Wendell Loop
January 19, 1995As told to Denison Thomas
(Note: Wendell Loop has been associated with the lumber industry one way or another for many years. Over the years he saw the evolution from the primitive heavy two-man saws used in timber falling to the lightweight one man saws. He was a dealer for McCulloch Chain Saws and engineered some improvements which he later patented. He was born April 18, 1912 in Rearden, Washington. His family moved to the Puget Sound area when he was about eight years old and he came to Prineville in 1944. His story follows.)
High lead logging was still being done when I started working in the woods in 1934. My first job was hand bucking with a cross-cut saw. It was very hard work. All steam donkeys were being used. There were some gas donkeys but not until later did I see any diesel skidders. Cold-decking was done by gas donkey. Those old donkey engines were fantastic. Unbelievable, the power that they had. They could lift the logs right up over a stump or anything else so fast you could hardly see it. It was unbelievable.
In those days there was so much put on production. There were a lot of accidents and a lot of deaths in high-lead logging.
I came to Prineville in 1944 during World War II. Actually, I came the first time in 1943 then went back to Washington State and moved here the last part of '45. I went to work for Ochoco Lumber Company falling timber with the old two man chain saw. We already had the experience with the chain saw as I had used it in Washington State before coming here.
Those early two man saws weighed around 140 to 150 pounds. They were still a lot of work but we could cut so much more and do it so much easier than by hand. They seemed to be the greatest improvement ever to happen in logging. It took a lot of work out of timber falling. It took two men just to pack those big saws around and do the limbing and bucking.
In late '49 or '50 the lighter two-man saw came out. Its motor weighed 50 pounds and the bar and chain added to the weight. Some men used them alone for felling and bucking but they were still a two man saw.
The early saws were made by Titan, Mercury, Disston and Maul. Those were the three most common power saws. Later, McCulloch made light weight saws. Those early saws were subject to frequent breakdown. There were things we had to learn to do on those early saws. For instance, the chain, which we called "scratcher" chain, we had to learn to file it so it would cut straight. We also had to "set" it the same as on a hand saw. We had to "set" the side cutters a certain way or else they would follow the grain and make a wavy cut. By putting a set in the chain it would cut straight.
We finally got the chisel bit and other little things that made a big difference. Each one of them increased our cutting and increased our production. But it wasn't until we got the one man saw that we noticed the greatest improvement in cutting. Not that it cut that much faster but we could get around faster and it didn't take two men to operate. One man measured while the other cut, so there was more production than with the two man saws.
At that time with Ochoco we were cutting out of Gerow Butte and then we moved to one of the Forest Service sales on Sheep Rock. Lee Adams was bullbuck and scaler. Fred Adams was road boss. About a year later Fred Adams took over as woods superintendent.
Around this same time I was becoming a dealer for McCulloch Chain Saws. I worked out of the basement of my home on Third Street. Eventually, I built a shop and called it Prineville Loggers. Originally I had planned just to have a place to work on saws. I didn't plan on quitting my job in the woods. But as it turned out there was just too much to do. So I went into it full time and never did get back to the woods until I sold the business.
I stayed in the business 10 or 12 years before selling out. I went back to falling timber with Grover Smith for Warm Springs Lumber Company. I left there to go back to Washington State, around Mt. Baker, to run the woods for my brother-in-law who was in the logging business. He had 54 saws running at one time. I took care of the saws and did the overseeing of the falling and bucking.
Then I came back to Prineville and went back to work for Hudspeths as woods foreman. About 1960 McCulloch Chain Saw called me and asked me to do some work for them. The work was supposed to be only for a couple of weeks but it lasted longer than that. I stayed with them 4-1/2 months and then came back to Hudspeths.
McCulloch then asked me if I would take a job working with their engineers and I said I would. I was to be a representative for McCulloch's engineers who were working with various internal designs that improved the performance of the saws. It was my job to put the saws out with the loggers, to keep track of their performance, and to report on the improvements each week to the engineers.
I was stationed locally but had to do a lot of travelling. I got to see a lot of different kinds of falling and bucking methods. Each was a little different depending on the area and the timber. The fellows who worked at it were good at what they did. They couldn't go from a Pine belt to the Redwoods. They wouldn't know what they were doing and it would have been impossible. But they could work in Fir timber. Most of the fellows working in the Redwood forest wouldn't think of working in a Pine forest. It was so foreign to them. But all those fellows were skilled in their particular field.
I broke in by hand falling in the Fir belt. I thought falling Fir was easier than falling Pine. In Pine areas the stumps were cut very close to the ground--about 16 inches from the ground. In Fir the stumps were cut high enough so that fallers were in a better position. They stood on a springboard and were able to work standing up straight rather than bending over.
In a Pine tree the bottom part of the undercut was sawed and the top part was chopped out. In Fir the undercut was chopped out completely with an axe. We could never have sawed an undercut in a Fir tree. It was not possible to go in deep enough to put in the undercut. On Fir it was chopped almost to the heart of the tree.
While working for McCulloch I made some improvements on the chain and some of my ideas were patented. As a matter of fact my name is on two or three patents. Many of the improvements I designed were finally put in production. Improvements on the chain were coming along very well and some of my patented designs were in use. But McCulloch lost out on a lawsuit with Oregon Chain and so they could no longer make chain. After that Oregon Chain made all of the chain for McCulloch. I did some work for Oregon Chain, too, through McCulloch.
I made several trips while working for McCulloch. I was sent to South America to train the natives in the use of the power saw. The trip was sponsored and paid for by the United Nations. The idea was to try to improve their cutting practises. The natives had never experienced anything that had anything to do with a saw--not a hand saw or any other kind of saw. The workers were native Indians, East Indians and Africans and they were felling trees using primitive methods. They used straight old single bit axes in chopping down a tree. To make the undercut a couple of workers stood on a pole wrapped around the tree and with an axe chopped both sides of the tree. They didn't know which way the tree would fall--it could go either way.
The natives had never seen anything like what we had. They froze up using the saw--they were scared to death. They finally loosened up, however, and got so they'd get the tree to fall in the right direction, but someone had to bodily pick them up and move them back out of the way. After some further instruction they learned. And they got quite good at using the saws and we were proud of them. After a few weeks of training they could have cut timber most anywhere. But some of the older workers never did learn how to "set."
On another occasion I was sent to Jamaica. We taught the natives there how to file chain, how to take care of their saws, and how to fall a tree. In Jamaica because of termites all of the felled trees had to be painted and treated on the end of each log. Otherwise, after a few months, there would be nothing left of the log.
I retired from McCulloch in 1977.
When I started here in the Ochocos we were cutting on a "sustained yield basis." We cut 25% of the timber, moved out, then went back later and cut another 25% and so on. Over the years the rules changed and more trees were cut out. Then as time went on they took out all of the trees leaving only the young stuff. That is the reason, I believe, that we do not have a good second growth of Pine timber in the Ochocos. One wonders how many years it will be before there are big trees back in the forests.
An old-time forester I knew, Norm White, once said that the Forest Service has less than 50 years experience and that there was not enough history behind them to know what all of this cutting will do to the timber and the forests. I remember his words of wisdom and I believe he was right. The question remains: Why don't we now have growing trees 10 to 12 feet tall? Instead, looking out over the forest you see bare ground instead of new trees coming up.
My father was a logger and my brother was a logger and once I thought that was a place I'll never want to be. But during the Depression I got a job bucking logs in the woods and I was darn glad to have it.
It's been an interesting experience and I'm sure I've seen the best of the industry.