42 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



«ary to eairy out in minute detail tlie ideal in lumber piling. It 

 answers tlie question of why, even in the yards of men who take 

 great pains in the care of their lumlaer, so many back ends of piles 

 are seen looking much worse than that shown in connection with this 

 article. It is a problem in long division w^hich is a great deal 

 easier to set out in detail than to solve in essentials. By setting 

 it out in this way and contemplating it, some good ideas may 

 be gotten for practical guidance in piling and caring for lumber. 



For instance, in the piles of this picture the stock has evi- 

 dently been sorted for thickness and grade, which perhaps made 

 it impractical to get separate piles at the same time for the 

 different lengths and widths. However, a glance at the picture 

 will show that some effort has been made to protect the extending 

 stock by eliminating strips from between the extending boards 

 so that they will lay flat together and protect each other some- 

 what. Evidently the right hand pile, which shows most of this, 

 has been replied since the primary piling at the mill, for it would 

 not do to pile green lumber without cross sticks between each 

 layer. 



Shortly after the taking of this picture another hardwood 

 yard was visited where five or six men, a team and the boss 

 were found taking lumber from a pile, putting some of it on 

 another pile and some on a wagon. It was poplar and the wagon 

 was being loaded with 6-inch 4/4 boards for conversion into 

 weatherboarding. The pile they were getting from the stock 

 was of uniform thickness, but mixed as to width, hence the men 

 and the boss and the sorting process. The wider boards were 

 being passed over to another pile, while even some of 6-ineh that 



would not serve the purpose went there, too, and there was handled 

 and replied perhaps three or four times as much lumber as was 

 gotten for immediate use out of that pile. With five men, and 

 the proprietor sujiervising, it was adding at a great rate to the 

 cost of that siding stock. 



Now glance back at the picture again, for, while it is not a 

 puzzle picture, there are perhaps more points of interest about 

 it than are likely to be taken in at a glance. The fact of 

 their being two piles in the picture has already been mentioned. 

 Xow note the size, especially of the smaller one with the mixed 

 lengths in it — and mull for a moment over the fact that in long 

 division the answer is often small as compared to the dividend 

 and the divisor. 



That is really the answer to this long division problem in 

 lumber piling — narrow, separate piles to get more division. In 

 many instances it need not involve extra foundations, but di- 

 visions on the same foundation. Glance back at the picture again 

 and note that both piles are on the same foundation, but each can 

 be handled separately. Had the man wanting the 6-inch stock 

 for siding made a sub-division originallj' and assorted for widths 

 in narrow separate piles on the same foundation, it would not 

 have cost near as much extra as was involved in tearing down 

 and rehandling to get a special item. 



The fewer times you can handle lumber the less will be the 

 cost, and the more detailed separations jou can get at the original 

 piling the less rehandling you will have to do to get any item 

 wanted. Ergo, the more separate narrow piles you make the more 

 divisions you can get into the original piling. 



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Conservation That Doesnt Conserve 



Conservation, in the minds of most people, refers only to con- 

 servation of materials. Anything which affects a saving of tim- 

 ber or lumber, consequently, appears to them to be good, no mat- 

 ter what qualifying conditions may show. The fact that a lot of 

 material about lumber and veneer mills, furniture factories and 

 other wood-working industries is either not used at all or is burned 

 under the boilers is taken as prima facie evidence that the sort 

 of willful waste which brings woful want is going on. 



People often do not consider that in many cases the cost of 

 handling, of sorting and of shipping to the point where it could 

 be utilized makes the effort to conserve anv' of this material im- 

 practicable. The loss is there, and it is regrettable, but it is not 

 real conservation to waste labor and handling expense merely for 

 the sake of utilizing material. 



This sounds like a reactionary view, and unappreciative of the 

 efforts of the Forest Service and other organizations which are 

 seeking methods of preventing waste. It is not meant to be so, 

 but simply to point out that one can not make a two-plus-two- 

 equals-four equation out of the facts that a certain percentage of 

 lumber is being wasted at some mills and a certain portion of it 

 could be consumed to advantage at a factory a good many miles 

 away. Labor is the big factor which interposes to make such an 

 operation costly if not actually worthless, in many cases. Be- 

 sides, there is the ever present barrier of high freight rates to 

 make such a proceeding impossible. 



Not long ago an observer who has been filling up on conserva- 

 tion literature noticed a big pile of ties being burned at the side 

 of a railroad track. He knew that these ties were made of oak, 

 and he had been informed that the supply of oak timber is getting 

 so low that none of it should be wasted if it were avoidable. 

 Consequently the destruction of the ties, merely because they had 

 served their purpose in holding a section of track together and 

 could not be used in that way any longer, appeared to him to be 

 entirely without warrant. 



Filled with a desire to save to the world this material, he wrote 

 a letter to the president of the railway company, inquiring whether 

 some means of getting further use out of the ties could not be 

 worked out, and indicating his belief that a terrible economic loss 

 was being suffered which the railway company would one day be 

 held responsible for. 



The head of the transportation corporation did not throw the 

 letter away nor did he direct a curt and savage reply to one who 

 might have been regarded by some moguls of this type as an 

 irresponsible meddler. He said, on the contrary, that if the in- 

 quirer were able to suggest a practicable method of saving the 

 material, he would be able to get a handsome reward from the 

 railroad company and others. As a matter of fact, he pointed 

 out, railroad ties become to a large extent impregnated with bits 

 of stony material which is taken up from the ballast, and an 

 attempt to recover value from them by sawing the ties into smaller 

 dimensions would be impossible, owing to the fact that any saw 

 used would be ruined in the operation. He even went into further 

 details citing obvious reasons why they could not be used com- 

 mercially for fuel and showed just wherein any attempt to fur- 

 ther utilize the ties would result in economic waste. 



"Consequently," he concluded, "I am afraid that unless you 

 can meet the difficulties I have suggested and can suggest a 

 method of handling the ties to better advantage than to dispose 

 of them by burning at the point where they are taken up, it will 

 be necessary to continue this apparently wasteful method. ' ' 



A visitor to a factory consuming ash and maple, which is turned 

 into baseball bats, noted that a large quantity of blocks, most 

 of them cubes about three inches each way, were created in the 

 operation of manufacturing the bats, the raw material having been 

 piled in squares for drying, and the blocks being produced as the 

 bats were cut to dimension and then turned. The obvious sug- 

 gestion was that there was a lot of material going to waste that 

 could be used, say, in a toy factory or novelty plant requiring 

 small sizes of wood. The material is rather exjiensivo. and the 



