In the sawmill the logs are transformed into boards and other pieces
A sawmill is an establishment where wood sawing is carried out . Sawing, meanwhile, is the process of sawing or sawing : sectioning or cutting with a saw (a tool equipped with a serrated blade).
Wood transformation
In sawmills, tree trunks are transformed into boards and other pieces of wood. After this first transformation, the product is sent to another industry or sector where the changes continue.
In ancient times, wood sawing was carried out manually. Usually two men were in charge of dividing the logs using a bow saw . Then, thanks to mechanical saws mobilized by mills , sawmills emerged.
Those primitive sawmills were located near watercourses given the need to have mills to move the saws. This location also contributed to the transportation of wood.
It can be said, in short, that sawmills constitute a fundamental part of the timber industry that begins with the planting of trees and ends with the production and distribution of multiple items. Without sawmills, the manufacturing of furniture or the construction of wooden houses , for example, would not be possible.
Technological advances
As time went by, different technological advances emerged that facilitated the wood cutting process and gave rise to more complex results, each time with less effort and greater efficiency .
The first of these was the invention of the circular saw, in the 18th century, whose blade has this shape although with its entire perimeter serrated, and is capable of cutting wood if it is kept rotating at a constant speed. Needless to say, this would have been impossible to do by hand but depended on mechanization .
The invention of the steam engine , on the other hand, was key to advancing the mechanization of tasks. This took place in the context of the Industrial Revolution . The sawmills, in this framework, fed boilers with the chips. Already at the end of the 20th century , sawmills began to operate with electrical energy and incorporated various types of technological advances.
Hierapolis Sawmill
Before continuing, it is important to mention that the term sawmill has a widely used synonym, sawmill , which in fact is also related to the mechanism in this section. The Hierapolis sawmill or sawmill, therefore, is an ancient machine that had a double saw made of stone and driven by a water wheel . It is the most remote connecting rod-crank mechanism ever found by archaeology, dating back to the 3rd century.
The concept of a connecting rod belongs to the field of mechanics, and is defined as an articulated element that in a machine is capable of generating a longitudinal transmission of movement between two other elements of a mechanism. For it to act, it must be subjected to compression and traction forces.
The first step is to cut down the trees and clean their trunks
It is complemented by the crank is another element that has the capacity to transmit movement, but it does so by means of pivoting on an axis at one end and rotating as a second degree lever at the other.
Hierapolis was a Hellenistic city, currently located in the Turkish province of Pamukkale . Today we only know its archaeological remains, which were declared a World Heritage Site in 1998 by UNESCO. Its importance lies in the fact that it is a great technological advance for its time, with principles of mechanics and physics that even today we continue to take advantage of for similar mechanisms.