Interview with Stanford Lunstrum

(AP: Okay, good morning today is Tuesday August 19, 2008. My name is Allison Page, I'm with the UW-Madison Oral History Program and this morning I will be talking with Mr. Stan Lunstrum who is a former employee of the U.S. Forest Products Lab.)

SL: My official title while I was stationed here at the Forest Products Laboratory was Forest Products Technologist, Sawmill Specialist. I started out my earlier years in life coming from a farm where my dad was a farmer all his life. I had an interest in nature and growing things, and in trees particularly. I went to school at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa and took forestry courses, and graduated from there in 1962. I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in forestry and I took the utilization option. It's interesting that 00:01:00during my time at school we took a trip here to the Forest Products Laboratory and that was the first time that I was here at the Laboratory.

I first took a job with the forestry department at the University of Kentucky located in Lexington. In 1962, I believe it was, the Congress passed the Manpower Training Act and this was passed while John F. Kennedy was president. The Manpower Training Act consisted of a program that enabled young people in depressed areas to learn a skill or skills to be able to get a job at the 00:02:00completion of the two-year program. Even though I was working for the University of Kentucky, I was stationed at their substation, which was located in Quicksand (Kentucky). They built a wood utilization complex that would enable the students to have a hands-on learning experience. I was to become an instructor in sawmilling. Prior to coming to the University of Kentucky I had worked for a man in Iowa for a couple of years who owned a sawmill and I had considerable experience working with him in this industry. We sawed up native timbers that we 00:03:00used in the construction of pole barns. With this experience I gained in Iowa, and being mechanically minded, I was able to jump right in to this position and fulfill my duties as instructor in sawmilling. Of course this involved a hands-on experience for the students as well.

Upon successful completion of the two-year course students were given an associate degree in forestry. Most of the students had a job waiting for them when they graduated. From my perspective it was a very successfully run government program. I was with the University of Kentucky from July of 1964 to 00:04:00January of 1967.

In 1967 I then took a job with the U.S. Forest Service and I was stationed in Ashville, North Carolina. This job entailed working in a 13-state area known as the Southeastern Area. I was a sawmill specialist there as well and worked in the program that helped sawmillers in this area to become more efficient in the log breakdown process. The idea was to conserve or to extend the resource and my 00:05:00whole career has been tailored around this theme and we were to give assistance to sawmillers then and to help them become more efficient in the log breakdown process. Now we worked with and through the State Forestry agencies. We didn't necessarily do the work ourselves but rather we trained the State Forestry people to conduct the studies and to basically carryout the tenets of this program. We worked very intensely with these state people in training them and to show them how to go out and conduct these sawmill studies. We would do 00:06:00anything we could to help the sawmillers to become more efficient in the log breakdown process. In many cases this involved providing technical assistance. I have examples here with me that I can show you a little later on if you would like. But this proved to be a very challenging experience. While stationed in Ashville, North Carolina my bosses were located in Atlanta, Georgia and this may sound like a cushy setup (but) I was still responsible for the program and the results that it generated. The nature of my work required me to travel a lot in 00:07:00those days and I've calculated that I traveled probably over 50 percent of the time and of course I made numerous trips into Atlanta to report on the accomplishments of our program.

In 1971 I took a position with the U.S. Forest Service. This was a National Sawmill Specialist position that opened up here at the Laboratory. This position was with what is known as State and Private Forestry, this is an arm of the U.S. 00:08:00Forest Service, which of course is a part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And strangely, my position was here at the Laboratory, my bosses were located in Washington, D.C. So, I didn't report to the people here at the Laboratory, they just provided a place for us to work out of and of course being located here, it enabled us to work very closely with the researchers here that did their research in the log breakdown process. This position was similar to the position I had in Ashville, North Carolina except that now I had national 00:09:00responsibilities. We covered the whole United States and particularly in those states that had forestry programs. And our job, again, was to train people in the techniques of helping sawmill operators to become more efficient in the log breakdown process, or sometimes we call it the lumber recovery process. So, I was glad to make the move from Ashville, North Carolina to Madison, Wisconsin. It was nice because it brought me closer to my roots, in fact now we were only about four hours away from where my parents lived in Iowa. In North Carolina we 00:10:00were probably about 18 hours away so it was a real plus to be able to be situated closer to both my (wife's) and my families.

