Interview with Kent McDonald

LB: Ok, Today is Thursday April 10 and this is Lauren Benditt, and I'm interviewing Kent McDonald about his experiences at the Forest Products Lab.

KM: How'd ya do?

LB: Yeah. A great rainy day. So, I guess, maybe we'll start with a bit of an introduction about you--maybe your education and how you ended up here.

KM: I was in the Forestry program at Iowa State University, and I was looking for a summer job. The same summer, 1961, some of the graduates of Iowa State [at FPL] were also looking for some help for the summer, and [at the same time] a new summer program became available within the Forest Service--all three things 00:01:00getting together. The first summer involved work referred to as the Wood Density Survey. And it involved travel out west sampling trees. My first job was to Colorado with a crew [to] sample trees. Well, it couldn't get any better than that. So, later on the next trip [was] to California, spent three weeks in California at four different sites, [and it was] a good introduction to the Forest Service. People that were working [together] in the field, as well as getting out into the timber and [locating] trees. [The field work involved 00:02:00taking] borings of the trees and [measuring] them in the evening and [deciding] witch ones were high specific gravity and low specific gravity. We would go [back] out the next day, and mark those specific trees that we wanted [for] another crew [cut down] and [take larger samples]. They would cut a sample [from each selected] tree and send it back to the laboratory for further testing. So, that program went on for years, although my involvement in it ended after that summer. I was also working for a scientist, [Dr.] Max Pillow, as Max was 00:03:00interested in specific gravity and wood characteristics and how they related to all different kinds of properties and the utilization. That was [my] beginning [at FPL].

LB: And so was that through the Forest Service or through the Lab?

KM: Really, [through the] Forest Service-wide program, [but several] summer students [were at the Lab]. There were about 25 summer students that summer [at FPL].

LB: And this was during your bachelor's degree?

KM: [Yes], this was the year before I graduated. And then after graduation, [FPL] had a job opening and I applied for [it] and [was hired] as a [Forest Products] technologist. And that was the second summer [when] I started working 00:04:00full time. My first job was to [travel] with two of the senior scientists to the State of New York, north of New York City, in the Harvard Black Rock Forest. And at that time there were trees [to be located] that had been fertilized in the '30s. One of these scientists, Harold Mitchell, was interested in sampling that wood to find out what the effects of fertilization would be on the quality of the wood, as well as the quality of the tree and how much that fertilization 00:05:00stimulated the tree growth. So, there again, it was a matter of finding the trees that he had fertilized by plot references and [lab notes], reestablishing those plots, and then cutting some of the trees and bringing back samples [to] test the wood. [The species were] ash, yellow poplar and [red] oak, [then evaluating] that wood for machining characteristic effects and strength.

That [began] the initial part of the first summer, [after which I traveled] to the state of Idaho to a sawmill and sampled two-by-four [studs from] Lodgepole Pine, trying to relate [how] certain [tree] characteristics might [affect the 00:06:00production of] crooked two-by-fours. We started with the trees and categorized [by stem characteristics, if] they had a forked stem or a crooked stem or an off-set, off-enter pith [in] the tree and sorted those all into [several] categories. [We sawed them into studs in] the sawmill and dried [the studs] and measured all the material that came out to try to establish if there [were any tree categories that] should get some deductions for certain poor characteristics. That was the next project that I [worked] on [as a new hire].

LB: And, so that was after you started full time?

KM: Right.

LB: Great. Just to go back a little bit, had you heard about the Forest Products Lab before you started in that summer program?

KM: Yes, because we had graduates [from Iowa State who] worked here as well as a professor [who] was very enamored with the Forest Products Laboratory. [He presented class material about] the research they were doing here. So, as a student, we heard a lot about the Forest Products Laboratory.

LB: And do you remember what professor that was?

KM: Professor Dwight Bensend, B-E-N-S-E-N-D--just passed away here, about a year and a half ago.

LB: And, so we've already talked a bit about your first summer full time at the Lab. Do you have any specific recollections of your first day here? Perhaps of your interview here before you started working?

