Steampunk or wood punk old-fashioned Saw Mill running at the Upper Peninsula State Fair

I took these videos of the saw mill that they usually have running at the Michigan Upper Peninsula State Fair in Escanaba, Michigan, when we were there on vacation this past August. The saw mill runs using a power take-off (PTO) from an old steam engine driven tractor. All day long these guys cut huge tree trunks into usable lumber. I heard that people with lumber from their property sometimes wait until the fair so they can cut sawn boards from this mill, for authenticity's sake for their cabins or old buildings.




The circular saw is huge, it looks three feet across. The mechanism holding the lumber cleverly moves the lumber another board thickness after each pass of the saw so that many boards can be cut from a log of the same set thickness.




If the apocalypse came tomorrow, I think these guys could still be running their saw mill and getting your boards for your new back country cabin to wait out the coming troubles.




You can see the resulting in the video above as well as a a view of the steam engine.

I tried to get a closer view of the actual engine running the saw mill here:




Looked like a coal fired steam engine.