Wearing jeans and work boots, Sen. Max Baucus looked like an old hand working the board edger Wednesday at the recently reopened Plum Creek Timber Co. stud mill in Evergreen.

It was his 94th “work day” in Montana, a tradition of putting in a full day’s work at all kinds of unusual and everyday jobs that he started in 1989.

Baucus, who recently announced he will retire at the end of his current term to cap a 40-year career in Congress, reminisced about his experiences and vowed to reach 100 work days by the end of 2014.

His first work day, Baucus recalled, “was over at the aluminum plant. They had me working the pot lines and man, was it hot!”

Since then, Baucus said he has come to enjoy the work days just to meet people and try different experiences. “I like physical work. It makes you feel like a real person,” he said.

“I’ve worked right here in the valley a lot, frankly,” he said.

Other local jobs he’s taken on include working at the Tamarack Brewery in Lakeside, assembling guns at Sonju Industrial Defense, construction work on U.S. 93, maintenance on Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park, plus stints at the Plum Creek plywood plant and on two area forest fires.

On Wednesday, he was on duty at the stud mill at 6 a.m., starting with a safety meeting, followed by working in the filing room on saw blades and saw guides, then on to the board edger, a meeting with media and work on the planer.

His shift ended at around 2:30 p.m.

Asked about his interactions with the mill workers, Baucus said, “We’re busy working, so we’re not doing much talking.”

But one employee showed him a photograph of a large grizzly bear that he spotted in the North Fork Flathead drainage.

“They really appreciate having jobs, and they talk about it,” Baucus said.

Baucus, 71, often likes to get involved with work that is in the news, and that is the case with the stud mill, which reopened on March 27 after being shuttered in 2009 because of a national collapse in housing starts.

“I’m delighted. It’s great,” Baucus said of the stud mill getting back into business. “Beyond that, the folks around here feel real good about the prospects of keeping it open.”

Tom Ray, Plum Creek’s vice president of northwest resources and manufacturing, said 33 people are at work at the mill, which is expected to produce 40 million board feet of studs annually.

“Overall, the market is good and we feel very optimistic,” Ray said. “The housing recovery is for real.”

About 1 million national housing starts are expected this year, up from a recessionary low of about 500,000 in 2009. Such a poor market forced Plum Creek to shutter the plant, Ray said, but restarting it went better than expected.

“We’ve been going strong ever since,” he said. “The start-up was smoother and quicker than we thought.”

Baucus said he hasn’t picked his next work day location, but he hopes to do so soon.

“I want to reach 100 [work days] pretty quickly,” he said.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by email at jmann@dailyinterlake.com.