HARDWOOD RECORD 



Jl-LV 



lillS 



Walnut Timber for the Future 



As FAR AS THE FUTURE CAN BE JUDGED by present con- 

 ditions, the planting of black walnut in this country will be 

 profitable. The war will make a pretty general cleanup of our 

 walnut timber. It will not take all of it, but it will not leave much. 

 The wood will be in demand in the future. Another great war 

 calling for gunstocks may not come again, though there is no rea- 

 son to hope for such good fortune; but walnut will always be in 

 demand at good prices for furniture, finish, fixtures, and airplane 

 propellers, and in the future those who have walnut can sell it. 



The country will not again be stocked with walnut trees unless 

 they are purposely planted. The natural method has been for 

 squirrels to plant the walnuts. That can never happen again on a 

 large scale; seed trees will be too scarce and squirrels too few. 



Forestry methods must be put in practice and walnut must be 

 systematically planted, or the country will be practically without 

 walnut lumber a hundred years from now. It takes the best part 

 of a century to produce a good walnut tree, suitable for lumber. 

 It is much longer in coming into market than hickory, because the 

 valuable part of the walnut tree is the slowly-formed heartwood, 

 and hickory's best part is the rapidly-formed sapwood. 



A hundred years is a long time to wait, but the planter of walnut 

 trees need not wait till they are large enough to cut. The planta- 

 tion is salable, and its money value increases from year to year. A 

 few farmers have woodlots of planted black walnut, but there 

 should be many more. Circassian walnut (commonly called English 

 walnut) has been more extensively planted in this country than 

 black walnut. California alone has more than a million growing 

 Circassian walnut trees, planted for their nuts. They will be large 

 enough for lumber in a century or so. The Circassian walnut of 

 commerce comes mostly from old planted orchards in Turkey. It 

 is not yet known whether the same tree planted in America will 

 produce high-grade wood; but there is no doubt about black walnut. 

 Therefore, it would seem to be the part of wisdom for those who 

 contemplate planting walnut for the wood it will produce, to plant 

 black walnut. It will do well on steep and stony land, not fit for 

 the plow. Waste corners of farms may bring on a crop of walnut 

 trees which will add to the farm's selling value every year, and 

 they may finally become the most valuable part of the farm. No 

 doubt should be entertained as to the future market. It is a long 

 look ahead, but it is usually the long look that pays best. 



Concerning Insurance Service 



THE DESTRUCTION OP A SAWMILL means far more today 

 than it did two years ago. Before present congestion in every- 

 thing, a mill could be replaced without undue inconvenience or 

 delay. As it is now the burning of a mill means more than tem 

 porary loss of shipments or loss of a few thousand dollars not 

 covered by insurance. There is no telling when it can be replaced, 

 and therefore it behooves everybody to see that his plant is fully 

 protected not merely with a policy, but with fire prevention methods 

 and devices. 



To this end the insurance engineer, the man who has made a 

 scientific study of fire hazards and who knows just exactly what 

 insurance problems are, is a valuable help. The insurance company 

 which offers the service of such highly trained specialists should 

 have the careful consideration of anyone contemplating placing 

 more insurance. 



The efficiency engineer has done wonders for American industrial 

 institutions in eliminating waste and speeding up production with 

 decreasing cost. The insurance engineer is just as highly a special- 

 ist in his training as is the efficiency engineer, and his counsel is 

 equally deserving of adoption. 



Protect your plant not simply by employing a watchman, but by 

 making it as unlikely as possible that fire may start or, if once 

 started, spread. An insurance engineer can best tell you how to 

 accomplish this end. 



Incidentally, it seems to be a habit with most lumber operators 

 to put on as night watchmen superannuated individuals who are 



not considered good enough for any other job. It would be far 

 more sensible to put this class of men on during the daytime when 

 the hazard is not so great, employing a thoroughly reliable and 

 energetic man for night duty. If you have a man on your pay roll 

 as night watchman who holds tluit position merely because he 

 needs a job and because you feel a moral obligation to take care 

 of him, you iimM far lictter afford to pay him the same money for 

 less weiglity iis|i.i)i,siliility and engage somebody as night watch- 

 man who is alert and young and active enough to really meet the 

 obligation. 



Dimension or Plank? 



SEEMINGLY THE PRODUCERS OF VEHICLE STOCK ami 

 the wagon makers with war contracts have at last reached a 

 common ground and obtained a state of mind which enables each 

 group to understand the other. Having reached that position it is 

 up to both elements to determine just where the lumber manufac- 

 turers and the vehicle people are kept apart on the question of 

 producing dimension rather than planks for wagon manufacture. 



Inevitably the production of hardwood lumber must drift to a 

 much greater extent than at present into the production of di- 

 mensions for specific purposes. This situation though cannot be 

 forced as the vehicle people have seemed to feel in the past, but 

 must come about through a fair working" out of the problems that 

 now stand in the way. In other words, when the lumber manufac- 

 turers are satisfied that they can manufacture dimension stock 

 profitably, there will be dimension stock on the market to meet all 

 requirements. 



Before that end can be attained the present organization of 

 dimension manufacturers must have fully determined the obstacles 

 that they can overcome themselves. That is, they must know the 

 exact cost of producing this material and judge what they must 

 ask for it in order to sell it with a fair measure of profit. Di- 

 mension stock can be bought today in competition with planks, 

 but it is exceedingly doubtful if very many people producing it 

 are doing so with a profit to themselves. 



Then when the lumbermen have a clear-cut case to present it 

 is up to the prospective buyers, those who are urging the patriotic 

 necessity of producing dimension stock, to meet with the lumber- 

 men and find out just why they have not been able to fill all of 

 their needs in dimension rather than in planks. It can easily be 

 demonstrated that the way in which the average buyer has figured 

 the value of dimension stock in the past does not take into con- 

 sideration anything more than the mere amount of wood involved, 

 whereas the man using dimension stock who possibly has bought 

 plank and converted it himself knows it 's true value. 



The vehicle people have advocated dimension manufacture very 

 strongly and if they really' want it they have an excellent oppor- 

 tunity now of thrashing the question out through the committee 

 made up of equal representation from each body, and thus accom- 

 plishing in a short time what under ordinary circumstances would 

 take many years. 



The Need for Labor-Saving Devices 



WITH EFFICIENT LABOR, and in fact any kind of labor so 

 scarce and so high priced, it is almost unbelievable that any 

 opportunity for replacing man power with automatic facilities 

 could be ovi-rlookcil. It is a matter of fact, though, that few of 

 the soutlii'ru hardwood operators are now employing one of the 

 most li.-ic-al and efficient means of laborsaving, that is, the drag 

 saw ii.r riittiiiL;- up fallen trees into log lengths in the woods. 

 Tlicic are alreaily quite a number of efficient types of this machine 

 in the market and their absence in the southern hardwood field in- 

 dicates a careless over-sight which should be remedied. 



It is not merely a matter of convenience or investment, but of 

 necessity and patriotic duty to utilize this one method, at least, of 

 increasing output and replacing labor. The automatic drag saw 

 is but one means of reducing manufacturing expense and its com- 

 parative cheapness recommends its use by every operator in the 

 hardwood belt. 



