Educating the lumbering industry away from extravagant practices is one of the important activities of the modern forestry experts.  Operators who manufacture handles, spokes, chairs, furniture, toys and agricultural implements could, by scientific methods of wood using, produce just as good products by using 10 to 50 per cent. of the tree as they do by using all of it.  The furniture industry not infrequently wastes from 40 to 60 per cent. of the raw lumber which it buys.  Much of this waste could be saved by cutting the small sizes of material directly from the log instead of from lumber.  It is also essential that sizes of material used in these industries be standardized.

The Forest Products Laboratory has perfected practical methods of building up material from small pieces which otherwise would be thrown away.  For example, shoe lasts, hat blocks, bowling pins, base-ball bats, wagon bolsters and wheel hubs are now made of short pieces of material which are fastened together with waterproof glue.  If this method of built-up construction can be made popular in all sections of the country, very great savings in our annual consumption of wood can be brought about.  As matters now stand, approximately 25 per cent. of the tree in the forest is lost or wasted in the woods, 40 per cent. at the mills, 5 per cent. in seasoning the lumber and from 5 to 10 per cent. in working the lumber over into the manufactured articles.  This new method of construction which makes full use of odds and ends and slabs and edgings offers a profitable way to make use of the 75 per cent. of material which now is wasted.

The vast importance of preserving our forests is emphasized when one stops to consider the great number of uses to which wood is put.  In addition to being used as a building material, wood is also manufactured into newspaper and writing paper.  Furthermore, it is a most important product in the making of linoleum, artificial silk, gunpowder, paints, soaps, inks, celluloid, varnishes, sausage casings, chloroform and iodoform.  Wood alcohol, which is made by the destructive distillation of wood, is another important by-product.  Acetate of lime, which is used extensively in chemical plants, and charcoal, are other products which result from wood distillation.  The charcoal makes a good fuel and is valuable for smelting iron, tin and copper, in the manufacture of gunpowder, as an insulating material, and as a clarifier in sugar refineries.

It is predicted that the future fuel for use in automobile engines will be obtained from wood waste.  Ethyl or “grain” alcohol can now be made from sawdust and other mill refuse.  One ton of dry Douglas fir or southern yellow pine will yield from twenty to twenty-five gallons of 95 per cent. alcohol.  It is estimated that more than 300,000,000 gallons of alcohol could be made annually from wood now wasted at the mills.  This supply could be increased by the use of second-growth, inferior trees and other low-grade material.