354 REPORT OF THK FORESTRY COMMITTEE 



"The heading is cut and planed in small boards, which are laid together 

 in squares from which the heads are cut. 



"Close utilization is practised, the boilers being run with refuse for fuel. 



The balance is shipped to the distillation plant a mile below, where it is used 



, for the manufacture of gunpowder charcoal. In this mill again nothing is 



wasted. Whether the fine large hardwood logs show a larger financial return 



in the form of staves than lumber was not ascertained. 



"The last process for utilization of all remaining hardwood materials, 

 wood waste in tops, defective logs and small trees, also the stave mill waste, 

 is the destructive distillation plant. This plant uses 100 cords each 24 hours, 

 and since there is no offal wood, the boilers are fired with soft coal. The 

 products are charcoal, wood alcohol, and acetate of lime. 



"The plant is especially organized to minimize the labor in handling 

 wood and products. The wood is air-dried in the yard for 15 months and 

 then loaded on iron cars and pulled into the charring ovens, car and all. The 

 charring is completed in 24 hours, when doors on the opposite sides of the 

 ovens are opened and the cars pulled out into air-tight cooling' ovens, whfere 

 they remain another 24 hours, and are then moved into second cooling ovens 

 for the third 24 hours, when the coal is cool enough to be loaded into box 

 cars direct for shipment to the iron furnace. The material is not taken off 

 the car from the woodyard until the coal is loaded into box cars. As each 

 oven is emptied at one end a new charge enters at the opposite end." 



EDUCATIONAL FEATURES 



TO promote a fuller utilization of timber, education along two lines is 

 required: First, that of the public to the use of products now rejected; 

 and, second, the lumbermen themselves, to more modern methods of 

 production and sale. 



Education of the Consumer 



One of the means by which the public can increase the utilization of timber 

 is through the acceptation of short and odd lengths of lumber where now only 

 longer and even lengths are taken. Aside from the sills, joists and plates, much 

 of the lumber actually used in buildings is of odd lengths or a mixture of odd 

 and even lengths when put into final position. The outside dimensions are com- 

 monly in multiples of two feet, but, allowing for the walls and partitions, it is 

 obvious that flooring cannot be laid in lengths which are multiples of two feet. 

 As a matter of fact, the flooring is finally cut to a great variety of odd and short 

 lengths. The same practice applies to ceiling, drop siding, and finishing lumber. 

 If building lumber were as closely utilized as factory lumber, and if the contractor 

 or builder ordered the material for a house in' the lengths actually required, odd 

 lengths and short lengths would find a ready market and much waste could be 

 saved. Under such circumstances, both the logger and the mill man could handle 

 defective logs that today have no market value, because short lumber does not 

 bring a price equal to the cost of its production. This is for no other reason than 

 that the consumer has been educated to think that if he wants four pieces of board 

 4 feet long he must buy a 16-foot board and cut it up into 4-foot lengths. The 

 making of even lengths only for many classes of lumber in our sawmills is entirely 

 unnecessary as has been proved in British Columbia, where lumber as it comes 



