What does a sawyer do?
Sawyer responsibilities
Here are examples of responsibilities from real sawyer resumes:
- Provide guidance and leadership to manage maintenance and activities, equipment inspection, overhauling, repairing, and installing mechanisms.
- Fall harvest Christmas trees, summer maintenance shearing/pruning, fertilizing fields and previously clear cut wild forest terrain.
- Operate table see, bender, butt welder, lathe and CNC router.
- Provide leadership, management and training to see teams for wildland fire suppression.
- Operate sawmill, bobcat with various unique attachments, knuckle crane to complete loading, unloading, and assembly.
- Operate battery of circular saws to cut plastic blocks containing ceramic-coat aluminum rods to length for processing into electronic resistors.
- Operate 3000 ton extrusion press utilizing computerize control panels and diagnostics systems.
Sawyer skills and personality traits
We calculated that 83% of Sawyers are proficient in Safety Procedures, Tape Measure, and CNC. They’re also known for soft skills such as Dexterity, Math skills, and Mechanical skills.
We break down the percentage of Sawyers that have these skills listed on their resume here:
- Safety Procedures, 83%
Trained new hires and employees changing jobs in job specific safety procedures and tasks.
- Tape Measure, 4%
Measure work pieces to verify conformance to specifications, using gauges, templates, or a tape measure.
- CNC, 2%
Operated a CNC Alpine Industrial saw to cut lumber with good accuracy.
- Load Trucks, 2%
Read blueprints,cut metal to size,fabricate frames and glaze window frames, load and unload trucks.
- Equipment Maintenance, 1%
Fork lift operator, equipment maintenance.
- Table Saws, 1%
Table saws Routers Band saws Sanders Air tools (staplers, grinders, sanders, socket guns)
"safety procedures," "tape measure," and "cnc" are among the most common skills that sawyers use at work. You can find even more sawyer responsibilities below, including:
Dexterity. To carry out their duties, the most important skill for a sawyer to have is dexterity. Their role and responsibilities require that "woodworkers must make precise cuts with a variety of handtools and power tools, so they need good hand-eye coordination." Sawyers often use dexterity in their day-to-day job, as shown by this real resume: "fork lift operator, equipment maintenance. "
Mechanical skills. Another skill that relates to the job responsibilities of sawyers is mechanical skills. This skill is critical to many everyday sawyer duties, as "the use of handtools, such as screwdrivers and wrenches, is required to set up, adjust, and calibrate machines." This example from a resume shows how this skill is used: "band saw operator (10'-24' self- indexing saws), mechanical and electrical torch operator. "
Technical skills. A big part of what sawyers do relies on "technical skills." You can see how essential it is to sawyer responsibilities because "woodworkers must be able to interpret design drawings and technical manuals for a range of products and machines." Here's an example of how this skill is used from a resume that represents typical sawyer tasks: "cut pipe on a band saw part time while i attended alexandria technical collegewelding parts together to cut. "
The three companies that hire the most sawyers are:
- Builders FirstSource48 sawyers jobs
- US LBM9 sawyers jobs
- Atkore International3 sawyers jobs
Choose from 10+ customizable sawyer resume templates
Build a professional sawyer resume in minutes. Our AI resume writing assistant will guide you through every step of the process, and you can choose from 10+ resume templates to create your sawyer resume.
Compare different sawyers
Sawyer vs. Wood lathe operator
These skill sets are where the common ground ends though. The responsibilities of a sawyer are more likely to require skills like "safety procedures," "tape measure," "cnc," and "load trucks." On the other hand, a job as a wood lathe operator requires skills like "hand tools," "machine operation," "computer numerical control," and "squeegees." As you can see, what employees do in each career varies considerably.
Wood lathe operators tend to reach similar levels of education than sawyers. In fact, wood lathe operators are 0.9% less likely to graduate with a Master's Degree and 0.0% less likely to have a Doctoral Degree.Sawyer vs. Debarker operator
Each career also uses different skills, according to real sawyer resumes. While sawyer responsibilities can utilize skills like "safety procedures," "tape measure," "cnc," and "load trucks," debarker operators use skills like "front end loader," "ran," "safety regulations," and "end loaders."
Debarker operators earn similar levels of education than sawyers in general. They're 0.9% less likely to graduate with a Master's Degree and 0.0% less likely to earn a Doctoral Degree.Sawyer vs. Portable sawmill operator
The required skills of the two careers differ considerably. For example, sawyers are more likely to have skills like "safety procedures," "tape measure," "cnc," and "load trucks." But a portable sawmill operator is more likely to have skills like "bobcat," "semi trucks," "planers," and "maple."
Most portable sawmill operators achieve a similar degree level compared to sawyers. For example, they're 2.9% more likely to graduate with a Master's Degree, and 0.0% more likely to earn a Doctoral Degree.Sawyer vs. Edger
Even though a few skill sets overlap between sawyers and edgers, there are some differences that are important to note. For one, a sawyer might have more use for skills like "safety procedures," "tape measure," "load trucks," and "equipment maintenance." Meanwhile, some responsibilities of edgers require skills like "ran," "design specs," "quality standards," and "machine operation. "
Edgers reach similar levels of education compared to sawyers, in general. The difference is that they're 0.9% more likely to earn a Master's Degree, and 0.0% less likely to graduate with a Doctoral Degree.Types of sawyer
Updated January 8, 2025
