MR ARMSTRONG'S SAW MILL.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume VI, Issue 574, 13 January 1882, Page 2

MR ARMSTRONG'S SAW MILL.

Up the Balguerie road, pretty high on the range, is Mr Armstrong's saw mill. It is of American manufacture, having been made by the Waterous Engine Works Company at Brantford. Canada. Mr Armstrong read an account some time ago of the saw mill exhibited by this company at the Sydney Exhibition, and wrote to the New South Wales agent in consequence. The result was that the mill was landed here some eight or nine months ago, and a competent Engineer was sent from Sydney to erect it. The result was most satisfactory, the machine being found to more than answer all the expectations formed of it. It is called the Patent Portable Direct Action Saw Mill, and has a locomotive boiler of 20 horse power. The machine seems fitted to give the least possible amount of trouble to the worker and is so simple that a child might direct it. The machinery of the table that receives the logs and carries them to the saw is very simple and eifec tive, and the saws themselves are some of them fitted with moveable teeth, so that if one is broken it can be replaced by another, without the disc of the saw being lessened. Attached to the mill is one of Smallwood's Patent Lever Feed Shingle Machines. This is tiie most ingeniously constructed labour-saving machine it is possible to imagine. It receives a block of wood in its teeth, fahifts it itself to the required width, slices off the shingle as smoothly as a knife goes through -soft cheese, and corrects any irregularity of the edges with a plating wheel. It is c;l.»ab!e of sawing 14.000 shingles per day."

The miU is most picturesquely situated, and is covered by a shed, the roof of which is of birch shingles, cut by the machine. There are m-my logs(nearly all birch), lying round the mill, and in the hush in the vicinity, ready for cutting. These logs were all cut last winter, for MiArmstrong believes that the wood is much better, and will last much longer, if cut when the sap is down. He therefore has the logs cut in the winter, and allows them to Jay till the summer, when the bullocks haul them down to the mill. As before stated, nearly all the timber is birch, which is of exceeding good quality and very durable. We were assured that some posts which had been in the ground twentyyears were as sound as the day they were put in. This birch is a close-grained wood of a pink color, resembling totara, only not nearly so free. It has little sap, quite small trees being nearly all heart, and the shingles made of it certainly seem excellent. There is a good deal of kowai on the hill also, much of it of considerable size. Mr Armstrong has cut a good many sleepers, for which the birch is admirably fdapt d. When the present bush is worked out he intends to move the mill over the range, where he has more than 500 acres of splendid birch, as much as the mill will cut, if kept constantly going, for 10 or 12years. Mr Armstrong certainly deserves credit for being the first person who,had the enterprise to introduce these excellent labor-saving machines in this colony.