May 20, 1965 Shelton Mason County Journal | ![]() |
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9ec. 9upplemenE of SYrELTON.IW $0N COUNTY JOURNAE
!
O
Weeding the garden to get both
the weeds and vegetables to pay
out---this is tile aim of Simpson
Timber Company's thinning pro-
gram.
The Northwest's largest corn-
mereial thinning operation in
Douglas fir is carried on in the
Company's second-growth lands,
where some three thousand acres
are thinned yearly.
Cal Poe, operations forester, is
in charge of this program. Trees
are marked for cutting by Strop-
son foresters--Bill Kamin, Cass
Visminas, Ping Armstrong and
Poe. Then the logging operators
cut, haul and deliver the logs to
Simpson, and an operator may
gross $50,000 a year for his work.
THE AVERAGE operator logs
out one and a half million feet
a year, some hitting two and a
half to three million.
He has a sizeable investment in
equipment, with a yarder costing
around $12,000, loader of $15,-
000 to $20,000, and a truck for
$5,000 to $10,000.
Roads are laid out to make yard-
ing distance reasonable and most
operators bring out two truck
loads a day, each load sorted ac-
cording to destination and use.
HAROLD AHLSKOG, manager
of the fir and hemlock sawmills
division of Simpson T i m b e r
Company, watches a sticker-
stacker arrange lurnber at the
Remanufaoturing Plant. The ma-
chinery sends al,ong a row of
lumber, drops down a set of
separating s t i c k s and then
brings on another row of
boards.
Marketing is a key to a good
thinning program, according to
Poe. "I've always maintained the
log has to be usable before thin-
ning. Pre-market thinning is ex-
pensive."
PRINCIPAL MARKETS are the
export trade, which seeks the
smaller logs, and Simpson's own
mills, whose machinery is increas-
ingly able to handle the smaller
logs.
"In 1951 the smallest log we
could handle was ten inches,"
Poe explained. "Now we're put-
ting in four-inch logs."
The overall result of thinning,
said Poe, is increased production
of trees. A thinned area may pro-
duee 130 per cent of what an un-
thinned area would. While the final
stand on a thinned site will be
eighty per cent of normal, fifty
per cent additional will have been
picked up in the course of thin-
ning operations.
THINNING USUALLY begins
when an area's trees are 35 to 40
years 01d, and continues approxi-
mately every ten years.
Although foresters will always
disagree which individual trees
are to be taken, certain basic
principles are followed in thin-
ning, Poe said.
"Not: more than twenty-five per
cent of a stand is taken in any one
cut, nor is the stand ever reduced
to •less than seventy-five per cent
of normal," he explained. "The
dominant trees are never cut, un-
less they're deficient."
TREES ARE classified in four
groups. The dominants are those
reached by sunlight rm all four
sides. Co-dominants have three
sides open to the sun. Intermedi-
ates are lower down with the
tops exposed to the sun and the
supressed are just below the basic
canopy, covered by the branches
of the taller trees.
A tree cut for thinning must
open some other t|'ee to the sun-
light on one additional side.
Things have changed around
Shelton's sawmilling waterfront.
At 10:12~i o'clock the morning
of December 7, 1960, the first log
hit the gang saw in Simpson Tim-
ber Company's n e w Sawmill
Three, ushering in a new concept
0,.~, ,~; pla f$1~bu tton' ' milling.
;Demolished last year was Saw
Mill One, the original Reed Mill
built in 1926 as Simpson's first
venture into the production end of
q, , m-''~ ..........................................................................................................
one of the great companies of
the forest products industries of
the world o:n its 75th Anniversary.
We are proud of our long association with
and our role as a supplier of some of the
vital "tools of the trade". May the
next 75 years see even greater ,achieve-
ments for this wonderful friend.
6500 N.E. Halsey St.
Portland, Oregon
II
-T
Marking trees is ex':tcling work,
according to Poe. A m'm must be-
lieve in the value ()f iC, and he
must combine it with a number of
other ta.sks to avoid the mental
numbnes.~| which comes from full-
time marking.
The thinning program has an..
other adwmtage in the creation
of roads for future logging an(1
fire protection. Simpson maintains
some three hundred miles of roaa
on its second-growtt~ lands an,1
adds roads at the rate of about
twelve miles a year.
The more roads there are, the
quicker the access will he in ease
of fire, and, thinned lands do not
present as much fire hazard as
clear-cut lands because the canop-
ies of the remaining trees keep
moisture in the stands.
the timber industry.
Sawmill Two, designed by Hen-
ry M'eCleary in 1926 as the front
end of a door plant and purchased
when Simpson bought out Mc-
Cleary's timber company holdings
in 1941, still holds forth, althougl~
half of it has been removed. '.
Mills Two and Three together
produce between 150 and 175 mil-
lion board feet of lumber annually
under the direction of Harold Ahl-
skog, manager of Simpson's Fir
and Hemlock Sawmills Division.
MILL TWO HANDLES the big.
get" logs, 24 inches and over, whil~
Mill Three is designed as a small-
log mill, for diameters 24 inches
and under. Logs processed are 55
per cent hemlock, 44 per cent fir
and the rest Idaho white pine. Ce..
dar will be milled in the near fu.
ture, according to Ahlskog.
The new planing mill and lum-
ber storage shed is 107 by 800 feet
in size with 45-foot sidewalls. A
10-ton bridge crane with a 100-foot
span can make the trip from one
end of the shed to the other in one
minute.