We started in 1972 with a national program that was quite similar in nature to the program that we had conducted in the Southeastern Area. This national position as I said had to do with improving the sawmilling efficiency of sawmillers nationwide. The mechanics of this program was such that it was tied very closely with the work that was conducted here at FPL. In particular they 00:11:00did work on what was called the Best Opening Face program and that was developed in the late '60s and early '70s. And this program that was developed by the researchers here at the Laboratory had to with using a computer to assist in the making the log breakdown decisions while sawing a log. And it had to do with determining where the saw lines were placed when breaking down a log because it was very important to make these calculations before actually committing the saw to the log, because once you do that then you can't change your mind. You have to go through with the sawing process. So this program then became a tool for us 00:12:00to use when we went in to sawmills to conduct studies and we used it as a gauge to determine whether or not a sawmiller was making the best log breakdown decisions because the computer of course could find the best breakdown decision whereas a human would have to guess at the best breakdown position and he may not guess correctly a hundred percent of the time. In fact most of the time they didn't make the best decision. So in conducting these studies it would usually take about a week's time and that included traveling to our destination and then getting people lined up and instructions given as to how the study would be 00:13:00conducted. And then towards the end of the week we would travel back here to the Laboratory and we would then begin the analysis of the study that we conducted. Most of the time this included preparing a report on our activities and we would go over the results of the study and we could pinpoint where the mill was inefficient and where improvements could be made then in the log breakdown process. Then we would send this study back to the counterpart or to our counterpart in the state and then he, in turn, would return with this report to 00:14:00the mill study participant.

In going over the report, for example, we could show that the thickness of the lumber producer, if the thickness of the lumber produced was high, then improvements could be made by tightening up on the sawing variation during the sawing process. If you have high variation in producing lumber it means that you use more of the log resource to produce the board than is necessary. If you have small variation then you can reduce the target size perhaps and come up with a higher lumber recovery than would otherwise be possible. The term "Lumber 00:15:00Recovery Factor" is used to describe the conversion of solid wood products into lumber products, or board products in the case of hardwoods.

The lumber recovery factor in mills in the United States in the late '40s or early '50s showed that it was around 40 percent, in other words the mills were recovering only 40 percent of the solid log into final lumber products and that meant then that 60 percent of the log went in to other lower value products. 00:16:00Sometimes this 60 percent of the log would be just total waste, they would burn the slabs and the sawdust in what they call teepee burners and this was particularly true in the West in the softwood industry. In the Midwest and back East, the hardwood slabs would many times be used for firewood so the log was not converted then into its highest value use because of the inefficiency of the breakdown process. So the research conducted here at the Laboratory by the 00:17:00researchers showed that considerable improvement could be made in the log breakdown process so we devised the Sawmill Improvement Program, better known as SIP. And this program ran over a 15-year period from about 1972 to about 1987. It turned out to be a very, very successful program that was conducted nationwide. During that time we conducted well over 2000 studies and, of course, the states carried these studies out while we provided the background support 00:18:00and training for these people that were to do the work on the ground. On a national basis then, as I said before, the lumber recovery was only around 40 percent, maybe it could be stretched to 45 percent. At the end of our run the 1980s and during the mid '80s, the lumber recovery factor as near as we could tell was around 55 to maybe 60 percent nationally. So we definitely saw an improvement in the mill efficiency in converting logs in to lumber during this run of the Sawmill Improvement Program. Now, of course, we can't claim all of the success in this arena, but we certainly feel that our program contributed 00:19:00much to the success of the industry in improving their lumber recover efficiency because there were many other places where work was done similarly to the work that was done here at the Laboratory and the work that we did in the Sawmill Improvement Program. The Sawmill Improvement Program team won a superior service award which was given to us in May of 1975, and on the plaque it states: "For notable contributions in extending the softwood saw timber supply of the United States." And that was signed by Earl Butz who was then Secretary of Agriculture.

