POWER SKIDDING 



209 



them for drainage purposes. The early operators had difficulty 

 because they started to use the canals from the mill end, and so 

 much debris and mud were drawn into the water, that frequent 

 dredging was necessary to keep the channel open. The practice 

 now is to dig the canal and begin logging at the far end, working 

 toward the mill. Log barriers are now used, which prevent 

 most of the refuse from falling into the canals. 



Fig. 58. — The Arrangement of the Roads down which Logs are pulled to the 

 PuUboat. This system is known as fantailing. The figure is adapted from an 

 actual operation in a Louisiana cj^press swamp. 



Pullboats operated from the shores of lakes or from wide 

 bayous are moored to nests of piling driven off-shore, and the 

 timber usually is pulled in straight lines. 



In laying out a pullboat job it is necessary to locate and cut 

 out main and secondary roads down which the logs are dragged 

 to the canal or bayou. The foreman may locate the main and 

 secondary roads on a map in the office before going to the field, 

 and determine at just what points on the boundary roads will 

 terminate, and the angle at which they should run toward the 

 pullboat. The far end of the cable passes through a sheave 

 block fastened to a tail tree. These should not be more than 1 50 

 feet apart; for logs cannot readily be side-lined for more than 75 

 feet. After determining on the map the approximate location of 