KM: I guess I [don't remember being] interviewed. [I was] a warm body that could work during the summer, and they needed warm bodies. So we got in line and [were] hired. There were other scientists here that said, we're looking for somebody like that to work for us. So, I kind of had an in already, because they knew how warm-blooded we were, I guess.

LB: Right. Willing to go out in the forest.

KM: [Yes].

LB: So, I guess, it seems like you've spent a lot of time out in the field doing research, as opposed to in the Lab. Did you spend most of your time here or elsewhere?

KM: Most of the time here [at FPL. Most of] the [research] projects that [I] would work on involved going to either the forest, or into a [wood] processing center, [like] a sawmill or a woodworking plant. Because we were involved with, as much as anything, the utilization of the [forest] products that came out of the forest. Not [involved] so much [with] the management of the forest itself, but mostly [research of] the products.

LB: Yeah. So what was a typical day like, then, for you? Or was there a typical day?

KM: I would say there wasn't a typical day. And for the most part [we] were given general [research direction and we] established what [we] wanted to work, an area you wanted to [do], and area [we] wanted to work in, and it was up to [us] to see to it that [a] project moved forward. And so it was a good job. Nobody was saying, today you're going to test these specimens and tomorrow you're going to do this and the next day we're going to the field and so forth. It was a matter of [deciding how] to get from point A to point B and [to design the research project]. And then you would establish a program, get permission, 00:11:00[and] if it made sense, [get support] from the division chief at that time. And usually we had good support from the division chief, so it was a good job.

LB: And what division was it, specifically?

KM: To start out with the first summer, [it] was TGUR, Timber Growth and Utilization Relations. Typical government, wanted to have name changes, to keep people off guard I guess, and they changed it to Wood Quality Research, WQR.

LB: And, I guess, were there any particular projects that you found particularly interesting?

KM: Well, I'd have to say that they were [all] interesting because they were projects that I helped initiate, in areas that I thought were important to the [objectives of the] Forest Products Lab. [Early on], there was a need to [update] a publication on hardwood lumber [yields] from standard log-grades. There were a lot of data collected from over the years, mostly in the '30s, that [were held] in the vault, but had never been published because of World War II and a lot of other things. When I [came] on board, they I [wanted] to update the 00:13:00publication. That was one of the interesting jobs, to gather all that information and compile it and get it into a rewrite of a publication, which was the publication, [FPL 63].

And [around] the same time, there was interest in [the] Washington [Forest Service Office] to have that kind of work transferred to another location within the Forest Service, and a lot of pressure from that other location to have it transferred. So, we got involved in some [mild competition] to try to see who would [publish first]. [FPL] had a sawmilling project at that time, and there 00:14:00was interest in Washington to close that research down because they thought [we] had gone as far as [possible] with what could [be learned] with sawing wood. With that in mind, I and two other fellows Erv Bulgrin and Hiram Hallock, sat down to try to look at what a future program for the Forest Products Lab could be, and what would make sense and what was important.

My suggestion was to look at using computers in making decisions in the sawmills. So that the computers would actually take into account all of the 00:15:00things that were in a log and decide how best to cut that log up to get the most material out of it. Sometimes it was a two by four, just for construction. Sometimes it was a graded board, to get a piece of furniture wood out of it, and so forth. So we sat down and put that program together. And there were several around that really wanted to see us not get something like that going. And they were very skeptical that there ever would be a computer in the sawmill. But, we put together about a ten-year program as to what research needed to be done in order to reach that goal. And lots of spin-off came from that.

