October 25, 1917 



-^ Lumber and Other Forest Products -^ 



Many people suppose that all forest material passes through a 

 sawmill and is converted into lumber as its first stage in manufac- 

 ture, and that some of this lumber is used in its rough form while 

 other passes through factories to be further converted. This view is 

 correct in part only. Not more than half of the timber cut in the 

 forests ever goes to a sawmill to be made into planks and boards. 

 Some of the largest items which do not enter a sawmill are fuel, 

 poles, piling, and hewed railroad ties. The aggregate of these prob- 

 ably equals the whole lumber output. 



Other products are manufactured without first being sawed into 

 lumber, and some of these are both important and interesting. Hick- 

 ory may be taken as an example. Tlie sawmills of the United States 

 report a yearly cut of this wood amounting to 278,757,000 feet ; but 

 factories consume yearly 389,604,531 feet, according to published 

 statistics. This shows that 110,847,531 feet of hickory passes through 

 factories annually which never was in a sawmill, or at least was never 

 reported as lumber. Most of this is split stock which is worked into 

 rough form in tlie woods by mallet and frow. Much of it is made 

 into handles and spokes. 



Spools and Shuttles 



The industries which manufacture spools and shuttles for textile 

 mills use 65,148,190 feet of wood per annum. Three woods supply 

 most of it, paper birch, persimmon and dogwood. Most of the birch 

 for sjiools is first sawed into squares and is duly listed in the sawmill 

 output, but the same is not true of dogwood and persimmon. These 

 are the leading shuttlewoods, and the factories which make shuttles 

 receive their wood in the form of billets, some split, some round, 

 and some in sawed squares. The sawmills of this country report a 

 yearly output of 1,577,000 feet of persimmon and 2,584,000 of dog- 

 wood, total 4,161,000 feet. The shuttle factories consume yearly 

 3,571,760 feet of persimmon and 7,518,177 feet of dogwood, total 

 11,089,937. This leaves 6,928,937 feet of these woods reaching fac- 

 tories without passing through sawmills. 



Boot and Shoe Findings 



It is not possible to determine from statistics what proportion of 

 wood used in the boot and shoe industry first passes over the carriages 

 of sawmills; but the proportion is very small. Several woods are in 

 this list ; but the chief ones are sugar maple and paper birch. The 

 maple is for shoe lasts. It is crosscut into bolts in the woods and is 

 split into billets long enough for one, two or three lasts each. These 

 billets are the raw material of the shoelast factory. The paper birch 

 which shoe manufacturers demand reaches the factory in the form of 

 logs and these are converted into shanks and pegs with no assistance 

 from a sawmill. The logs are usually peeled to make veneer, and the 

 shanks for the shoe's arch and the pegs for tlie sole are cut by 

 machinery from the sheets of veneer. The wood demanded by shoe- 

 makers in the United States totals 66,240,200 feet annually, and it is 

 doubtful if one-fourth of it ever enters a sawmill. 

 Lead Pencil Wood 



Lead pencil statistics are somewhat difficult to get at, because they 

 are included in a class designated as "professional and scientific 

 instruments." The total demand of this class calls for 35,070,928 

 feet a year; but it cannot be definitely determined how much of this 

 goes into pencils, but probably more than 20,000,000 feet. It is 

 practically all southern red cedar, the kind that attains its' perfec- 

 tion in the region from Tennessee to Florida; but a little wood of 

 other kinds is made into cheap pencils. Very little of this cedar for 

 pencils is listed in the output of sawmills, for it goes to pencil mills 

 as logs or blocks and is worked up by special machinery. 



The same species of cedar is cut into lumber in several of the 

 southern states, but the lumber finds its principal use in the manu- 

 facture of clothes chests and wardrobes. Statistics of sawmill cut 

 of cedar for the whole country are lumped together and are not 

 separated according to species. For that reason, it is not known just 

 how much of the pencil cedar is cut into lumber. Four other impor- 

 tant and several minor cedars are included in the cedar lumber output. 



The important species are the western red cedar, the Port Orford 

 cedar, and the northern and southern white cedars. Sfianisli cedar 

 which is imported in round logs should be included in the total cedar 

 lumber output of the United States. 



Staves and Chair Stock 



The material used in the cooperage industry is not a sawmill 

 product, except a small part of it. Lumber statistics do not include 

 the staves, heading and hoops which are consumed by the manufac- 

 turers of barrels and kegs. Most of this material is cut by saws, but 

 at no stage of the process is it lumber in the common acceptance of 

 that term. 



Chair stock falls in the same class, so far as its method of manu- 

 facture is concerned. The chair stock mill cuts dimension stuff from 

 short logs, and odds and ends of the forest, but no census collector 

 ever includes it in lumber statistics. Chair stock is usually in small 

 pieces, suitable for rounds, spindles, rockers, arms, backs, and the 

 like. The longest of these pieces are seldom above two feet in 

 length. The consumption of chair stock by manufacturers in this 

 country amounts to about 290,000,000 feet a year, and it includes all 

 the important hardwoods and some of the softwoods. 

 Other Materials 



Several other demands are made upon the country 'a forests for 

 material which is not supplied in the form of lumber. Not less 

 than half a billion feet of logs are annually converted into veneers. 



A much larger quantity is consumed yearly as pulpwood. The total 

 exceeds an equivalent of 2,500,000,000 board feet. 



Tanbark and wood converted into tanning extract constitute another 

 large item. If this material could be expressed in board measure 

 the amount would be 500,000,000 feet a year. 



Shingles made yearly require the equivalent of considerably more 

 than a billion feet of lumber, and lath manufacturers take half as 

 much more. 



It is, therefore, apparent that when the statement is made that the 

 demand for lumber in the United States calls for 40,000,000,000 feet 

 of material annually, the figures are wholly inadequate to include 

 the total drain upon the forests, even without including material 

 used in its rough form, such as fuel, posts, and poles. 



Cherry Still Available 



Cherry, that excellent cabinet wood which many thought a thing 

 of the past, is still available, and perhaps in larger quantities and 

 sizes than generally believed. A correspondent was romin<led of 

 this recently for while in the rounds among the hardwood con- 

 suming industry a car of cherry had just been unloaded which 

 appeared to be from large timber. A closer examination showed 

 boards as wide as 16 and 20 inches and a fine lot of cherry gen- 

 erally. The plant was manufacturing oak and ]iarquetry flooring, 

 and inquiry brought out the information that it was also using 

 about a carload of cherry a month and found it more satisfactory 

 in some respects than mahogany and walnut. The cherry was being 

 treated in a vulcanizer and was used for strips in making up 

 borders and it seems to serve both the purpose of black walnut 

 and mahogany. It is an excellent wood — easily seasoned, and 

 when seasoned holds its shape well. The only question heard about 

 it during the past decade was that of the scarcity. The supply is 

 limited, but there is evidence that cherry is still available, and 

 perhaps as was the case with walnut we may find that there is 

 more cherry timber in the country than even those informed in the 

 trade think there is, and under proper encouragement lots of it 

 may be forthcoming during the next season or two. 



One of the greatest shortcomings of the portable sawmill is in the 

 cutting of high-grado timber for low-grade uses. To tlie observer 

 it looks like the portable mill managers in the hardwood belt need a 

 course of lessons on the value of and uses for clear hardwood stock. 



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