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01/13/2003: "Cant Hook or Peavey?"

Cant
"A square-edged timber or a squared log."

Cant Hook
A form of lever for canting over, or turning, timber, consisting of a wooden bar with an iron catch, or hooked arm near its lower end which passes over the log, grips it, and so affords a hold by which it may be pulled over. Also called a cant dog."

Peavey
"A lumberman's cant hook having a spike at the end of the lever."

The origin of the cant hook is lost in the fog of history, but a little is known about the peavey, named after its inventor Joseph Peavey.

From the start the tool's name was spelled several different ways. In the March 16, 1878, issue of The Lumberman's Gazette it was called a "pevy," while a 1907 story spelled it "pivie."

The origin of the cant hook is lost in the fog of history, but a little is known about the peavey, named after its inventor Joseph Peavey. From the start the tool's name was spelled several different ways. In the March 16, 1878, issue of The Lumberman's Gazette it was called a "pevy," while a 1907 story spelled it "pivie." In Scribner's Magazine of June 1893 a writer refers to a "...banking-ground (that) swarms with men armed with pevies (which are cant-hooks furnished with strong spikes in the end)."

So what is a cant hook and what is a peavey, and how are they used?

Since the time of the earliest colonists lumbering has been big business in the state of Maine. Hundreds of English men o'war, and later American ships, carried masts fashioned from the tall, straight fir trees that abounded in Maine's forests. These trees were felled, the branches stripped with axes, and the resulting logs dragged to the banks of the Penobscot or the Kennebec rivers.

These two famous rivers served as "highways" for floating the logs to sawmills and shipyards downstream, so much so that at one time the Penobscot was called "the river of logs." The intrepid men who rode those huge bucking and rolling masses of logs were known as "river drivers." Their task was to keep the logs moving and prevent them from jamming. Being a river driver was hard work. Although it was probably an exciting job, staying alive required strength, agility, and luck.

Joseph Peavey was born in 1799 and grew up to become a blacksmith in Upper Stillwater, a town along the Penobscot River north of Bangor. From the book Maine: a History comes the following: "The peavey belongs distinctly to the Penobscot. Joseph Peavey, then of Upper Stillwater, in 858, standing on the bridge watching some river-drivers at work below with the old swing-bail cant-dog, conceived an improvement. He was a blacksmith and going to his shop nearby, he worked out his idea. The tool, as he made it, has ever since been known as the peavey and is universally used in log driving."

Loggers liked the peavey, which Joseph made in his smithy until the demand outgrew his small facilities.

A logging tool description from the Lumberman's Museum at Patten, Maine, reads in part: "A cant dog or cant hook was used for lifting, turning, and prying logs when loading sleds and on the drive. At first, a swivel hook on a pole with nothing to hold it in position was used. This was called a swing dingle.

In 1858, Joseph Peavey, a blacksmith in Stillwater, Maine, made a rigid clasp to encircle the cant dog handle with the hook on one side. It moved up and down, but not sideways. All loggers have used it ever since."

After outgrowing his original blacksmith shop Joseph, with his sons Daniel and Hiram, apparently moved to nearby Orono for a while, and later moved three miles upstream to Old Town. The manufacture of peavies continued at Old Town until 1873, when Joseph died. In that same year Joseph's grandsons C.A. and James H. Peavey opened a shop in Brewer, just across the river from Bangor. One account says the shop was in Bangor, and it may have been, since it was called the Bangor Edge Tool Co.

The firm made many kinds of logging tools. In about 1946 the company moved some 50 miles west to Oakland, Maine, just a couple of miles from the Kennebec River. A major fire in March of 1956 destroyed the firm's buildings. When production resumed, it was under the name of the Peavey Manufacturing Company, with 18 employees making lumberman's tools and wooden handles. By May of 1965 the number of employees was down to six and again a fire destroyed the plant.In 1966 the operation was moved to Eddington, working for a time out of an old chicken coop.

The company still manufactures a variety of logging tools including cant hooks and peaveys.

Robert VanNatta of the VanNatta Brothers Logging Co. in Apiary, Oregon, makes the following comments on his web page: