Episode 20 : Crosscutting : an interview with Warren Miller [transcript]

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:29:15 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: Welcome to the Subway Bitterroot Wilderness History Project, which is made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The University of Idaho, and Washington State University. Part of the project’s mission is to collect, preserve, and make public oral histories documenting the history and people of the subway. Bitterroot wilderness. For more information, please visit our website at SPW lib argue Idaho redo.

00:00:29:17 - 00:00:54:15 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: And then I think people, I think people get so much out of being in a wilderness setting. Once you take away cars and money and telephones, people are different and they are different to each other, I think. And, and, and then they draw on things in themselves that maybe are a little rusty from our crazy life out here.

00:00:54:15 - 00:01:25:23 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: Now, I think the ways that people get along when they’re isolated in a place like that, that they place that they want to be, are really it’s a wonderful thing.

00:01:25:26 - 00:01:57:29 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: Thank you for joining us for the 20th episode of the Selway Bitter Wilderness History Project. In this episode, titled cross-cutting, we hear from Warren Miller, who took a special interest in using and promoting primitive tools for use in the backcountry, in particular the crosscut saw. Because of his interest, Warren searched out experts to mentor him in the use and maintenance of crosscut saws, and eventually became one of the leading experts in the Forest Service on crosscut saws, which led to his revising the manual produced by the Forest Service on the subject.

00:01:58:01 - 00:02:09:11 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: Here he tells us something about the intricacies of sharpening saws. By filing, he discusses brands of saws and tells a story about a particular saw that received a name.

00:02:09:13 - 00:02:18:22 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: So you. When, did you start getting in and interested in crosscut saws?

00:02:18:25 - 00:02:52:06 Warren Miller: Well, actually, about the first year I was there, most creek I got interested in crosscut. there. Well, actually, the first first job I had, was at Moose Creek was using crosscut. I, fell in with clam pulp, and I ended up cutting out the old wagon road from Moose Creek up to the ranches. I think that was the first task I had it Moose Creek’s using using cross cuts.

00:02:52:09 - 00:03:25:27 Warren Miller: And then, after that. He had a clam, but I end up going down the stairway to Solway Falls and worked our way back up the of the river, doing trail maintenance up to Moose Creek. This is before a guard school there. We had a saw with us and we did of course did some salt work. Then. And that spring, I think it was that, that same spring, and of course, the, the need to have the saws sharpened.

00:03:25:27 - 00:03:51:08 Warren Miller: And so one of the outfitters, I remember his name, ended up doing ended up filing the cross cuts for the district. I believe. Sort of interested. I didn’t actually watch him, but I was aware of the process that that you gotta sharpen these things to make them work. And I don’t know why. Well, I got interested in them, but.

00:03:51:10 - 00:04:14:06 Warren Miller: But, I just started getting curious about them and asked the people of the district what they knew about them. Saws. again, I was clam Pope, who knew more than about anybody else on the district, but we dropped the saw shed and, banging away on saws and things didn’t work out the way I thought they should.

00:04:14:06 - 00:04:46:09 Warren Miller: And so I started Pester Animal Care and said, hey, what do you know about this? And and he knew a little bit, but not as much as not enough to be able to answer the questions I had. So he realized that both clam and I were really interested in saws and he ended up on one of his trips to the coast, looking up a filer by the name of Martin Winters, who was a,

00:04:46:11 - 00:05:09:24 Warren Miller: Fella who’d fired from logging camps starting in about 1927 and filed lung cancer a good part of his life. And at that time, when Nemo Penny went to visit him, had was retired, but was still filed for contest. Sawyer and know came back and said, you got to go over there and meet this fella because he knows what he’s talking about.

00:05:09:26 - 00:05:41:17 Warren Miller: And so the next well, that winter actually clam and I and, Mary Ferguson and I brought up to Olympia and, spending a day with him while he’s very graciously, sharpened the saw what we were watching and answered questions. And he kind of put a bug in my ear about, saws and fillers and the whole aura of cross cuts.

00:05:41:17 - 00:05:59:22 Warren Miller: And I spent the next two winters on the coast, while I was working for Moose Creek, looking for saws and saw filing tools, talking to as many filers as I could because I could track down.

