The gang knives cut salmon into uniform pieces using circular blades. Like a Ferris wheel, a slotted escalator lifts each cleaned and gutted fish up and into the spinning blades. The blades are spaced to cut fish into lengths equal to the height of the cans.
The filling machine uses a piston to push salmon steaks into cans. It could process at more than 100 cans a minute. The filling machine is developed in the 1880s, but not used in Fraser River canneries until 1902 and not adopted by most canneries until much later. In fact, most canneries still preferred to hand fill the cans because the hand-filled product could be sold at a higher price.