That's one of the areas where--and we had an ex-Navy man here that was in 00:16:00electronics. And I was telling him about how we might locate defects in logs. And his experience was in sonar, with the Navy. I was looking at it because in logs, sometimes the grain spirals. When the grain spirals, then when the wood dries out it [tends] to un-spiral. A good example of that is if they put a telephone pole in the ground and put cross-arms on it, when it dries out then the cross-arms change direction. So, that was one of the things that we were 00:17:00going to try to find in the log, was if it had spiral grain. And I was thinking of the idea that you'd just hit the log on one end at twelve o'clock, for example, could you put a receiver on the other end and listen to where it would come out strongest. And he said sure, he said you should be able to do that. And he said that at the same time if you hit it on one end, you'll get a reflection back from where all the defects are in that log. So well, that's fantastic. If that's the case, we can tell where the defects are as well, so we have an internal picture of the log.

Well, that kind of simple explanation from the Navy guy launched [a] whole [research] program and we started with ultrasonics. And with the idea of eventually getting to logs, but we thought lets learn what we can with ultrasonics and lumber first. And in the spin-off from that was a system where 00:18:00we could locate defects in lumber. And then the spin-off from that was if [we] can locate defects in lumber then what can you do with that information? And, so we had spin-off programs on, and people writing computer programs, which were very advanced for that time. [With] the information from a board, [we] could really make the decisions on how to rip it and cross-cut it. So we had programs that stimulated [other research] programs in a lot of universities [and industry] around the country as well as other Forest Service stations. And, [many] then wanted a piece of the action, and [many] had an idea of how to apply 00:19:00it. So, it fosters a lot of other research because of the possibilities, and the possibilities at that time were fantastic.

Our bottom line was to try to get better utilization of the forests that we were growing, rather than getting just fifty percent of the tree converted into a product, and the rest going to, what at that time was called waste. Some of it was burned. Some of it, very little of it was chipped. Nowadays, a lot of things are done with the extra byproducts. But, at that time they weren't. So we were looking--and the highest value would be in converting it to solid lumber, at that point, and veneer. We had some veneer studies as well. But, solid lumber 00:20:00was the most important thing. And our idea was if [we] could cut one tree down instead of two to get the same amount of product, it seemed a lot smarter.

But, to sum up that approach, since then the whole Forest Service has changed [direction]. With the objection of people that think that [we were] cutting all of the forests down, their solution was to just stop cutting all together. And, so, a lot of our product was supplied from outside of the country and imported. So, and that's a big generalization as well, so that's not an explanation of everything that's involved [here].

LB: Well, I suppose I could ask that question then. So, how do you think people's perceptions of the Forest Service changed over your time working here.

KM: Oh, a lot. The Forest Service itself changed within itself. When I first started, most of the forest management in the Forest Service was involved around foresters that had degrees in forestry, but they included geology, zoology, and biology and all these other [sciences]. So then, the change in the Forest Service, from my perspective in my opinion was that we started hiring all these --ologists of every imaginable description. And each one had their own axe to grind, and own ambitions, naturally. And, so they wanted to apply what they knew about zoology, and what they knew about geology, and what they knew about wildlife and all these other things. So, to me, the Forest Service changed 00:22:00within, and many tried to just adapt to what they conceived of as the environmental pressures from without. And, essentially, they threw out the forester, and threw out the idea of managing trees for wood, and for a consumer product.

And that's probably the biggest change that, as a forester was a disappointment to me because soon they realized that they really needed to get back to managing trees. And fire is just one of the problems that came out of that. And that came because of the change in policy to stop cutting trees. And before, we weren't even [using] the best management techniques. We were getting there, but then in 00:23:00the 70s that started to change back. So now I look at them as non-productive forests as far as products go. And, so I guess that's kind of a brief, brief summary of it.

LB: Do you think it will change back?

KM: I don't think it will ever change back to where they have the kind of management level as what we had before. It's too rough on people's eyes to see timber cut down. They don't conceive of it as the same as cutting down a cornfield and converting that every year. It's just the forest is the same way, [but] it's over a longer period of time. And those people need to go back and look at the forest that was cut down and what it's like thirty years later, 00:24:00because they'll find out that it definitely continues to grow. And, it just looks bad for a while. [But a harvested forest looks bad] and it's an easy thing to sell. They can fly over and show the devastation of a cut. It's easy to convince somebody that [it] doesn't look good. But they don't go back and say, ok, it doesn't look good today, but five years now you've got all these little trees growing. And you move on.

