Popular Mechanics/Volume 49/Issue 1/Skylining our Lumber
Tractors Equipped with Winches and Steel Cable Handle Enormous Logs Which Would Have Taxed the Strength of Many Teams and an Entire Crew of Men a Few Years Ago
The last of the great industries to abandon man power has been converted to machinery. Oil and gasoline engines, electric motors and the law of gravity, applied to the forests, have brought out more logs this year than men ever moved before, made of lumbering an organized industry, and left undamaged thousands of square miles of new-growth timber to replace that which men and mules and oxen had trampled into the slopes of our mountains.
An endless-tread tractor, tanklike, but equipped for peace instead of war, rolls into the forest, three men riding it. In the midst of the grove, the great machine halts, a portable saw is unloaded and placed against a towering pine, three feet thick at the base. Power is applied from the engines. In fifteen minutes the tree lies on its side. Again the saw is moved along the log, taking off the branches one at a time. Block and tackle, with a running pulley, is attached to the upper end. A pit is dug at the base. The tractor backs away, picking up the slack in a steel cable running from the top of the fallen trunk to a winch on the front of the machine. The tree rises again, is guyed into place, and becomes what is known among the lumberjacks as a "spar tree."
From its top, or from the top of another high tree, a gang of men, with the aid of the tractor's winches, runs a steel cable to another tree, probably half a mile away down the hill. For a radius of 500 feet around the spar tree, the tractor and its portable saw cuts trees, as a man with a mower might cut wheat. As fast as one falls, it is trimmed and shot down the hill. With two tractors and six men, one California lumber company has cut and delivered, to the pond at the mill, 40,000 feet of lumber a day. Approximately thirty men with four or five ox or mule teams would have been required under the old man-power system, to get out that much timber in two days—instead of one.
When the logs arrive at the base of the mountain—for most of our forests are now on lofty mountainsides—it may be that the mill is still miles away. If there is a large stream, the logs are rolled into it and floated down. But here, machinery has eliminated not only labor, but danger. If the logs jam, a cable from the tractor is thrown around the key log, and with sixty horsepower straining at the steel line, that particular timber is jerked out, and the jam freed. No longer do men with canthooks risk their lives amid the tumbling logs, and dynamite is no more needed to free the crossed timbers in the stream. If logs run wild, as they do in high water, sliding over the dam at the mill, the modern lumberjack, turned into an imitation cowboy, "ropes" them as they whirl in the stream, and the tractor does the rest, pulling them gently to the bank and snaking them back up to the mill.
With the "Spar Tree" Set Up and Rigged, the Tractor Is Able to Handle All the Logs for 500 Feet Around, and Later Skyline Them to the Road or Railway
Where there is no stream at the bottom of the aerial railway, several new mechanical means of getting the logs to the mill have been put into use this year. If a large area is to be logged, a single-track railroad is laid without much grading, and over it comes a train of great flat cars, pulled by what seems to be an interurban express car. As a matter of fact, it contains a Diesel engine, direct-connected to a generator, providing current for electric motors on the wheels. This is an entirely new factor in logging, which has been tried during the past year with great success. But, if a track cannot be laid to the base of the mountain, the tractor is called in again, and, by several methods, the logs are taken to the mill. First, there is the "bummer," a four-wheeled dolly, of which two are towed behind the tractor, a third of the log being raised up, also by tractor power, and rested on the bummer, while the remainder trails behind. Then there is the old and simple method of "snaking" the logs out, by means of chains attached to the tractor, as many as six or seven logs being handled in this manner in tandem by two men and tractor.
Skylining. Showing How the Aerial Tramway Works, and, Inset, a Huge Log Crossing a Ravine
More recently, "high-wheelers" have been applied, in which the log is picked up between the wheels of a two-wheeled skeleton trailer and towed by the tractor. This is particularly effective where there are many stumps or bowlders, since the logs are carried high enough to clear such ground obstacles. In the swamps, where there is mud all the way out, floats or skids, made on the ground from smaller logs, are towed out by tractor. Even the donkey engine, which in some lumber camps superseded the team, in turn has been virtually put out of business by the portable power plant, with its winches filled with steel cable, and its ability to move itself anywhere. Fire danger from the old-time "donk" also is removed. Other mills, in Montana and California, similarly situated on the downhill sides of their forests, use chutes or flumes. Running sixty miles from mountain mill to railroad, in California is the longest lumber flume in the world. It handles cut timbers by a stream of water, the lumber being halted at any loading station by ropes and snubbing posts.
One large lumber company has now in process of construction, at a cost of $250,000, an incline railroad down one side of a deep gorge and up the other, to be operated by electricity. This installation will make available approximately half a billion feet of lumber, sufficient to occupy this mill for the next eighteen years. The distance is about ten miles. One 200,000-pound electric hoist will drop the lumber-laden cars into the canyon, where another similar hoist will lift them out. The cars will slide down and climb out at a virtually uniform speed of 600 feet a minute.
Lumbermen agree that profit in their in- dustry depends on three factors: first, getting the fallen tree to the mill at the lowest possible cost; second, with speed that will increase volume, and, third, with least possible damage to standing growth and young timber. The first two have been supplied by the new mechanical devices. The third is being materially helped by the elimination of large numbers of men working in gangs, the removal of long teams of mules or oxen, and the complete stoppage of sparks and other fire hazards by the use of oil and gasoline engines and electric motors.