FROM THE TIME the lumber
leaves the green chain until it is
placed in a boxcar for shipment,
it is scarcely handled by men at
all, Ahlskog said. Machinery does
practically everything.
Sorting and stacking is mechan~
teal. Eighty per cent of the planer
output is not touched by hand,
other than the work of graders
turning it to determine the grade.
Four pocket sorters lay sticks, fill,
reset themselves to receive the
next stacks. An end-butting ma-
chine evens up stacks. Automatic
strapping machinery squeezes the
sides and top of a stack and straps
it into a nice, neat package.
"This is merchandising at the
manufacturing level," Ahlskog ex-
plained. Ends of boards are spray-
ed with a protective and colorful
red paint, and attractive Simpson-
diamond wrapping polishes off the
job.
DRY KILN CAPACITY for the
mills is 90 million board feet a
year, With the lumber spending
five days in one of the eight kilns.
Steam heat removes the moisture
from the boards.
The advent of the pushbutton
mill has created a need for a new
type,, of mill worker, Ahlskog sazd.
With machines to do the work,"
he explained, "there's less need for
'strong Ole' in the mill. Men di-
rect the machinery, and they must :
be fast in reactions and mind.
Sometimes we have to try five or
six men for a job until we find
one who feels comfortable doing
this type of work."
AN OPERATOR sits in front of
a panel of buttons and lights hold-
ing a control stick that looks like
a floor gear shift. He looks much
as though he's in the cockpit of an
airplane as he makes split-second
decisions about the machinery he
directs.
Even though Mfll Three was the
latest thing in 1960, Ahlskog feels
the need to modernize continues.
"The lumber business is so com-
petitive we have to keep progress-
ing all the time," he explained.
"I will not accept anything as
the best way of doing things," he
said. "There is always a better
way."
DAVE POWELL is in charge of
mill operations from the cutting
of logs into timber to the green-
chain. Hugh McKay manages re-
manufacture, including dry kiln,
surfacing, grading, packaging and
shipping.
!~,~.~ ~.r:.~ r ..... : : ~ ~v .....................
....
~:~,~"
-
Powelrs general foremen are
Don McCuiston, day shift Mill
Two; Bill Kuhr, night shift Mill
Two; Louis Sergeant day shift Mill
Three; and Doyle Barnett, night
shift Mill Three. Dewey Blacker
is master mechanic, John Bishop
is chipping boss, Emil Johnson is
head filer and Paul Case, head
st6rekeeper.
Remanufacture foremen a r e
George Pitts, green planer; Leon-
ard Leeper, dry kiln; William Sta-
pleton, dry planer; Harold Cra-
met, production scheduler; Gary
Dillon, assistant production sched-
;uler, and Josephine Rau, produc-
tion clerk.
i Roger Anderson is the methods
engineer.
On a beautiful ten-acre woodsy
site ne').r Bellevue, research is
housed in a modern building testi-
fying to the struelm'al and esthet-
ic wonders of wood. The man in
charge is R. J. Scidl, Company vice
president for research.
IeAILUI~E, F A L L O U T and
change are lhe things from which
research learns, and the goals are
complete and ever-better use of
what comes from the tree."~
"The common product of re-
search is faihtre," Seidl explained.
"Out of a hundred ideas that; reach
the lab, maybe ten are worked on
in some depth. Out of th(~se you
might get two to four u) the
market and one might fail at
the market place."
Research does a pretty good job
just to contain failures in the lab,
1)ecause it's far less expensive to
learn in the lab thm~ the market,
and the experience research goes
through permits management to
make better products.
"FALLOUT" from research be-
ing done by others is of great
vMue, according to Seidl. "People
visit our lab from chemical comp-
anies to offer us something, for
instance, because we have techni-
cal people who are capable of
under'standing their ideas."
Change is the climate of modem]
research, which probes the tech-
mate acceptance as a profitable
item in the marketplace.
THE RESEARClt division is
staffed by twenty-five persons
specializing in a number of sec-
tions: adhesives, chemicals and
glue; coatings and overlays; build-
ing-board research; building con-
struction; technical se~wices and
administration.
Some of the studies currently
in progress deal with improved de-
sign and acoustical properties of
ceiling tile, overlays for plywood
and particle board, treatment to
reduce flame spread in wood prod-
uets and combination of redwood
and plastic in an exterior siding
system that requires no paint for
twenty years.
Why was the research head-
quarters established at Bellevue?
The lab got its start in Shelton
as an aid to the insulation board
plant, but the growth of the Comp-
any necessitated a centralized de.
partment to serve all divisions.
BELLEVUE WAS chosen as a
location close to a large universi-
ty, close to the Company's main
office, attractive to research peo-
ple in giving them a choice of
large-city or suburban living, close
to a major airport for nation-wide
travel and near a large center of
consideration for convenient try.
ing put of products.
DAVE POWELL
Mill Operations I-I~d
of
is most
it$
to a long"
upon the
75th
TOM
EQUIPMENT
THANK YOU, SIMPSON TIMBER
for the many manifestationS of
tll}ll EI6HBORS
You have given our
organization and'our
community during" '
75 years
Voiture 135 • Mason County
(guaranteed 40 years)
Flameproof Lumber
* $ *
OSMO SALTS
0
Oreosole Treaimenls
at
tends Congratulations and Best Wishes
the 75t~ Anniversary o/a great
all its
J;