As one giant tree falls, it helps fell surrounding trees. The trees are cut into logs and floated to the river where they are tied into large rafts that are guided to the sawmills by tugboats. The log rafts are taken to sawmills and sold. An average log is between 4 and 16 meters long and is transported for about 10 days to reach the mill. The logs are taken from the river and cut into lengths of about 4 meters then stacked by size and species.
Workers do much of the work by hand though some power tools are available.
A closeup of the cut logs waiting to be milled into lumber. The logs are placed onto this machinery and cut into various thicknesses and lengths. This should be considered good pay for the area. Once milled, the cut lumber is stacked and allowed to air dry for several weeks. This one mill cuts about 7,500 linear feet of board each day.