296 A MANUAL FOR NORTHERN WOODSMEN 
WEIGHT OF MATERIALS 
A cubic foot of water weighs .62£ lbs. 
A cubic foot of cast iron weighs about. 450 lbs. 
A cubic foot of wrought iron or steel weighs about .... 480 lbs. 
Woods when thoroughly seasoned weigh per cubic foot 
about as follows. Absolute drying in a kiln will lessen 
these figures about 10 per cent. Green wood is from 50 
to 80 per cent heavier. 
White pine, white spruce, balsam fir, aspen .27 lbs. 
Red spruce, hemlock, poplar .30 lbs. 
Pitch pine, Norway pine, black spruce, white maple .... 31-35 lbs. 
White birch, red maple, tamarack, white ash, yellow birch, 
red oak . 40-45 lbs. 
Beech, sugar maple .about 48 lbs. 
White oak, black birch.. about 52 lbs. 
A cord of green spruce pulp wood weighs about 4500 lbs.; 
fir and white pine a little more. A cord of dry spruce pulp 
wood weighs 3000 to 3500 lbs. Pine, fir, and poplar are 
somewhat lighter if in exactly the same moisture condition. 
Green hard wood by the cord varies greatly in weight. 
A cord of white birch spool-wood weighs 6000 to 7000 lbs.; 
sugar maple and yellow birch are 10 per cent heavier; soft 
maple, ash, basswood, and poplar are somewhat lighter 
than white birch. For green split cord wood 4000 to 6000 
lbs. are the usual limits of weight. Medium dry birch, 
beech, and maple, split, 66 per cent solid in the pile, weighs 
about 3000 lbs. to the cord. 
A thousand feet of old growth spruce logs, Andros¬ 
coggin scale, weighs about 6000 lbs., and this is probably 
the lower limit for green soft-wood lumber, while southern 
yellow pine at 8000 to 10,000 lbs. is the limit in the other 
direction. Between these limits there is wide variation by 
reason of scale and quality. 
Seasoning decreases the weight of timber by 30 to 50 
per cent as a rule, and at the same time increases its 
strength by 50 to 100 per cent. 
