In 1902 the Oxford Foundry & Machine Co. was making sawmill machinery, including a patent double circular sawmill.

Information Sources

• December 1902 The Canada Lumberman.

  New Method of Sawing Lumber

  Mr. Martin L. Killam, of Liscomb Mills, N. S., has invented a new method of sawing logs which will appeal to the consideration of lumbermen. A patent on the device has been granted in Canada and the United States. The experiments that have been made with the new system have proven successful, and Mr. Killam and all who have seen the tests are unanimous in the opinion that the new method will saw more lumber in a given time and at less expense than any other method yet introduced. The following description of the method has been furnished us and will be of interest.

  It is a common method of sawing logs to use a circular saw with carriages of various makes, and by the use of this method to saw some fifty or sixty thousand feet of lumber in ten hours, but Mr. Killams method improves on the old one by using two saws and cutting two deals or boards at the same time. The two saws are placed one directly in advance of the other; one saw (the head one) is adjustable and by the use of a lever at the sawyer's side can be instantly and while in full motion moved nearer to or further from the carriage, so that any thickness of lumber up to and including six inches can be sawn two at a time. At the first forward movement of the carriage a slab and a deal or board are taken from the log. At all other forward movements of the carriage two deals or boards are sawn until the last cut when three deals or boards or a slab and two deals or boards are sawn.

  ...The following particulars of a test of the new method made at a mill in Liscomb Mills may be of interest: Three deal logs averaging 75 superficial feet, sawing time 19 seconds; four deal logs averaging 121 feet, sawing time 24 seconds; five deal logs averaging 156 feet, sawing time 34 seconds. Something over five hundred logs were sawn during the test, the regular mill sawyer, Joseph McDonald, of Mosen River, N. S., doving the sawing and finding no trouble in handling the extra saw. The lumber sawn during the test was well and accurately sawn. The saws were equipped with Killam's patent guide to top of saw. The saws were of gauge 9, the larger one sixty inches in diameter. They were hammered and fitted by Mr. Killam, who is an expert on circular saws. Mr. Killam is the best known millwright in the eastern provinces and built the Liscomb Mills, Ship Harbor, and Stewiacke mills for Mr. Alfred Dickie, all of which have proven themselves very fast cutting mills.

  We understand that the Killam double circular mills are now being manufactured by the Oxford Foundry and Machine Company, of Oxford, N.S.

• The Oxford Historical Society website has a page with pictures showing the Oxford Foundry & Machine Co. building and its workers.
• YouTube has a couple of videos of an Oxford Foundry sawmill: Video 1 Video 2.
• A page on GearedSteam.com website, this firm made a geared steam locomotive.