At the start his outfit
consisted of Babe and his big axe.
No two logging jobs can be handled exactly the same way so Paul adapted
his operations to local conditions. In the mountains he used Babe to
pull the kinks out of the crooked logging roads; on the Big Onion he
began the system of hauling a section of land at a time to the landings
and in North Dakota he used the Seven Axemen.
At that time marking logs was not thought of, Paul had no need for
identification when there were no logs but his own. About the time he
started the Atlantic Ocean drive others had come into the industry and
although their combined cut was insignificant compared to Paul's, there
was danger of confusion, and Paul had most to lose.
At first Paul marked his logs by pinching a piece out of each log. When
his cut grew so large that the marking had to be detailed to the crews,
the "scalp" on each log was put on with an axe, for even in those days
not every man could nip out the chunk with his fingers.
The Grindstone was invented by Paul the winter he logged off North
Dakota. Before that Paul's axemen had to sharpen their axes by rolling
rocks down hill and running along side of them.
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