This then is a thumbnail sketch of the type of work that encompassed the bulk of my career. After the SIP program ended in 1987 we continued to assist the states in developing some spinoff programs that helped sawmillers improve their lumber recovery. In general, these programs were more specialized. The umbrella program we devised after 1987 was called the IMPROVE System, which analyzed the lumber recovery process not only for sawmills but for veneer mills as well. The Laboratory was not as heavily involved in providing backup for this program as 00:21:00it was in the Sawmill Improvement Program but the researchers did assist us in developing these programs. One of the signature programs within the IMPROVE System was the lumber product size analysis program. Within that program we developed a target size reduction program, which specifically helped the sawmiller to reduce the target size of his lumber. We then used statistical process control to achieve our goals. In all these routines we used the computer to assist us in making our analysis. In lumber product size analysis we developed a quality control handbook for users to interpret the data and to 00:22:00troubleshoot. Under the IMPROVE System, we also developed a veneer product size analysis routine, which analyzed the recovery in veneer mills.

There were other things that we did along the way. I authored some technical publications, I have one here called "Circular Sawmills and Their Efficient Operation." This turned out to be a very technical book and I wrote it while I was stationed in the Southeastern Area in Ashville. It was a takeoff actually from previous work that had been done, but the reason that I decided to publish 00:23:00this book was that in my work I got many questions over the phone from people and I noted that many of these questions were very similar in nature. So I compiled all of these questions and the book then that I wrote was the result of answering all of these questions over and over. So we published this book and then I was able to send it out, hand it out, at various meetings that we went to and of course people would write in and request it.

Circular sawmills were very inefficient in breaking down a log because they used a very large kerf to saw the lumber out of the log. The kerf is defined as the 00:24:00width of the cutting edge of a tooth that is inserted in a saw blade. Now, a saw blade can be three to four feet in diameter and the width of the kerf then would be a quarter of an inch or more. In contrast, in band mills the kerf would be typically half, or less, than the curve in a circular mill. So by definition then you would get more lumber recovery from a band mill than in a circular mill, but in small operations you wouldn't put the capital outlay to put in a 00:25:00band mill. It was quite a bit cheaper to build a circular mill even though the lumber recovery wouldn't be as great as in a band mill. At the Lab here we had a little mill called a Wood-Mizer that had a kerf of about one-sixteenth of an inch and this mill was donated to the Lab by the Wood-Mizer company to use in the research projects here at the Lab. Now the sixteenth of an inch in kerf of this Wood-Mizer would be half again of what a typical band mill kerf might be and we could get very high lumber recoveries from this little Wood-Mizer mill, 00:26:00but obviously being a small sawmill you could not use it in a high production process.

One of your questions was: "Did my job take me away from the office?" Well it did. It involved quite a bit of travel. I figured that during my career here at the Forest Products Laboratory I traveled around 35 to 40 percent of the time, which in reality is quite a bit of time away from the office. But in order to get it all done you had to travel and of course you had to work with the state 00:27:00agencies and you had to attend meetings. I traveled quite a bit back into Washington, D.C. where my bosses were located to get my marching orders. My job was very challenging as well as fulfilling and I felt like we contributed to the mission that was before us, which was to extend our nation's resources.

Sometimes we would try to show what we accomplished or hoped to accomplish in 00:28:00terms of what people could understand. For example, if all sawmills in this country could reduce their saw kerf by one-thirty-second of an inch, and that doesn't sound like much, but we could save enough wood to build the whole city of Madison (Wisconsin) and that's just one year of savings and that's a lot of homes. We felt that we had a great impact on the sawmilling industry and as a result of our work with the sawmillers, they, of course, made more money but in 00:29:00turn they paid more taxes so the tax dollars then that they would generate because of our assistance would more than pay for the cost of our programs. This was very fulfilling in that sense and we felt that the work that we did had a large impact on our nation's economy as well as conserving or extending our resources.

(AP: Well if you don't mind I'd like to backtrack a little bit and ask you a couple of questions.)

SL: Sure.

(AP: Do you have any memories or first impressions about when you came to the Lab? You came in 1971?)

SL: Correction, I moved here in July of 1972.

(AP: Okay. Do you have any initial impressions or memories that come to mind when you think about when you first started here?)

