Red River Has Modern Moore Kifns

The Red River Lumber Company, Westwood, California, has one of the most efficient dry kiln organizations and most modern battery of kilns of any plant on the Pacific Coast. Charlie Lewis is in charge of the dry kilns and lumber from the green sorting chain to the dry sorter comes under his supervision. He has a corps of assistants for tallying the lumber, charging and discharging the kilns, and adjusting schedules during the process of drying.

More than 350,000 feet of lumber per day is segregated according to kind, grade, thickness and length before being stacked on kiln trucks. This lumber is held in charges, segregated for kind, thickness and grade before being put into the kilns. When a kiln is available, a charge of lumber is dried at low temperature and controlled humidities. Automatic instruments are used for controlling the drying process at each end cf the kiln and the operator adjusts the temperature and humidity at twelve hour intervals.

Large capacity fans are used to circulate the air across the loads from one side to the other in the kiln and this cross circulation is reversed at twelve hour intervals. The range of schedules is from 100 to 150 degrees F., so that there is no kiln stain, check or any unavoidable kiln degrade. When the stock is uniformly dried to about 8/o moisture content it is given a final reconditioning treatment to relieve stresses, casehardening and to give a uniform distribution of moisture content in the boards. This steaming treatment is done after first cooling the stock in the kiln with water sprays and using a high humidity tre-atment at 20 degrees higher temperature than final drying temperature. The elements of heat, humidity and circulation are under close control and the stock is uniformly dried in the minimum of time to a moisture content of about87o.

The kilns are of Moore's Reversible Cross-Circulation type of the latest design employing a longitudinal shaft and sufficient ventilation to change the air in the kiln once a minute. The company has a battery of 3l kilns, 2Z of which have been built by the N{oore Dry Kiln Company during the last fifteen months. F'our additional Moore Reversible Cross-Circulation Kilns are now being placed in operation.

The accor1lpanying picture graphically illustrates the size of the Red River Lumber Company drying operation, an interesting feature of rvhich is that the buildings are entirely of rvood constr.uction. This company has a yearly output of more than 250 million feet of Sugar Pine, Ponderosa Pine, Incense Cedar and Fir lumber and rvith their new kilns, they lvill be able to season a greater amount of their output than ever before.

Loggers Makc Ready for Summ et Fhe Fight

Seattle, June 13.-Five hundred and forty-six billion (546,000,000,00O) feet of stonding timber in the Douglas Fir region of Oregon and Washington face another summer onslaught of forest fires.

Twenty-nine million (29,000,000) acres of forest land on the Pacific slope of these tr,vo states-"the greatest treeclad area in all the lvq1ld"-tnust be defendecl on a thousand fronts during the months to come.

First move of the defence campaign was made by the loggers and lumbermen of the West Coast on Saturday, May D, when logging operators, superintendents, foremen and camp rvardens of the Willamette Valley region met to prepare for the coming war in the woods. This is the first of a series of meetings called by the Conservation Department of the West Coast Lumbermen's and Pacific Northwest Loggers Associations, \\r. G. Tilton, Forester, in charge. Two similar meetings rvere scheduled for June 5, at Wilars, Oregon, and for June 12, at Bordeaux, \\rashington. Each meeting will open at 1O a.m. Others will follow.

Questions of fire protection, slash disposal, snag falling, restocking, and other forest conservation problems will be threshed out, to make effective in lumber localities the program of the National Forest Conservation Conference.

Forest authorities agree that keeping out fire is 75 per cent of reforestation in the Douglas Fir region. The fire danger is highest in the late summer, r'vhen dry weather and careless campers combine in menace'

Only 3 per cent of forest fires of consequence in past years have started from logging operatior-rs. Loggers and lumbermen, with public forest forces, are the shock troops in every major fire fight.

During the West Coast fire season, government and private forest agencies are held under a system of general orders, like an army staff ready for mobilization. Hundreds of big-timber lookottt stations are constantly n.rannecl. Patrols march the mountain ridges. Scouting airplanes skirn the big trees rvhen the lookottts have poor visibility. Stocks of modern forest-fire-fighting apparatus are kept ready in every logging headquarters. Portable pumps, rvith knapsack packs of hoselines, are typical standard equipment on logging operations. Logging railroad pump cars and locomotives may be lined out in a service of supply for a battle against fire the moment 3 llrarttil'lg crackles from the wire. Forest protection organizatiorls are provided with portable radio sets. Tractor fleets become fighting squadrons when smoke bursts from the treetops.

That is war in the woods. \\rest Coast foresters and loggers also work constantly for conservation, according to the program of the National Forest Conservation Conference and the rules of the lumber industry's Conservation Department. Snags and dead trees are felled in logging. Slash is burned under safe conditions. Blocks, or islands, of seed trees are now left on the cutover. This conservation work steadily increases in scoPe.

Yet one man with a match can unloose hell in the rvoods' One man with a match can ruin thousands. One man with a match can destroy in a moment centuries of nature's labor. The man with a match is the major problem in forest conservation on the West Coast.

T'OB SOMD T'AOTOBY T'LOORS

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San Francisco l|!5 Dlcrlc Blft.

- Telephone Sutter 7520

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