Two Views of a Sixty-Mile Flume. Built at a Cost of $3,000 a Mile, to Carry Lumber from a California Sawmill to the Railroad
But these mechanical devices have not taken all the adventure out of the life of the lumberjack. Half a million feet of logs recently escaped from a main boom at Merced Falls, Calif., during a sudden rise in the river and jammed against an irrigation dam three miles down the stream. There was no way to get these logs back by ordinary methods, since the stream was too swift for navigation. There was danger of damage to the irrigation dam, and for this reason the time-worn use of dynamite to break the jam was impossible. A tractor, with winch and steel cable, was called in, the logs snaked out one at a time, and then picked up by high-wheelers and carried back to the mill at comparatively small cost. Three men rescued all the logs, a job 100 men working under old-time methods of logging could not have accomplished.
TONGS TO REMOVE CLINKERS SAVE COAL AND DIRT
Clinkers are easily removed from the furnace, without useless shaking of the grates and breaking up of the fire, with a special pair of tongs now on the market. Sharp prongs and a powerful gripper, operated by a lever, afford a convenient and efficient tool for getting hold of the most stubborn piece.
Gripping Tongs That Clutch the Stubborn Clinker, to Effect Its Removal without Shaking the Grates
MACHINE SOLVES PROBLEMS TOO DEEP FOR BRAIN
Where Answers to Profound Problems Are Ground Out by Machinery; the Electric "Brain" in Operation; It Is Described as an "Adding Machine Carried to an Extreme Design"
Answers to mathematical problems, too complex for the human brain to master, are ground out with ease on an electrical instrument devised by eastern engineers. Given the conditions of the problem, it writes out the answer as efficiently as another machine takes in lumber and chemicals and produces finished boxes of matches, the authorities report. It is called the "Product Integraph." Dr. Vannevar Bush, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of its makers, says that it might be classed "as an adding machine carried to an extreme design. Where workers in the business world are ordinarily satisfied with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of numbers, the engineer deals with curves and graphs which represent for him the past, present and future of the things in which he deals." The machine works especially in this field of graphs and curves. It is virtually a man-made brain which transcends human reasoning and readily plots the answer to some classes of problems that cannot now be solved by formal mathematics.
ARTIST WHO MODELS IN GLASS PRODUCES NOVEL EFFECTS
Interpreting Nature in Glass; at the Right Is a Tiny Tree of Delicate Design
TEN-MILE TUNNEL UNDER SEA TO LINK JAPANESE ISLANDS
Preparing to Lower the Caissons for the Submarine Tunnel That Will Link Japanese Cities; the Passage Will Be Ten Miles Long and Will Supplement Ferry Service
An engineering task, rivaling anything of its kind in the world, is under way in Japan, where builders are at work on a ten-mile tunnel that will connect the cities of Moji and Shimonoseki, now linked by ferries and boats that ply between the islands. In places, the water line of the tunnel will be eighty feet below the sea bed, and difficulties, such as soft strata and other obstacles, are being encountered.
ENGINE BURNS OIL AND WATER FOR CHEAPER POWER
Oil, water and air are mixed and burned to run an engine developed by a western inventor for the cheaper production of electric power and for many other purposes. An essential unit of the apparatus is said to be a springless mushroom valve that works successfully under the 5,000 pounds pressure required to prepare the proper emulsion for combustion. The mixture is also suitable for fuel in home heating plants. The engine employed by the inventor to demonstrate the performance of the fuel was a one-cylinder, ten-horsepower unit of an old model. A low grade of oil, air and water were pumped in and compressed to 5,000 pounds in a small steel cylinder. The engine was first started with gasoline and the mixture cut in later. The exhaust from the emulsified fuel was free of carbon and noxious fumes, and was cool, according to reports.
BASKET BALL WITHOUT LACING TO IMPROVE GAME
Absence of lacing, and a side valve for inflating it, are features of a basket ball introduced this season. The bladder is attached inside and air introduced through a valve screwed into an opening in the cover. When the valve is removed for playing, a little rubber flap closes the hole. The slit through which the bladder is put in, is sewed up, making a smooth surface, and the stitches do not have to be undone except to remove the bladder and put in a new one.
AERIAL MAPS CUT CITY TAXES
Using aerial maps to locate tax dodgers has proved successful in five Connecticut towns, according to the department of commerce. In Middletown, the first to have an aerial photographic survey made, 1,896 buildings which were not on the tax lists were disclosed by the map. Seventy-nine stores located on Main street alone were in the list. As a result of the survey, which cost $4,000, the Middletown tax list was raised from $20,500.000 to $31,500,000 and the tax rate reduced from thirty mills to twenty-four mills. Rocky Hill, Conn., increased its tax list from $1,500,000 to $4,000,000 by locating buildings which had escaped taxation, and as a result lowered the tax rate from twenty-two to eight and a quarter mills.
AUTO BED THAT DISAPPEARS ADDS COMFORT TO TOURS
Entirely concealed when not in use, and easily extended, a folding automobile bed invented by a southern man is hidden under the rear-seat cushion, when closed, and pulls out over the front seats. It has comfortable springs and keeps the bedding shielded from dust.
When Not in Use. This Bed for the Auto Tourist Folds Up under the Rear-Seat Cushions
MINIATURE CASTLE DOLL HOUSE ATTRACTS CROWDS
Doll-House Castle Which Visitors Pay to See
Built in one summer as the result of a hobby for model construction, a miniature doll house in the form of a castle is proving a source of revenue for its owner, a California man. He charges admission for inspection of the curious three-story abode, and visitors gain access by stooping low under the doorways and squeezing through sidewise. The house was built after he had seen a similar model owned by a friend.
LAUNDRY USES STEEL BOXES TO COLLECT PACKAGES
Steel collection boxes, resembling the large-size parcel boxes of the post office department, are used by a Nebraska laundry to collect the bundles of its patrons. The boxes are scattered through the city on private property, usually a corner occupied by a gasoline-filling station. They attract laundry customers to the filling stations, and make it convenient for them to deliver their laundry while getting gas service. The laundry-collection wagons make regular rounds, and the finished work is then delivered direct to the customers' homes.