00:05:59:24 - 00:06:06:28 Warren Miller: And what started off so as, as a hobby, just kind of.

00:06:07:00 - 00:07:06:18 Warren Miller: Exploded or got out of hand or. I’m not sure. It depends on your perspective. but the the, work season, after I had visited Martin and gotten a little bit of a handle on how to file, I started filing songs for the district and file for the district from from the bottom to from from then until, like, quit in seven or in 91, but, it didn’t really stop there because Bill Holland, who’d been the Ranger when I first got to Moose Creek, had gone over to the regional office and recreation and at the not too long after he got there, Missoula Recruitment Development Center had written a small filing manual.

00:07:06:21 - 00:07:38:17 Warren Miller: And Bill had gotten hold of a couple of copies and send it in to me in kind of a moose Creek, and asked us to critique it. After, after our, introduction through him, through Martin and we realized that the manual was pretty deficient and told, well, I’ll tell Bill, bill home and that and that go back to Npdc or it was there was them Missoula Equipment Development Center.

00:07:38:17 - 00:08:03:27 Warren Miller: So Missoula Technical Development Center, and so they invited me over to, to a meeting, and I sat at the table with a whole bunch of engineers and told them what was wrong with their manual. And they at the end of this, about a four hour session there, said, well, it looks like we need to rewrite this thing, and I think you’re probably the one to rewrite it.

00:08:03:27 - 00:08:29:15 Warren Miller: How do you want to do this? So I eventually did, and the right to do do finally manual, that was distributed all over the country to Forest Service offices. I think each district office got a couple of copies and the regional offices got half a dozen or something like that.

00:08:29:18 - 00:08:36:13 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: So what next? Filing across cuts are so technical and so difficult.

00:08:36:15 - 00:09:12:11 Warren Miller: Well, it’s there’s a lot of different aspects of all have to work together. You’ve got you got several different kinds of or you have two different kinds of teeth and they each, each has to be sharpened up or treated in a particular way to so that they work with each other. a size, not the crosscut saw is not really a primitive tool because you’ve got, for it to work properly, each of the teeth has to be filed essentially the same way in a very precise way.

00:09:12:14 - 00:09:31:12 Warren Miller: So that it interacts most efficiently with the wood. because unlike power saw, where you have a lot of power to muddle your way through or cut, if the saws not sharpened properly.

00:09:31:14 - 00:10:05:20 Warren Miller: Your, crosscut is human powered, and humans don’t, you have about a quarter of a horsepower. Most that they can deal with. And so you want a saw that you want a tool that is as efficient at cutting a log as you can make it. And so in order to do that, you have to have the, the, the interaction between the two different types of teeth on a saw.

00:10:05:22 - 00:10:30:06 Warren Miller: well, how to explain it? I spent a week teaching people how to how to file size and how to describe it in a couple minutes. Here. basically, it’s just it’s a very precise it’s a precision tool made up of a number of different parts, all of which have to be working in concert with each other for it to work efficiently.

00:10:30:10 - 00:10:47:04 Warren Miller: And that’s basically what makes it complicated. It’s not, It’s not that each individual piece is very complex or difficult, it’s just that they all have to be, working together.

00:10:47:06 - 00:10:54:28 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: Then you now teach classes every year to, to young people. Middle aged people. What?

00:10:54:28 - 00:10:56:10 Warren Miller: How to do all ages.

00:10:56:12 - 00:10:59:16 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: How to sharpen and how to use them.

00:10:59:16 - 00:11:29:23 Warren Miller: Or maybe not so much how to use them. Well, I I’ve been for the last 21 years, I’ve been teaching classes over at Nine Mile Ranger station, the Wetlands Training center over there. and how to, well, how to select, how to take care of how to, resurrect and sharpen cross-cut saws. that’s my primary, primary emphasis is actually, on making of work.

00:11:29:25 - 00:11:39:02 Warren Miller: I’ve done a little bit of, of, training, using them, but mostly it’s, it’s how to make them work.

00:11:39:04 - 00:11:44:13 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: And how many different kinds of styles are there? brands.

