LUMBERING. 11 



Spoke billets are commonly rived. Rived billets are preferred by 

 the spoke makers and bring the best prices, but riving is wasteful. 

 Skilled hands may get as many rived spokes out of a given bolt as 

 could be obtained by sawing, but fewer cuts are taken from the tree 

 and the material which will not make spokes is never utilized, except 

 occasionally for firewood. There is an additional waste because 

 heartwood and birdpecked wood, which would be used if it were at 

 the mill, is generally left in the woods. The price of rived spoke 

 billets in Memphis, Tenn., is $14 per 1,000 billets for the white and 

 $9 for the red. In southern Indiana the prices are $22 and $14. 

 Sawed billets are usually about one-third less. Much waste is 

 avoided when the tree is cut into round bolts of the proper length 

 and these are hauled or shipped to the mill to be sawed. Such bolts 

 bring from $7 to $10 a cord delivered at the mill in the South, and 

 from $10 to $12 in Ohio and Indiana. A cord of hickory will yield 

 about 700 rived spoke billets, or 900 sawed ones, or from 250 to 300 

 handle blanks. 



STUMPAGE PRICES. 



Next to black walnut, hickory, according to the census returns, is 

 the most valuable of important American woods. This high value 

 is due in part to the inclusion of the prices of special stock and to the 

 greater cost of lumbering. Stumpage prices, however, are. in most 

 places, still comparatively low, generally about the same as those of 

 oak. In the South the common price is from $2 to $5 per thousand 

 feet. In northern Ohio, according to the location, $15 to $25 is paid, 

 and in eastern Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, $15 to $35 is 

 common. Oak in these more settled districts brings, perhaps, 30 

 per cent less. 



LOG RULES. 



Except where hickory bolts are actually piled and sold, the crudest 

 of methods are used for measuring hickory logs and bolts. Logs 

 over 10 inches in diameter are usually scaled by the well-known 

 Doyle rule, which, in spite of its wide popularity, is one of the most 

 inaccurate of all log rules. a It gives values which are too high for 

 large logs and very much too low for small logs. On a conservative 

 estimate based upon a number of mill studies, 10-inch logs show an 

 overrun of as much as 70 per cent in the amount of rough lumber 

 which they will yield; 15-inch logs of 40 per cent; 20-inch logs of 

 20 per cent; while logs more than 30 inches in diameter show an 

 underrun. This is particularly unfair in the case of hickory because 

 the sizes are usually small, and in an average lot of hickory logs 



"Forest Service Bulletin 36, "The Woodsman's Handbook;" Forest Service Bul- 

 letin 73, "Grades and Amount of Lumber Sawed from Yellow Poplar, Yellow Birch, 

 Sugar Maple, and Beech;" Report of the New Hampshire Forestry Commission for 

 1905-6. 



