File:Canadian forest industries 1910 (1910) (19905275563).jpg

Title: Canadian forest industries 1910
Identifier: canadianforest1910donm (find matches)
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors:
Subjects: Lumbering; Forests and forestry; Forest products; Wood-pulp industry; Wood-using industries
Publisher: Don Mills, Ont. : Southam Business Publications
Contributing Library: Fisher - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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CANADA LUMBERMAN AND WOODWORKER the nearest point to the other and dragged from the first lake to the second or into other waterways. By such a use of this machine drives may be frequently shortened and timber rapidly brought from one watershed into another. The third machine above mentioned is a cableway skidder. It is the most versatile of the three machines and the one most suitable to the conditions of the eastern provinces of Canada. Its great versatility is due to the fact that it can at any time be used also as a slack rope or as a snaking machine, while the other two machines cannot be used as a cableway skidder. The cableway skidder conveys the logs in suspension instead of dragging them upon the ground. In addition to the suitable engine it consists primarily of an overhead cable, which is stretched from the tree at the engine, and the place of log deposit, to the farthest point from which these logs are to be skidded, and is there attached to a second tree, there being no intermediate support. A suitable carriage runs upon it and conveying ropes for handling this carriage and the logs. It will be seen that the logs, being brought in through the air, the nature of the ground has little or no influence upon the operations. Small cliffs, boulders, fallen timber, and underbrush, or mud, do not seriously hinder the operations of this machine as they do the others. In fact, recognizing that the reach of such a machine is over a quarter of a mile in a straight line, it may be said that there is no tree growing that it cannot secure, providing, of course, that its engine can be brought within a quarter of a mile of the tree. This is a point of vital importance the cost will vary more widely because the ground and nature of the timber will vary widely where such a machine would be used. There is practically no timber growing, however, no matter how rough the ground, that it will not skid for less than $2 a thousand feet, and its cost will reach a minimum in smooth ground with timber cutting over 10,000 feet to the acre. Under such conditions the cost will be as low as 35 cents per thousand feeet. Pine timber in Ontario runs anywhere from three thousand to thirty-five thousand feet to the acre. The average timber in Ontario cuts three to four thousand feet to the acre or else the operators do not go into it. In this latter case the saving has been as great as $6 per thousand feet compared with the methods previously in use. In a general way a saving can be effected in skidding in the eastern provinces of Canada by the use of steam, which will vary greatly under specific conditions, but wherever there are any difficulties steam will operate very much more cheaply than animals. The next operation in logging is the sleigh haul. Logs are usually put upon skids in the fall and held until the snow renders hauling possible. The logs are loaded on the sleds by hand. If in a flat country, this is quite expensive, but where there are suitable banks it is done quite cheaply. The loading of sleighs may be accomplished by steam, as is the loading of cars. The steam hauling of sleighs is also a recent introduction, and the successful methods are two. The first is the Lombard sleigh hauler, now built by a number of concerns in the East- ern provinces and the northern States under various names, which
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in that there is remaining a great deal of timber throughout the country which is inaeessible under the present methods. If 20 or 30 per cent, of such timber on a limit can be secured cheaply, it will add very largely to the value of any holding. Summing up the features of these three machines and their efficien- cies as compared with the present-day method of skidding by horses, the following is essentially true: Where the timber is small and scattered and standing on smooth ground, where it can be readily skidded by horses and does not go over 5,000 feet to the acre, the method of skidding by horses is the cheapest. Where the ground is smooth and the timber cuts over 5,000 feet and less than 10,000 feet to the acre, a snaking system is by far the cheapest. Where the distance necessary to the skid increases over fifteen hundred feet, under the same conditions, a slack rope system should be used, and on all timber standing on rough ground or in swamps, or on any kind of ground cutting over 8,000 feet to the acre, the cableway skidding method is the cheapest. As an example of the saving to be effected by these methods, it is asserted by those who are in touch with the conditions in Eastern Canada, that a snaking machine on smooth ground, with timber cutting five thousand feet to the acre and skidding a distance of one thousand feet in every direction from the machine, will skid logs for from 50 cents to $1.50 per thousand feet, either putting them on skids or loading sleds or putting them in the stream; that a slack rope machine pulling a distance of one-half mile, would handle logs under suitable conditions in timber cutting from five to fifteen thousand feet to the acre, for from 75 cents to $1.50 per thousand feet, and that with a cableway skidder consists of a modified traction engine, the driving wheel being replaced by two large chains, thus securing a suitable bearing upon the road for the machine. This machine, on any flat or uphill road over four miles in length, is more efficient than horses, and its comparative effici- ency rapidly increases with the length of the road and the amount of uphill work. Thus, on a flat ten-mile road, it will haul for one-quarter the cost of hauling by horses. It is, however, not suitable to very rough roads or very steep grades—that is to say, grades of eight or ten per cent. Nor is it particularly desirable on short roads; that is to say, under three or four miles in length, the various operations that have to be made for it, and its cumbersomeness, rapidly decreasing its efficiency on short hauls. It travels on a road approximately the same as an ordinary sleigh, and requiring little if any more preparation. The second method of sleigh hauling is by hoist, similar to an incline hoist, as used in railroad logging. This is a short-haul method solely, and one not to be used on a flat road or a road with a moderate grade, unless that grade be uphill. It is a method, however, by which loaded sleighs can be hauled up any grade encountered, no matter how steep, and by which loaded sleighs may be lowered down hills too steep for horses to go over safely. Or it may haul empty sleighs up hills, thus saving the horse's. It is a device by which logs can be taken from one watershed to another cheaply and easily. Thus a large saving can be made in eliminating the improvement of small streams, the logs being taken over the intervening height of land to the main streams, and frequently roads can be very materially shortened by disregarding the natural grade which has to be followed with horses, and by cutting over

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