442 Forestry Quarterly. 



We rented a two-story building at Custer with a good base- 

 ment. This building was 50x25 feet. My original plan was to 

 store the cones upstairs, making a drying room on the ground 

 floor, and have the furnace in the basement. The drying room 

 which was on one side of the ground floor was very tight, and 

 after I got it arranged, I filled it with green cones. I expected to 

 take them out in 36 hours. I had them in there seven days, and 

 they were closed as tight when I took them out as when I put 

 them in. The reason was there was too much moisture by 

 evaporation from the cones which filled the room with steam, 

 and I found the cones never would open in that way. By that 

 time I saw I was going to get such a quantity of cones, I would 

 have to enlarge my drying room. I tore down the first drying 

 room and made a new one 30 feet long by 20 feet wide. The 

 arrangement of this drying room was about as follows: I first 

 made what I called a false floor, constructed of 2-inch slats laid 

 on joists. The spaces between the slats were about f of an inch. 

 The trays first constructed were seven feet long and four feet 

 wide. They were constructed by simply taking wire meshing and 

 nailing on each side two strips 1x2 inches. There were no shelves 

 made to place them on, but to strengthen the trays we nailed cross 

 pieces across the corners. That gave us a 4-inch space between 

 each tray, and the trays were stacked one on top of the other. 

 These trays held about two bushels of cones. After I had con- 

 structed this new drying room, and got it finished, it worked in 

 pretty good shape. I found by leaving the cones in three nights 

 and two days, they were ready to come out, that is, they were 

 sufficiently opened on these trays that practically all of the seed 

 would rattle out. After the cones had opened, I built what we 

 called a "flying machine." It was nothing more than a cylindrical 

 box which was rotated by a gasoline engine. It was constructed 

 by using a piece of gas pipe 16 feet long with four cross pieces 

 set on the pipe, and covered with wire meshing. This was rotated 

 at just the right speed to allow the cones to work out at the lower 

 end, and the seed to fall on the floor. It was set on a slope so 

 that the cones were put in at one end and rolled out at the other 

 end of their own accord. 



After the seeds shaken out of the cones are gathered up we 

 run the winged seed out through a fanning mill. The fanning 

 mill sits in the basement of the building. The seeds pass over the 



