ties by 56 percent. Fence-post production fell off 39 
percent. 7 
The production of poles and piling has more than 
tripled since 1936, mainly because of the accelerated 
demand for poles in the construction of rural electric- 
transmission lines and the greater use of smaller 
poles. 
Timber used by 27 miscellaneous plants in making 
a wide variety of products, such as handles, laths, 
shingles, and shuttle blocks, accounts for about 1 
percent of the commodity drain on the forest. 
Timber Used for Naval Stores 
The production of naval stores does not constitute 
a commodity drain on what is normally regarded as 
the timber supply. However, this industry is an im- 
portant part of Florida’s forest products industries, 
to be considered in the over-all picture. Further- 
more, naval stores operations greatly affect both 
growth and quality of pine timber in the State, as 
well as forest practices in general, and in this way 
indirectly influence the timber supply. 
Naval stores include two primary products, tur- 
pentine and rosin. In the past, these were obtained 
entirely from the crude gum of slash pine and long- 
leaf pine (fig. 9) and from pitch-soaked pine wood, 
including old-growth stumps. However, in fairly re- 
cent years an increasing quantity of sulfate turpen- 
tine is produced as a byproduct of the pulping proc- 
ess. In the naval stores season ending March 1950, 
48 percent of the turpentine in the United States 
was produced from crude gum, 30 percent from 
pine stumps and lightwood, and 22 percent from 
pulpwood (19). About 46 percent of the rosin is pro- 
duced from crude gum and the remainder from 
dead pine wood (1/9). 
a7 
F — 426184 
Ficure 9.—The trend in gum production in Florida is downward. In the 1948-49 season only 14 million trees were being 
| worked, compared to 36 million in 1936. 
The Timber Supply Situation in Florida 
13 
