Lather, you know what timber inspectors are called? (I have no idea why I'm saying this.)
"Cruisers."
Timber cruisers.
"I'll be cruising that quarter-section by Opal Creek."
(Also used as a verb and verbetto.)
Cruisers estimate the amount of standing feet in a section of woods. ("Board feet." "A Universal Piece of Solid Wood" measuring a foot square, and an inch think. "Millions of board feet" are not uncommon.) A "section" is a measured-from-a-map portion of a stand of trees or woodlot or timber acreage (timber land); or it can be the other definition of "section" as a square mile. The woods are measured from maps, in square miles. It was set out that way in the beginning; the entire map of the state overlaid with a block grid of numbered square miles; that are "sections."
For example, to get the railroads to invest in track line through the virgin woods, they were given the royal inducement of Title to every other section (a freaking square mile!) of land, with all its trees and resources, on either side of the proposed route. Zowie, man. Deal.
Well, that got the rails built; that got the trees hauled out.
Boy; did it.
By the way, hills of trees do contain more board feet of lumber than flats. Un-even land, up to really steep, has more trees and wood per acre.)
The woods are in 40 and 160 acre lots, and 320, and 640 acres, which 640 acres is a square mile. Which is handy. (A word you may use in almost any business.) And you hire a cruiser to go out to a certain spot and tell you how many board feet of lumber are in the 15,000 trees on that 320 acre half square-mile up on the flank of Mt Hood.
Why do they call them cruisers? Timber cruisers? I don't know, and now I must find out. Because I hate stuff I don't know.
But I spose after three weeks up there in the woods, a plump Douglas Fir is the only date you can get.
The amazing things is, those guys, well, the old-timers anyway, can tell you whickles who should have stayed in Fresno with the family feedlot fortune exactly how many board feet are in those 15K trees of varying age and condition. I mean a woodpecker drills a hole and they adjust the number. It's amazing. They just get really good at it.
Since the margin on wholesale lumber is incredibly thin, I mean incredibly for as big as wood is, if you mis-estimate a million board feet for Weyerhauser and they bid and ship it to the mill, they will roast your chestnuts over an open wigwam. You'll be taking down your pictures and packing them in the U-Haul.
You see them out there sometimes, crusiers, in the middle of the woods, these guys, and they're always ~ you know ~ get this, it won't be surprising ~ they're always concentrating. I'm not kidding. They're usually wearing those orange vests, and deer horns.
You wonder what they're doing out there, but you don't want to talk to them.
"Hi! How's the cruise going?"
That would be an embarrassing moment.
There are certain things you don't do, like saying "That cow is lifting his tail!"
They're "in-house;" or hired through exotic relationships. They're distinguished-service, elite surveyors. I mean they're surveyors, who went to post-grad-grad school. Like Columbia River Bar Pilots. Elite.
They must be coveted like Tintorettos. "I sent Albrecht up to the Starland Sale." "Good. Escher needs a nap."
A key link in Wood Products.
Wood Products are, frankly ~ awesome.
I mean it. Awesome.
You'll get to feel that way.
Really. And then you'll be a happier person.
So when the logs come down out of the canyons, on log trucks, (amazingly), the guys who actually measure the logs, physically, with a stick and a coffee pot, are "scalers." But not "timber scalers;" no no, uh uh; ~ "log scalers."
Because now they're LOGS!
Hoopeee!!
Logs are fun. If you're not a camper, bird, or neighbor to that 40 acre section that was old-growth forest and has been clear cut under a National Forest or BLM Timber Sale. You won't see those woods recover in your lifetime. You won't even see the scarred dirt grown over, for years. You have a pathetic mess, you do. It looks like the Ardennes, after the shelling. Broken, badly. You might as well move.
Logs really are neat though.
They're round.
Round.
I know ~ so what. But if that isn't cool, to you, you don't "get" logs. But chances are you do. Really! It's not like double-column accounting. Not at all. It's more romantic. Chances are you get logs and timber and boards. You. Get the simple beauty of logs and timber and lumber.
ALL OF LUMBER AND TIMBER AND SAW-MILLING IS ABOUT ROUND AND SQUARE.
Logs are round; lumber is square or rectangular or what I think is actually a parallelepiped. (A "box.") You know, what we call, "a rectangular box." A long, skinny, box.
Made of wood, no less. Think about it!
You have a box of wood!
A board, is a box, of wood. Neat. It's doesn't need wrapped, even. It fits the box, exactly, that you order it in; that you want it in. You want a 1-1/2 by 5-1/5 by 96 inch board (a 2x6-8') (8 board feet), and that's what comes. You can use the whole thing, any way you want.
LUMBER IS BEAUTIFUL.
Uh oh. I can tell I am about to wax wood here, so I will stop. Before enthusiasm carries me well into the day.
Uh. I see it might have already.
Oh boy. I'm going to be embarrassed, after I post this. I will have to hide outside, away from my computer.
But remind me to tell you about log decks. I love log decks. Well, they're not really decks, .....
|
