70 BULLETIN 440, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
The power plant usually consists of an engine and two boilers. 
The engine is frequently underneath the mill and the boilers in a 
separate boiler house. The mill floor is commonly raised from the 
ground in order to make room underneath for shafts, belting, and 
conveyors. The building is frame with a board roof. A conveyor is 
installed for carrying out sawdust and a light track built to an 
outside burner for slabs. The cost of the equipment in such a plant 
is about $10,000. The cost of delivery, installation, and construction 
of the building brings the cost of the completed plant up to SI 5,000 
or $17,000, exclusive of pond and yard. 
In a representative mill of this type two men are required to 
operate the log j acker, do the scaling, and roll the log's down on the 
deck. The logs are turned on the carriage by the steam nigger; 
and two men, a setter and a dogger, handle the setworks and the 
dogs on the carnage. The sawyer is located at the saw and the 
oflbearer places the boards and slabs on the rolls as they are sawed 
from the log. The pointer transfers boards from the rolls to the 
edger table and the edgerman manipulates the edger. One man is 
stationed at the rear of the edger and two men manage the trimmer. 
The slabs are loaded on cars and delivered to the fuel piles or slab 
fire by two men. The remainder of the crew consists of a foreman, 
an engineer, a fireman, a filer, a millwright, and a night watchman. 
The total crew contains 19 men, and the daily cost is about $63.20. 
Based upon an average daily output of 38,000, the direct cost of 
sawing is SI. 66 per 1,000. With a daily average of 40,000 the direct 
cost is $1.58 per 1,000. The labor cost of maintenance is largely 
covered by the wages of the sawyer, engineer, and millwright. The 
additional cost for supplies and overhauling is judged to be from 
25 to 40 cents per 1,000. Thus the cost of sawing is from Si. 90 to 
S2.10 per 1,000 feet. 
There are two common methods of loading lumber for yard 
delivery at these mills. One is to load the boards on small cars 
directly behind the trimmer; the other is to allow the lumber to pass 
upon a sorting table behind the trimmer, from which table it is loaded 
on various lumber cars or trucks. The latter method allows a better 
separation of the different grades. The crew is the same in each 
instance, a grader and two sorters. The daily labor cost is $9.25, 
or the equivalent of 24 cents per 1,000 for a daily output of 38,000. 
Thus the average cost of sawing and sorting in mills of this class is 
from S2.10 to $2.40 per 1,000, depending upon the cost of labor and 
material and the class of lumber manufactured. 
Circular mills are frequently intermittent hi operation and thus 
incur costs while idle. Crews are often less efficient than in larger 
mills, and the mill equipment and yard facilities generally are not 
such as to obtain the best quality of lumber from the logs. 
