10 BULLETIN 718, TT. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
5. Do not try to keep your "axes sharp and serviceable with a rusty 
file. Try a grindstone. 
6. Do not try to skid saw logs without skidding tongs, swamp hook, 
cant hook, and chain. Handspikes and hand-beam levers are out of 
fashion. 
7. Do not try to haul saw logs on a lumber wagon. Try a heavy 
truck or a logging sled if you have sufficient snow. 
8. Do not try to haul saw logs uphill or over rocks and brush. 
Build a road. 
9. "Work steadily and systematically. If half your crew leaves on 
Saturday and does not return to work until the following Tuesday, 
get steadier men. Blow your whistle at 7 o'clock every morning 
and get to work at 7, not 9. 
10. Do not unload your saw logs all over the mill yard and then 
roll them over rocks, boulders, slabs, brush, and mud holes with a 
handspike. Build a downhill skidway in front of the carriage, and 
the logs will roll clown by gravity. 
11. If your mill can manufacture 10,000 feet per day, see that it 
does that every day you run it. Capacity cutting for one day dur- 
ing the season does not count. 
12. If your boiler is old and leaky, get it repaired and inspected. 
A rusty, leaky boiler is likely to stop all business quite suddenly. 
Watch the water gauges. 
13. Use dry slabs and clean water in making steam. Green slabs, 
dirty water, and a leaky boiler make a bad combination. Use the 
mud cock frequently. 
14. Do not try to manufacture merchantable lumber with a dirty, 
lusty engine set on a rotten foundation with a shaky mandrel, rotten 
belting, a saw out of " true " and running at half speed under insuffi- 
cient steam from a leaky boiler. It can't be done. 
15. Do not expect your mill to be a profitable business if you leave 
your mill machinery exposed to the weather the year round. You 
will soon have a junk pile, not a sawmill. 
16. Do not expect to get the value of your lumber if you throw it 
in a heap in the mill yard instead of piling it properly and grading it. 
17. Do not sell your lumber on credit or on time. You have not 
sufficient capital to do a credit business. 
18. Do not keep your accounts on a shingle or marked up on a 
board. A small Dr. and Cr. account book is much more satisfactory. 
19. Do not try to run a sawmill, however small, by rule-of -thumb, 
hit-or-miss methods that your grandfather practiced. They will 
not work in this day and age. 
20. Do not forget that this is the twentieth century and that the 
management and successful handling of a portable mill is a twen- 
tieth-century problem. 