SL: Well, I didn't know a lot about the Laboratory but what little I did know, I thought it was a unique place. I had read a little bit about the work they did here, particularly during the Second World War, they contributed a lot to the war effort. Interestingly, I had come across a publication that had to do with the Lindbergh Kidnapping and they actually did work here to help track down the kidnapper and it was very fascinating to learn how they traced the lumber that came out of a house that the kidnapper had used to construct a ladder to place against the house of the Lindbergh's. This impressed me as to the very technical 00:31:00nature of the work they did and I guess I would describe myself as a mechanically-minded, technical person so the details of this work really fascinated me. I'm interested in the tales of how things work and so associating that with what they did here at the Laboratory, I was very impressed with how they did it.

I actually came to the Laboratory and took some drying courses early on during my career. I believe I was still stationed in Kentucky at the time and I came to the Laboratory and took some drying courses just to further my own knowledge of the drying processes and I was very impressed with how they conducted these courses and still feel that the work they conduct here is of very high quality.

(AP: Great. I know that you said that you were overseen by your bosses in Washington.)

SL: In Washington, right.

(AP: How did you work with here on a day-to-day basis?)

SL: We worked very intimately with our counterparts in the research that directly affected our work. Hiram Hallock and David Lewis were the co-developers of the Best Opening Face program that we used in our Sawmill Improvement Program. They were the main reason they put my position here at the Laboratory because these folks had very intimate knowledge of the log breakdown process, 00:33:00which was to become the backbone of our programs. They also helped us design some of the other programs that we used in our work. We also worked with the people in publications quite a bit because they helped us with the editing, writing, and putting out our publications and so we leaned on them quite heavily to assist us in that area.

(AP: Was your position here--it kind of has a very unique way of being in that your bosses were in Washington and not here. Was that kind of challenging for you?)

SL: Yeah, it was challenging. It was nice and you might think on the surface that you know you're free to do anything, but really, that's not the case at 00:34:00all. Just because your boss isn't sitting next door doesn't mean that he or she isn't aware of what you're doing because you're accomplishments come under scrutiny, eventually. We regularly submitted reports of our accomplishments to the D.C. office and of course we traveled to Washington for meetings pretty regularly and if you don't have anything to show in these meetings they will quickly know about it. But it was a unique situation and it worked well for me because I was challenged by the job and I'm driven by accomplishments. I like to 00:35:00see end results when I do something so that carried through to these programs that we developed, and it was more than just going out and conducting a mill study for training purposes and then next week doing the same thing and so forth. For us, there had to be kind of an end result of what we were trying to do and of course that end result would be to train people, maybe write some publications, and ultimately see our nation's resources extended.

May of 1985, I published another pamphlet that had to do with the balancing saw performance. In contrast to the earlier publication that I wrote, "Circular Sawmills and Their Efficient Operation," this one had to do with both circular 00:36:00mills and band mills. And it had to do with correctly selecting a saw for the job and setting up that saw correctly to operate within certain parameters. You had to have an understanding of the interrelationship of the raw materials, the end products, your machinery and the sawing process itself in order to accomplish what I call balanced saw performance.

Earlier I referred to the IMPROVE Program and I'll elaborate a little bit more on that program which ran after we completed the Sawmill Improvement Program in 1985. IMPROVE, which is an acronym for Integrated Mill Production and Recovery 00:37:00Options for Value and Efficiency and within the IMPROVE Program we wrote several micro computer software programs to assist the mills in analyzing their lumber production and in some cases the veneer production as well. We wrote these programs within three programs: one, the Log Processing Program, which was log analysis; and number two was the Lumber Variation--or excuse me, the Lumber Manufacturing Program, which included saw design analysis, LRF change economic analysis; the third, V-belt hookup analysis; fourth, BOF sawing simulation 00:38:00analysis; fifth, lumber products size analysis; and the sixth, target set reduction. Within the third program was the veneer manufacturing program, we wrote a routine called veneer product size analysis. So we produced these programs then so we could send them out to our counterparts in the states, complete with instructions on how to conduct them, and they could conduct the studies on their own then without our assistance.

(AP: We've talked a little bit about some of the work that you did here. Is there one project, or study, or program that was particularly memorable or fun? Conversely, was there one that was particularly challenging for you?)

SL: Yeah there is. In May of 1994, a year before I retired, we did a slab 00:39:00recovery study from a hardwood mill that produced around six million board feet of red oak furniture lumber per year. Producing lumber in hardwood mills is totally different than producing lumber in softwood mills. For example, in softwood mills you produce primarily what they call dimension lumber, which is used to build homes. In the hardwood industry you produce lumber that's used primarily to make furniture.

