LOGGIKG IK THE DOUGLAS FIR REGION. 37 



good ground and s6cond-growth timber along the Columbia River, 

 was 60 feet. 



Long logs can be cut into shorter lengths at the landing, boom, or 

 mill with a power machine more economically than in the woods with 

 a crosscut saw, and special orders for unusal lengths can more readily 

 be filled. 



LONG BUTTING. 



Some trees are defective at the base, the defect consisting of rot, 

 shake, and pitchy material extending 6 feet or more up the tree. 

 These defective ends will make little lumber, so little or no scale is 

 given them. To include them with the butt logs would be poor 

 economy, since it costs practically as much to log and saw defective 

 as sound material,, particularly in the case of operators who haul 

 over a common-carrier railroad. This has resulted in the practice 

 of bucking off that portion of the tree which in the judgment of the 

 log marker is defective. The practice is known as long butting. 



Old hemlock trees frequently need to be long butted, the defect 

 at the base — rot, shakes, and checks — destroying the utility of the 

 butt logs, though these defects are not so common or so injurious in 

 western hemlock as in the eastern species. The operator can not 

 afford to take any chances in the utilization of hemlock. Sound 

 hemlock logs sold in 1916 from $5.50 to $6.50, in rare cases $7, per 

 thousand feet, a price that about equals the price of the lowest grade 

 of Douglas fir; so there is a comparatively small margin of profit, 

 sometimes no margin. Then, too, if hemlock that has not been long 

 butted is dumped into the water, driven, rafted, and towed some dis- 

 tance, or stays in the water any length of time, a portion of the butt 

 logs will be lost through sinking or straying. The loss because of 

 hemlock " sinkers " will vary. If no preventive measures are taken, 

 such as long butting, cutting long-butt logs, " swinging " the butt 

 logs in the raft, etc., the loss may amount to 10 or 15 per cent. 



BREAKAGE. 



With the felling of the first tree the logger was confronted with a 

 problem of breakage, which was to remain to a great extent unsolved 

 to the present and reach its most aggravated form on the Pacific 

 coast. 



No comprehensive study of breakage as it relates to this region has 

 been made. Few companies have seen fit to study the losses that 

 result. Different men have different ideas as to what the percentage 

 is in the region as a whole or in a given camp. One head bucker puts 

 the loss at 30 per cent of the timber felled, taking it straight through, 

 60 per cent of this loss being due to carelessness. Others estimate 

 the breakage at from 5 to 15 per cent of the total merchantable stand. 



