also made it nice to be near that big, dry tent.

The best part was meeting people with whom we had visited the previous year.  I was delighted that several had purchased sawmills and were either starting a business or were cutting lumber for their homes and barns!  The demonstration also gave me a chance to talk to a large number of people about one of my passions—using the sawmill to salvage lumber that would otherwise go to waste.  The Seven Springs Resort had been saving up logs from dead trees for the past year, and we had some of the most beautiful cherry logs I had ever sliced up.  If I had been cutting them for a regular customer, I would almost certainly have tried to take some home with me.

Once the mill had warmed up, we let some of the folks watching try their hand at being sawyers.  The most common comments were “it is a lot easier than I thought”, and “this mill is so quiet!.”  By next year, the wood we milled will be in use at the resort, and there will be another batch of logs for us to mill. 

Comments (0) Join others in the discussion!
    Online Store Logo
    Need Help? Call 1-800-234-3368