In the years that we conducted our mill studies we noted that in hardwood mills they had a problem and this problem had to do basically with the log breakdown 00:40:00where they would produce heavy slabs and thus leave a lot of usable wood in those slabs. Part of the problem they had was that they produced lumber that had to conform to grading rules and these specifications, which were setup by a grading association were such that they didn't salvage lumber that was less than eight feet in length and then they devised grades of lumber so that they could sell this lumber then according the grades that came out of the milling process. The highest grade was called first and seconds, or FAS, required that 00:41:00approximately 83 percent of the board had to be in clear-cuttings. And then they went on down the scale in these grades to a number two common board, which had to have only about 20 percent of the board in clear-face cuttings. So this meant that when these boards were sent to the furniture manufacturer they would cut these boards up and salvage then only the clear, usable material from these boards.

When you watch a log being sawed, it becomes quite evident that the clear materials, that is the material that is free of knots and that kind of thing, is 00:42:00located on the outside of the log and as you progress towards the center of the log the grade of the lumber deteriorates. So it becomes quite evident then that the highest grade of lumber will be obtained on the outside of the log and so we observed that most of the sawmills were throwing away large amounts of high-grade material in the slabs that they were producing. Interestingly, in the furniture industry a hundred percent of the pieces they use in furniture manufacture is less than 84 inches, that is seven feet. Ninety-five percent is 00:43:00less than 60 inches, or five feet, and two-thirds of what they use is less than 36 inches. So it makes one wonder why the sawmill industry that produces the lumber for the furniture industry doesn't save anything less than eight feet. This seemed like a real conundrum to us.

What we did next then was to obtain four bundles of slabs that contained approximately 75 cubic feet of wood in each and we had these delivered to the Forest Products Laboratory. These four bundles would normal have been sold as firewood for about 17 dollars each and so roughly we had 68 dollars worth of 00:44:00slabs. We then proceeded to saw these slabs on our Wood-Mizer sawmill at the Forest Products Laboratory and recovered all of the usable clear wood from these slabs that was four feet or less and we did save lumber down to fifteen inches in length. The net result then of this lumber was that we took it to a furniture manufacturing plant and asked them to evaluate it and to see if they could use this wood in their operations and of course it turned out that they could. We 00:45:00recovered approximately 900 dollars worth of short lumber that could be used for building furniture and so in effect then we turned 68 dollars worth of slabs that were destined for firewood primarily and turned it in to 900 dollars worth of short lumber that could be used then for building high-quality furniture.

SL: Turn the tape over. (pause). Segment 18.

We did another study in April of 1994 that we termed Short Log--Short Lumber 00:46:00Recovery Study and it was conducted at the Forest Products Laboratory. What we did was to fell several standing trees and we bucked them in to four, five, and six foot lengths. By cutting short lengths, sweep and crook were effectively eliminated in the bucking process. We wound up with 20 logs that ranged from 12 to 20 inches in diameter, then we sawed the logs using a procedure that I termed "sawing from the inside out." In this procedure you first must quarter the log and the bottom line to this study was that of the 145 cubic feet of logs that we 00:47:00started with, produced 119 cubic feet of lumber. This translated in to 82 percent then of the log volume that was recovered as rough green lumber. Roughly 12 percent were edgings and six percent was sawdust. Now if you compare this to the recovery efficiency of the 1920s, '30s, and early '40s only about 40 percent was recovered as rough green lumber. This study capped my career nicely as I felt that it exemplified what I was trying to achieve throughout my career.

(AP: Well maybe to switch gears we've talked a little bit about the work that you did. I have a couple questions about kind of the social aspect of working at the Lab. Are there any colleagues or coworkers that you have particularly strong memories of? Were there any activities offered at the Lab that were particularly either enjoyable or very memorable?)

SL: Hiram Hallock was a colleague of mine here at the Laboratory. Hiram had been 00:48:00a researcher for several years and he also, prior to that, was a sawmill operator and so he brought a lot of knowledge about sawmilling when he came to the Laboratory. He was actually my mentor when I came to the Laboratory and I relied on Hiram to give me a lot of the knowledge that I needed in my position. So I always appreciated that and have thought highly of Hiram over the years.

