:t, Weyerhoeuser Timber Go.

Hondling Logs on Titonic

Scole by New llethods

The new methods of handling logs on a titanic scale are moving tons of timber around like matchsticks at Weyerhaeuser Timber Company's Longview and Grays l{arbor, Wash., mills. Promising to be used throughout the Northwest, these large machines are estimated as the largest in the world.

An "electric elephant"-so powerful it can lift a truckload of logs as high as a three-story house-is busy stacking logs on a cold deck at the Grays Harbor pulp mill. At Longview, a huge pair of log grapples are helping unload logs atthelogpond. H

The machine at Grays Harbor is fast as well as powerful. It lifts an entire load at one time from a log truck, backs away from the truck, rolls to the small mountain of logs already stacked, and deposits its burden.

It then returns to the truck, raises the truck's trailer into the air, and sets it gently in place behind the cab where it will ride on the truck's return trip to the woods for another load.

Within about five minutes from the time it first started the operation, the log stacker is ready for the next load of logs.

Operator Paul Larsen (formerly a millwright at Longview) unloads and stacks pulpwood with ease by just pressing a few buttons on the control panel in front of him. All movements of the 3O-footJong machine are controlled by electric motors powere.d by a huge generator mounted behind the six-foot-high rear wheels. F--)

The business end of the log stacker is an ingenious elephant-like arrangement. Its "tusks" are three heavy prongs (like the forks on a lift truck) which go under the logs to be hoisted.

A pair of curved prongs move forward and down to wrap around the load from the top, much like an elephant's trunk does, to keep the logs from rolling off the forks. Still another pair of prongs serves to push the logs from the carrying forks when the load is set in place.

The 33-foot boom on which this assembly rides up and down can be tilted forward, making it easier to stack the logs like toothpicks on top of the pile.

When the Grays Harbor pulp mill begins operation this year, the electric elephant will have helped create a stockpile of more than a month's supply of logs ready to be made into pulp.

The log grapples at Longview are "The world's largest grapples, as far as we know," said a representative of the Berger Engineering Company, which designed and built the new log unloader.

The grapples open up 16 feet wide enough to span any railroad carload of logs. And the ends of their arms are thin enough to readily slip between the logs and the sill of the rail car.

A special feature of this mechanism is a locking device which securely locks the arms in their closed position for lifting the carload of logs. Each grapple is controlled indi- r-idrrallr'. or in rrnison, 1r-r- thc unlolr<lcr ()l)erator rvho ricle-* at (irlL-r's in a glass-encloscrl crrlr htrtre- f roltt tlrc lrritlget cralte. :ttrtl tttorc llotli the unLo:icler at 1.<-rngviet'ltttrl 1ht'clcctric clcplrant lJ:Lrlror :Lrc hcllrine' tu:rlie a big job e:r-qier. srit'r, c lll cicrr t.

'fl.re stecl ir:rnrc l'hich currics tlre Irrirlger crane straclrllcs the trrLck;Lnrl c-rtrrrrls ()ut ()\'cr thc u'atcr. As e:rc1-r carlolt<1 of lr-,gs is spottrrl untlcr tl'ris cr;tnc, thc grapples errclose the Ioad, lift it rrp lLnrl crLrr_r'it itcr()ss the track. anrl gcn1lrIor'r'cr it into thc u'atcr.

\\'lrt:n thr'logs irr the load settle into the u'lt1cr. 1hc gr:rpplc arll)s:rre opencd. the lrigs float au'ar-, lLntl thtr cr:trtc carrics tl're grulrplcs lxtcli for the r-rext 1o:rc1.'fhc cr:tne is lrcing'opcratcrl trr-o shifts to take c:rre of the entire crtrloatl input oi los's elLch rlar'.

'l'lris nrctho<1 of log unlciacling u'as instltllcrl to clirrrirratc thc 'l.rg lrrclLk:Lge exlieriencecl n-hen logs n crc pttshctl olT thc clrrs:rn11 trrln'lrle<1 intr-r the 1touc1 otre otr tol> oi ltnothcr. (lltrloltrls of lrancled sniail logs f ronl lrrc'loggi rlq ,'lltrirtit,ll5 lLrc also han<1lerl br. this nen' unloatlcr.

Seosoning Course Postponed