🪵 Why did builders stand underneath a log?

On this drive we're passing lots of houses, and many are built from wooden boards. Wooden boards are long, flat pieces of wood cut from a round tree log. But how do you turn a round log into flat boards without any machines? Long ago, before sawmills, two builders did it with one giant saw. First they dug a deep hole in the ground, called a saw pit. They rolled the log across the top of the hole.

One builder climbed up and stood on the log. The other climbed down into the pit, right underneath it! Try guessing which houses we pass have wooden fences or porches. The saw was longer than a grown-up is tall, with a handle at each end. The top builder pulled it up. The bottom builder pulled it down.

Up and down, up and down, the saw went, all by hand. Each pull cut a little farther, until a whole flat board slid off the log. What a team! Two builders, one giant saw, and no machines at all! Today, big machines in sawmills do the cutting quickly. But every wooden board in the houses around us still began as a round tree log.