Now the Laboratory, you asked about some of the other activities that the Lab 00:49:00provided, they did have an annual picnic and I didn't attend many of those. My work called for me to travel a lot and when I came back home I felt like I wanted to devote my time to my family. I had a wife and three children and we liked to travel a lot in my free time. Since we were campers we were able to camp around the country and we still do and I guess camping got in our blood and it was just one of the extra activities that we liked to engage in. So as a result of that I did not engage myself in many of the social activities here at 00:50:00the Lab. One of the things that we did do was to have an annual Christmas party in our division, and I always enjoyed going to that event.

(AP: A couple of the guys have talked about being in a coffee group. Were you in one of those?)

SL: Yeah, we had a coffee klatch. I've seen coffee klatches wherever I've been in my career. I know when I was in North Carolina it seemed like it was a bigger deal there but you could set your clock by the time you went to the coffee klatch. But here at the Laboratory we went down to the lower level in the building and I forget what time it was, but we usually time it with others or 00:51:00other researchers and we usually had a good time and discussed just about everything under the sun. But it gave you a little chance for interaction, and you could kind of catch up on the latest on just about everything. For example, if you were a big hunter you would tell hunting stories and of course we all had to listen and respond to that. It was a fun time but I guess just about every place you go there are coffee klatches and here at the Laboratory it was no different.

(AP: Well I guess maybe to switch gears a little bit and talk a little bit about the end of your career. When did you retire and what made you decide that that was--?)

SL: Well, I retired in 1995 and I had about 30 years of government service 00:52:00including my military service in which I was in the Navy for 37 months so that time counted towards my retirement. I had started thinking about retirement in 1995 but I wasn't necessarily thinking very seriously about it because I liked my job and things were going really well. When I got up to go to work I really looked forward to it because I always had stuff to do and things I wanted to accomplish. But in 1995 the government had its ups and downs and they were in a down period at that time and they were trying to scale back on the size of the government. We were almost always annually threatened with cutoff of our funding 00:53:00from the Washington office and we kind of had to sweat it out just about every year. But this time around it seemed like they were a little more serious than previous years about cutting back government operations. So they offered a buyout package that looked very attractive to me. I really pondered it and I wasn't really sure that I really wanted it at that point. Attractive as the buyout was, which was 25 thousand dollars, it looked awfully good but still I 00:54:00made up my mind not to do it at that time. Well, things kept changing and the Washington office was going to change how they operated my position here at the Laboratory. The biggie was that they were going to transfer the leadership of the State and Private activities to the Laboratory, which was a different way of operating our activities but I could see that my job was going to change drastically if they made that move. I was going to be retreaded, so to speak, 00:55:00and I could see that they were going to train me for a new job that I wasn't entirely sure of what that job might be. It probably would be along the lines of what we did before but it would surely be different. So I took all of that in to consideration and I felt that at my age, 57 at the time, I was too old to be retreaded and I just didn't want to go through with it.

So the handwriting was on the wall and I decided that I would take the buyout and on January 1st of 1995 I pulled the plug. If circumstances had not changed at that point I likely would have stayed for a couple of more years before my 00:56:00retirement but it don't hold it against the Forest Service or anybody else, that's just the way things developed and I made my decision. And I've been very happy with it.

(AP: Looking back now, how do you feel about having work for an agency that works with or for the U.S. Forest Service?)

SL: Well, I would do it again in a heartbeat. I feel that the Forest Service was a very good agency to work for. I think that all the things they did and said were genuine, like they really were concerned for the environment and conserving the timber resource. They had the ideals that I was in agreement with and did things that I would have wanted to do personally. I just felt very privileged to 00:57:00have worked for the Forest Service and that I was able to be a part of their legacy as a whole, which went back to the Gifford Pinchot days when the Forest Service began.

(AP: Do you feel that your work here has left a mark either on the Forest Products Lab, the Forest Service, USDA or beyond that?)

