THE USES OF WOOD 



335 



oetter steel and its temper is more even and better 

 adapted to the work it is expected to do. But the great- 

 est improvement is in the teeth, the set, and the gage. 

 The old mill saws were thick and they wasted in the 

 form of sawdust with no pretense of economy, and while 

 doing it, they wasted power, for the thicker the blade, 

 the greater the force required to drive it through the 



AIR DRYING YELLOW POPLAR LUMBER 



The purpose of stacking lumber on end, in the manner shown in the 

 cut, is to give it good circulation of air to hasten the drying process. 

 Water does not flow out of the boards at the lower end by gravity, as 

 was formerly supposed. It evaporates from all parts of the surface. 



log. The modern saw is as thin as it can be made with- 

 out sacrificing its necessary strength. The bandsaw 

 cuts out hardly half as much dust as the thick circular. 

 The pioneer lumberman did not care for waste, but the 

 modern mill man cares, and he selects his saws with an 

 eye single to economy in wood and power. Spring-set 

 teeth always did smooth work, and the swaged tooth 

 was a long time gaining recognition ; but when it came it 

 proved to be a power saver as well as a saver of the 

 filer's time, and it was inevitable that such a tooth 

 should win the day for general use. 



An extra smooth surface on lumber, free from tooth 

 scratches, is not considered so important now as for- 

 merly ; for at the present time nearly all lumber is sur- 

 faced by machinery before it is used, and saw marks are 

 easily planed off; but formerly the planing was done 

 by hand and a rough surface involved extra work. 

 Attempts have been made to devise saws which will 

 smooth the surface of the lumber as it is sawed, all in 

 one operation ; but users have not generally looked on 

 that as an economy, since such lumber must still be 

 passed through planers if a true, smooth surface is 

 wanted. 



The problem of getting lumber to consumers after it 

 has been sawed, is enormous and complicated. The 

 manufacture is simpler than the distribution and some- 

 times cheaper. The transportation of lumber differs 

 somewhat from the transportation of logs, though both 



use the same means of conveyance, such as horse 

 vehicles, boats, rafts and steam trains. 



The problem was not always so complicated. When 

 mills were all small, and the customers lived within a few 

 miles, the same team that brought logs in might haul 

 lumber out. That method still holds with a few small 

 mills, but not with many. The lumber generally goes 

 farther than the logs come. The average length of the 

 log haul in the United States is considerably less than 

 100 miles, perhaps less than half of it though there 

 appear to be no figures showing exactly what the average 

 is. But the average length of the lumber haul by steam 

 roads is about three hundred miles. To be exact, it is 

 299 miles, according to figures published by the Bureau 

 of Foreign and Domestic Commerce. This does not 

 include water carriage or hauling by wagons. Were 

 these included, the average length of the lumber haul 

 would be shorter, but it would still be three or four times, 

 at least, as much as the average length of the log haul. 



Had railroads not been invented, the lumber business 

 could not have attained its present dimensions. The 

 industry's growth has been due more to steam transpor- 

 tation that to the invention of wood-working machinery. 

 Large sawmills would never have been built if railroads 

 had remained unknown. Distribution is often more 

 important than production. 



There appears to be a tendency of trade, or a rule 

 amounting almost to the force of a natural law, that the 



SAWMILL DRIVEN BY AN OVERSHOT WATER WHEEL 



Small mills like the one shown in the picture were the earliest in America 

 and they supplied the first settlers with lumber. The mill's capacity was 

 1,000 feet or so a day. A few such are still at work. This one is 

 operating among the mountains of eastern Tennessee. 



further wood is manufactured into products, the more 

 widely it is distributed. Apparently that tendency holds 

 true through all steps of manufacture until the final 

 users of the wood are reached. For example, a door, a 

 handle, a wagon felloe, a strip of flooring, or a piece of 

 furniture, may go 2000 miles to find a buyer, but a log, 

 unless of extraordinary value, would never go that far. 

 It cannot stand the freight charges, and only certain 

 kinds of lumber can stand the cost of a carriage so long. 

 Vehicles drawn by horses or oxen have always been 

 employed in hauling lumber, generally for short dis- 



