2 o8 FORESTS AND MANKIND 



on. The amount of sawdust, itself, has been greatly reduced by 

 using thinner saws which, in the process of cutting make less 

 sawdust than the thicker saws. 



Building up wood from odds and ends formerly discarded is 

 another practical economy and some mills are gluing together 

 small pieces of wood and building them up to do the work of 

 larger, higher grade material. These built-up pieces serve just 

 as well as the sawed pieces and, as a matter of fact, the glued 

 joints are often stronger than the wood itself. 



In other cases wood not used for lumber is converted into 

 charcoal and into wood alcohol. This is an important use of 

 waste material for from twenty to twenty-five gallons of alcohol 

 can be produced from a ton of dry coniferous wood. From 

 material now wasted at the mills, probably some three hundred 

 million gallons of alcohol could be made each year. This 

 promises to become an increasingly valuable product, since 

 wood alcohol is yearly more and more important as a fuel for 

 motors. 



Composition boards for partitions and interior walls are in- 

 creasing in popularity and these are frequently made of wood 

 ground from waste pieces. 



So all the industries that use wood as a raw product are 

 helping the forester by eliminating waste and finding uses for 

 parts that once were discarded or fed to the burners. After 

 all, to save the timber in a thousand trees by more careful meth- 

 ods of manufacturing is just as much a step forward in con- 

 servation as it is to grow a thousand trees. And although the 

 day of complete utilization is far off, industry is constantly 

 working toward the time when they will use all of a tree but 

 "the knotholes and the whispering among the branches." 