SL: I think we did leave a mark on both the Forest Products Laboratory and the Forest Service. I felt that the Laboratory appreciated us being here because it helped them get their research into use more quickly. The work they did developing the Best Opening Face program was a signature program that was 00:58:00cutting edge technology for the lumber industry. I'm sure they would have not implemented that technology as quickly as it was had we not been here to help do it. We reflected well on the Laboratory and the Forest Service and I think more importantly the lumber industry as a whole. When we would attend meetings we would often meet people that were well aware of the work that we had been doing at the Laboratory. A lot of calls would come in to the Laboratory asking about how to improve lumber recovery operations and they would be transferred to our 00:59:00division for an answer. At lot of people also sent in for technical publications, it was the Lab's responsibility to distribute requests for these publications. So all in all our presence here reflected very well on the Laboratory towards helping them meet their goals and accomplishments, as well as our own.

(AP: Do you feel that you've met, or the Forest Products Lab has helped you meet all your personal career goals?)

SL: Well, I do because they provided the resources for me to have a job here and always made me feel welcome to be a part of their team. When I first came to the Laboratory they promptly asked me to attend a director's meeting and I felt like 01:00:00wow, why are they so interested in little old me? Well, first off they just wanted to get to know me a little better so we had a roundtable discussion on how we intended to run our activities while stationed here at the Laboratory. It got us off on the right foot and I was very impressed from that first meeting that I attended. From that point on I participated in a lot of meetings where we'd give an account of things we were doing or how we could do things better and make improvements. I felt that the Laboratory was always supportive of our efforts and because of that I was able to meet my personal career goals.

(AP: Well that's kind of the end of my questions. Do you have any other stories, memories, or comments that you would like to record for posterity?)

SL: Well, to recap, the Sawmill Improvement Program was our signature program as it ran the longest of anything we did. Other things that we did after that were takeoffs from that program. We incorporated statistical process control in to some of our activities after 1985. Many of the procedures we used were developed by Edward Demming, which we felt could help sawmills improve their processes by gathering data. For example, we developed procedures using statistical process control to help sawmillers improve their lumber sizing. A board would be pulled 01:02:00from the process, then six or eight measurements would be taken on that board. This procedure would be done throughout the day and every day. Results would be calculated, analyzed, and plotted on charts for interpretation. When warranted, changes would be made in the process to make it better or at least to keep it from deteriorating. This technique, while quite technical and required an extra person to be assigned to carry it out effectively, was not picked up by most mills because they did not want to make that heavy of a commitment.

The bottom-line of what I would say my career consisted of was to help the sawmill industry to improve their lumber recovery efficiency and thereby conserve our forest resources for future generations. I feel the tax dollars that the mill generated by our helping them more than offset the cost of our programs. Many things we do of this nature are intangible and it's hard to evaluate their effectiveness. For example, if you give a talk on improving lumber recovery, how do you measure the good that the talk may have had? It might help someone and it might not. I found that people that were the easiest 01:04:00to reach were the people that were already efficient in their operations. They were the easiest ones to talk to, to get them to change something. The ones that had low recovery efficiency were the hardest ones to reach. Now that may sound contradictory. You would think the person with the low recovery would be more interested in making improvements but no because he is making a dollar, he's happy, not necessarily interested in how he can make two dollars because he is happy that he's making one. It might require making capital improvement and he may not want to do that. They are perfectly happy making the one dollar. But the person with the high recovery, he would sit there with his hand cocked to his 01:05:00ear, so to speak, and wonder what he is missing. How could I get that next tenth of an LRF point? This was kind of an interesting paradox that I noted during my career.

One last thing I would like to say about what I learned late in my career and that was this: economics drives most change. I'll try to explain what I mean by that. In the '60s when I started out in my career, log or stumpage costs were low with regard to the total cost of the lumber that a mill produced. What that 01:06:00meant was that a mill wasn't too concerned if it did not recover all the high-value products when they sawed a log. After all stumpage was plentiful and they were more concerned with those things that did influence the cost of producing lumber the most such as labor, which was a major contributor to the cost of producing lumber. Well, things changed as my career went along. Stumpage costs rose and at the end of my career it represented up to 80 percent of the cost of the lumber produced at a mill. So as stumpage costs rose, sawmills 01:07:00became more and more interested in how they could improve their lumber recovery and so I came to the conclusion late in my career that economics was the real catalyst that changed peoples' minds about improving their lumber recovery efficiency.