Lost Art Press

Scieurs de long

Posted on by fitz
hubert_robert_fountain_of_apollo_gardens_of_versailles
Hubert Robert – Fountain of Apollo gardens of Versailles – 1774
This painting depicts the rejuvenation of the park at Versailles, begun in 1774 with the cutting down of the trees for sale as firewood (not FORP).

Scieurs de long, (literally ‘the long sawyers’) is the French name for what we know in English, from the British tradition, as ‘Pit Sawing’, albeit with trestles instead of a saw pit. This entry will continue with a set of old French photographs and postcards that show a method of holding the log that utilizes a single trestle or scaffold (echafaudage de scieur de long) to hold the timber in a cantilevered position for sawing.

echafaudage_de_scieur_de_longscieur_de_long_ill

edouard-valletfrench_postcard_08
Les scieurs de long – Edouard Vallet 1915

A quick check of French websites shows this style of sawing is still practiced at historical fairs and museums. I put together a collage of some images I found from the recent past.

mazagan_morocco_french_postcardmorocco_french_postcard_01hanoi_french_postcardtonkin_french_postcardvietnam_french_postcard_02vietnam_french_postcard_01vietnam_french_postcard_03vietnam_french_postcard_04vietnam_french_postcard_05china_french_postcard_02vietnam_french_postcard_07vietnam_french_postcard_08vietnam_french_postcard_09china_french_postcard_01morocco_french_postcard_02tunisia_french_postcard_01vietnam_french_postcard_06charpantiers_syriens
French postcards from Morocco, Vietnam, China and Tunisia.
negres-scieurs-de-long
An Illustration of sawyers in Brazil by French artist Jean Baptiste Debret
Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil (1816)
crude_industries_of_korea
This last photo didn’t really fit anywhere else so I’m including it here. This is a circa 1900 stereoscope card showing sawyers in Seoul Korea.

to be continued…

—Jeff Burks

9 thoughts on “Scieurs de long”

  1. To give some idea how much firewood was being consumed in Paris; it required 550,000 cubic meters of wood in1880 to heat the city! Talk about global warming…spread that concept over all of the northern hemisphere and you soon realize how Europe was deforested. The Royal Epping Forest on the north of London once was 50,000 acres…now it is a subway stop and a large public park.

    1. Here in southeastern Ohio, the iron smelting furnaces (of which a total of 65 were built) each consumed an acre of forest PER DAY. The last furnace was abandoned just about 100 years ago; both the iron ore and the forests had been fully depleted by then.

      -Steve

  2. The big question is – how did they get those giant logs in the air!? My guess is they chained the log to what I will call the “hypotenuse” of the assembly on the ground then somehow levered the duopod underneath to lift it. It would be wonderful to see this demonstrated! Perhaps at WIA 2016? I know you read this blog, Megan! I’m sure Roy could handle it! See how easy it was to volunteer other people’s time and efforts? Seriously, this would be cool to see in action.

    1. I’ve been wondering the same thing. I mean, I can imagine various solutions, each of which with a high probability of putting me and my woodworking friends in the hospital (or the ground). Somehow I suspect they had a safer solution.

Comments are closed.