A few years back, a group of amateur history buffs spent the better part of two days dragging an enormous hunk of metal off a densely wooded mountain in southern Vermont. The area is referred to on topo maps as the “McIntyre Job” – the site of a big lumber operation in the early part of the twentieth century. The top picture shows the machine’s carriage, the bottom picture shows the blade. What was this? And what was it used for?
Answer
A barrel-stave saw. Maybe.
You can detect a hint of sheepishness in this answer. Honestly, we’re not totally sure what it is. The historians who extracted the saw think, with a pinch of certainty, that it was related to the coopering process. Maybe it cut little 8 inch staves to use as nail kegs or cheese wheels, or maybe it was used to cut barrel bottoms. The equipment will soon be on display at the Vermont State Fairground in Rutland, so stop in and take a closer look.
We received many good guesses, including variations of the barrel-bottom line of thought. Someone guessed that it was a hole saw that made wooden reels, another solid wooden wheels. Several people guessed debarker, including one hiker who’d actually seen the piece at its original site, but the teeth look too aggressive to us for that purpose. One person guessed cookie cutter, and while lumberjacks have notoriously hearty appetites, we’re 99.9 percent sure that this is wrong.
Because of the ambiguity, we gave everyone who entered the contest equal chance at the book. You can expect a full story if we ever get a definitive answer.
This week’s contest winner was David Birdsall of Middletown Springs, VT