00:11:44:16 - 00:12:12:28 Warren Miller: Well, there are three primary, three main brands of saws, but, there was Simon’s decision and Atkins, were the primary companies, but there were there are numerous smaller companies that made them. there was a company by the name of Old Bishop. there was a number there were a number of companies, like, in fact, but, like, craftsman actually had a saw, but I don’t think they manufactured their own.

00:12:12:28 - 00:12:59:22 Warren Miller: It was actually manufactured by Atkins. And then they just rebranded it. But the those were the primary, primary brands were Simons decided Atkins and they quit. Macon Simons was the last one that made them. And there was actually a letter in the files of Moose Creek dated about 1967, I believe, from Simons Company to Moose Creek, which I was in response to an inquiry made by Moose Creek to Simons asking about so in which it was stated that there was 1967 or 66, that there, was the last time that they manufactured cross cuts.

00:12:59:25 - 00:13:33:25 Warren Miller: So any songs that were currently using are leftovers from that period and prior. nobody at this point is making, is making cross cuts that are, that are worth a darn. There’s a company back in Seneca Falls, New York that the manufacturers cross cuts, but they’re, of course, we’re imitation of the of the older saws, in workmanship and, and, steel content and that kind of stuff.

00:13:33:27 - 00:13:53:19 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: So if you see the crosscut saws being an integral part to the spirit of wilderness because you have to deal with trees, obviously that went well in our wilderness, but, you can’t use machines.

00:13:53:21 - 00:14:15:06 Warren Miller: Well, that becomes an interesting question. The dilemma, of course, what happens when cross cuts wear out? I mean, because we have we’re working on a, limited supply of, of cross cuts, and they eventually wear out as you sharpen them and use them, you know, there, there becomes a dilemma of, okay, what happens when we run out of saws?

00:14:15:08 - 00:14:45:06 Warren Miller: is there a possibility of, of interesting or having some manufacturers actually re remanufacture them? or do you just decide that the minimum tool no longer is a cross cut, but it’s another type of, of tool, perhaps mechanized equipment? so how does, how do you how do you deal with that dilemma?

00:14:45:09 - 00:14:58:08 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: do quite a few songs have stories for you that’s just really interesting that saws hold, you know. So. And stories.

00:14:58:10 - 00:15:39:29 Warren Miller: Not very many. I mean, not that I know of. Not really. I mean, all songs have stories, but the. I’m not aware of very many songs that have stories, or of specific songs. there was one, one song that I do that I’ve filed every year is a nice little four and a half footer that I’d made out of a 5.5ft side, but cut the ends off of it, and it happened to have been left someplace in the weather, and apparently a small maple leaf had fallen on to it.

00:15:40:02 - 00:16:26:17 Warren Miller: And it had been out in the weather, and the maple leaf had kept the moisture, and it had rusted the outline of that maple leaf right into the saw, and it was had been there long enough that it actually was etched right into the saw. And it was a delightful little pattern, a very distinct, one of the trail crews latched hold of that saw a gal, who, made that her saw, and and she actually made that saw, so that, every year when she came back to work, she would ask for that particular saw, which she could, of course, recognize by the Maple Leaf on it.

00:16:26:19 - 00:16:32:05 Warren Miller: That was one of my very favorite songs, because just because of the distinctive pattern on it was pretty fun, too.

00:16:32:07 - 00:16:36:09 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: a lot of songs have names.

00:16:36:11 - 00:17:00:14 Warren Miller: I don’t know, the I guess there’s a lot of the songs. So a very foundation have, have gotten named, well, I’m sure a lot of songs have had a lot of songs in the past, have had names, not all of them complimentary. I don’t either, I don’t know.

00:17:00:16 - 00:17:03:02 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: Yeah.

00:17:03:04 - 00:17:12:04 Warren Miller: I don’t have a name, so. Yeah, they’re called the song names and everything. So.

00:17:12:07 - 00:17:35:03 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness History Project, which has been made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The University by Tahoe and Washington State University. The project coordinator is Debbie Lee, recorded and produced by Aaron Jepsen.

00:17:35:06 - 00:17:39:07 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: This.