Behind the
100 Mile House Visitor Centre and beside the
100 Mile House Marsh, a protected waterfowl habitat developed by
Ducks Unlimited, is a small area housing five individual pieces of machinery once used in the labour intensive process of turning trees into lumber, the primary industry in the 100 Mile House region.
This gang saw is doubtless the most contemporary of the equipment in the display, being driven in part by a three phase electric motor. A fairly complex piece of machinery, it used steel rollers which were pinched against a log or timber to pass it through the saw, which consisted of 11 saw blades, driven in an up and down motion to cut up to 10 boards from each log or timber which was passed through. The rollers were driven by the electric motor while the saw blades were driven off the large flywheel and crankshaft at the bottom of the unit, itself driven by a flat belt pulley in the centre. Said pulley might have been driven by either a steam or gasoline stationary engine, possibly even a (quite large) electric motor, since electricity was available.
The wording
Nr.3818 - Gebr. Linck - Oberkirch Baden tells us that the saw was manufactured by
Linck, of Oberkirch (Baden), Germany, the largest European manufacturer of sawmill equipment in Europe. How old it is, we can't say. Linck itself referred to these as
Frame Saws.
Linck still manufactures saws which achieve roughly the same results, using more efficient technology, though similar frame saws are still available on the "used" market.