J.J. Burns - Striving Is Our Objective

This document, written by Burns Tools' founder J.J. Burns in 1973, was just found when we recently moved our offices. The most interesting part is J.J. talking about hitching up his ox team with his grandfather as they went out lumberjacking in Nova Scotia:

"Striving is Our Objective"

My one great objective from the time I became associated and familiar with the ecology of saws related to their use in the cutting of things which have become too numerous to mention. I embarked into the field of saws, their use and functions. The act of cutting tools is an old one. Down through the ages of time more things have had to be cut. Some brought about by nature, more by the genius and efforts of man.

Way back in 1895 my Grandfather had a 'One-Man, One-Saw' up and down sawmill that ran from a water wheel. This mill was located on a small water brook in Digby County, Nova Scotia, Canada. The foot or board sawing capacity of the mill was 1,000 feet per 11 hour day for 6 days a week, Monday to Saturday. Sunday being a church day, Grandfather would close down the gates of the wagon shed so as to store a pool of water for the next 6 days' sawing.

I recall as though it was only yesterday my Grandfather would hitch up the old ox team on a pair of front lumber wheels, then call out to me at 6:00 a.m., "Come Johnny let's get going!"

Off we went, oxen, carts, bag of hay, 6 quarts of corn meal for the oxen, a red bandana hanky with 4 hard-boilded eggs in the shell, a good sized onion, 4 or 5 homemade biscuits, salt and pepper, tea, a kettle, a fork and knife, and matches to build a fire to make dinner. This we did together day after day.

As time went on I grew up to be a young Lumber Jack, went to Maine into the woods as a Swamper, next a Yard Tender, from there to a Tree Lapper or Head Chopper, then a Foreman. As soon as the ice broke up in the rivers and lakes we would drive the logs down the rivers to the sawmill ponds where these logs were sawed into finishing material, such as boards, planks and other dimensions.

I worked from job to job in the sawmills meanwhile acquiring experience in all phases of operations.

My experience gained, by and large, started with my Grandfather in his one-man water wheel mill. Even today at this age of 80 I can survey the footage of standing timber to within 5%, plus or minus.

-J.J. Burns, 1973