LB: I guess to go back then, were there other interesting projects that you worked on?

KM: Oh many, many. We got involved in one project, and that was in the early 60s, where there was interest from a company to--at that time we were making 00:25:00sheathing-grade plywood, and a lot of the plywood came from some of the better timber, Douglas Fir. And in the very beginning, it started at that time, turning yellow pop, excuse me, Southern Yellow Pine into, into plywood. There was interest in northern Minnesota about turning aspen into plywood, sheathing-grade plywood. The company, in a sense, paid for the research to find out if [we] could make plywood out of aspen.

We went into northern Minnesota and sampled aspen trees and graded the logs, so 00:26:00if we ended up with some success that they could go back and say ok, an aspen log with this grade, and so many knots, and the distribution of the knots and so forth, and the log size, that it would be the best to make aspen plywood. So, it turned out, we were lined up to go to a mill, and that mill in Canada. And it was a mill that was accustomed to peeling birch and turn that into paneling. But that mill burned down, so we had to change, and they found a mill up in Edmonton, Canada, and so they hauled many train-car loads of aspen logs to 00:27:00Edmonton, Canada. We went up there for three weeks, and at night from six o'clock at night when the day-time mill was shut down, we turned, peeled aspen logs into veneer and then graded all the veneer that came out of that. And then put it in their ovens, and then they [glued] it into plywood.

Well what they found out, what we found out, was that the grade was so high, of aspen, that they could make paneling. They had enough clear sheets of veneer out of the aspen that they could make a high-grade paneling out of it, which was worth a lot more than sheathing. And, so that was the end result of that 00:28:00project. The company then could not get the aspen material they needed out of northern Minnesota. There were too many of those that said that they didn't want to see the aspen cut. So, because availability of material wasn't there, they didn't go into that venture, building a plywood plant. But it made some very nice looking paneling. And it would have made excellent sheathing plywood as well. But at that time there was plenty of product being made elsewhere. Now, nowadays that probably would be a good adventure, a good venture to get into, maybe just an adventure too.

LB: Need some of those, too.

KM: So, and then there [pause], well none of the others in particular come to mind as far as which ones were interesting. All of them were, we, later on we kind of carried the ultrasonic scanning to a certain point, and we thought, enough so that it would stimulate industry to go in that direction. But industry, at that time, had no problem getting wood, really. But they were interested in improving their utilization. And [industry] found that they could improve it by how they cut the logs using the computer. So, the log scanners were [developed] where they just did a profile scan of the log and took the 00:30:00actual size of that log into the computer and then made the sawing decisions from that. And we saw some big growth in the kinds of saws that would break down a log. And I wasn't directly involved with that, but kind of parallel to that.

LB: And about when was that?

KM: That was probably in the middle 80s. And about that time there was another shuffle in the Laboratory here, and I was [hired] into a Wood Engineering [research project]. And, at that time, we were finishing up some work with the Ponderosa Pine [moulding and millwork] industry. They were quite interested in getting better utilization of the very expensive material that they were cutting 00:31:00up for door and window trim, and things like that. And we did some extensive work with them to show what a computer could do for them [to process] wide Ponderosa Pine boards [in] a mill. They were just telling the operator to rip it into strips. And they had a certain combination that would fit within whatever width [a] board was. And they would rip it without respect to where the defects were.

We could show them that with the computer program they could get a twenty percent increase in their yield, if they would know where the defects were and 00:32:00make the best decision as to where to rip it. Well, that, to some of the engineers, that, they look at that in the industry and they say yeah that's sure a headache to try to build a machine to do all that. And, I was at a big window manufacturer one time, and it happened that there was a company's accountant was [sitting] in on that meeting. And, when I said twenty percent the engineer was just yawning, like oh yeah, how're we going to do that? That's going to require a change in the assembly line and the breakdown, and we've been doing it this way for thirty years. