The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-09-07
THE BIGGEST
TIE SAWMILL
A Mountain of 0hia Logs Is
About to Be Put
Through 1t.
(staff Correspondence. }


PAHOA, Puma, Hawaii, September
"a tie sawmill, the biggest mill of
its kind in the world, will be started
up here next week, on Wednesday if
the weather is propitious. A great deal
depends upon the weather, for in
Puma, as elsewhere on this island, the
drought is being felt, and there are
four great S0,000-gallon tanks yawning
to be filed with water in order that
the boilers in the mill may have suffi-
cient supply to run. Back a mile in
the forest, hedged in by wild bamboo
and banana fronds, dense and tropical,
is a dank mudpuddle, the biggest
waterproof within many more square
miles of jungle, and this is to be tapped
soon for a water supply, but the main
dependence is placed for steam for
the mill upon the rain that falls upon
the big corrugated iron roof of the mill
itself. The mudpuddle, pond or lake
it is called either, and both of the
latter two in Puna-itself is only a
catch basin for the rain, saucer inI
the lava, the one place for miles in any
direction where water can collect.
Everything else about the mill is
prepared. The big solid building is
ready to echo to the whine. of the null
tiple saws, the conveyor belts are
stretched to whirl away the product
the sqr 4red and solid ohia ties-to
where fatcars will be waiting to re-
ceive them, the boards from the cut |
tings to yard where they will be piled
for drying and subsequent shipment, |
and the slabs and sawdust to giant !
lava urn, where fire will reduce the |
waste bulk to ashes The mill is mod |
ern, as new as the industry it serves,
as up-to-date as the men creating the |
new industry for Hawaii, as complete |
as money will buy and brains plan for
and supply. When running at guaran-
teed capacity, 2500 ties a day will go !
from saw cradle to fatcar, 100000 |
board feet each twenty-four hours.
In readiness for the opening and
starting up of the mill, mountain of
Dhia logs have been piled up behind
the building, yanked from lumber
trains by steel cables and stacked up
sixty feet high, tossed about by the
tentacles of donkey engines as matches
are snapped from the fingers. In the
forest clearings mile mauka, other
donkey engines snort and puff loading
.hese trains from piles snaked by cable
from a thousand feet on either side
,he little narrow guage railroad line,
while deeper in the forest, where the
,hias stand thick, towering above the
,angled and almost impenetrable I'M
iergrowth and down timber, other
donkey engines are pulling down the
5rees. pulling them down literally in
punches, the steel cables being looped
n the arc of a great circle and in the
everything within the sweep
must come crashing to the ground.
And the initial purpose of all this
activity is to clear the way for that
irst thing of all in Hawaii mel, sugar
.ane. The land the Hawaiian Ma /
logany Company is working on at pres
mt in Puma is land belonging to the ]
Puma plantation, and the cane planter {
$ on the heels of the lumberman.
Where only a short time ago the jungle
Ield the land, between the hamlet of {
'ahoa and the forest mauka, now
tretches the bright green rows of cane
nd, in one place, the planters swept
ound and past the clearers and in the
cry shadow of the forest itself an
nm of the cane field has been thrust.
Originally, before it was known
broad that ohia is of all woods the
inest for railroad ties, the clearers
tackled logs and brush together and
made the pyre for many thousands of
otential dollars. The land was needed
nd the ohia growth was regarded as