SELLING WOODLOT PRODUCTS ON MICHIGAN FARMS. 27 



that the bolts be "cut from live timber, free from gnarls, doze, rot, and 

 large knots.. . .Bolts should be piled up in ranks with a space of about 

 two feet between piles and on poles to keep them up from the ground 

 until they are seasoned and ready to ship. All culls and bolts under 4 

 inches in diameter will be thrown out."* 



Prices paid for 37 inch excelsior bolts in 1914, delivered to factories in 

 Grand Rapids, were about as follows: 



Basswood (peeled) , per cord |5.50-|6.00 



Aspen (peeled), per cord 5.00 



Aspen (unpeeled) , per cord 4.00 



At Grand Rapids there is a limited marketf for 36-inch bolts of soft 



elm, basswood, and soft maple for the manufacture of fiber "binder," to 



be used in place of hair in plaster block making. These bolts must be 



between 8 and 36 inches in diameter, with solid centers to take the dogs 



of the lathe; pieces with "dozy" centers are culled out and rejected. 



The bolts may be limby, if the limbs are trimmed flush with the bark, 



but they must be straight and the ends must be square. Double heart 



is no defect. The bolts are bought from farmers or jobbers ; and in 1914 



the prices offered, delivered at the factory, were |6 when the bolts 



were mainly soft elm, and from |5 to |5.50 when mainly basswood 



and soft maple. 



Wood for distillation. — Hardwood distillation for the manufacture 

 of charcoal, wood alcohol, and acetates consumes a large amount of cord- 

 wood of maple, beech, and birch, and offers a means of disposing of the 

 top wood, small trees, and low grade logs left after disposing of the 

 more valuable products. This material is taken with the bark on in 

 lengths of 4 feet or 50 inches, and to minimum diameters of usually 3 

 or 4 inches. The price paid per standard cord of distillation wood de- 

 livered at the factory is in the neighborhood of $3 or $4. Most of 

 the companies get their material largely from the cutover areas of the 

 big lumber companies, and some of them require that the wood shall be 

 "body-wood," with only a small mixture of branches. Pieces over 6 

 inches in diameter must be split in a manner generally similar to that 

 described under "Excelsior." 



Firewood. — Probably no other form of woodlot material has brought 

 such large aggregate returns as firewood ; and yet this is, in the majority 

 of cases, the least paying use to which good log timber can be put. It 

 offers, however, practically the only means of disposing of branch and 

 top wood, defective logs and slabs, of some species throughout the State 

 and of all species in some parts of the State. 



The best fuel wood is hickory; high prices are paid for it, but its 

 promise for much more exacting and remunerative uses is so great that 

 the farmer who has it in his woodlot should hesitate to sell for firewood 

 any but the lowest grade timber and the refuse left in logging. This is 

 also true of other woods, such as ash, oak, walnut, cherry, basswood, 

 rock elm, and even thrifty second-growth hard maple, yellow birch, and 

 soft e-m. Beech is generally less valuable than most of the other species 

 for many uses, and second growth and defective beech trees can often 

 be cut from a woodlot and sold to advantage as cordwood. This 

 affords a means of improving overstocked woodlots by thinning out the 

 trees and giving the most desirable of them more light and growing 



*From printed specifications furnished by the Excelsior Wrapper Co., Grand Rapids, Mich. 

 tThe'Alabastine Co., Grand Rapids; associated with the Michigan Gypsum Co. 



5 



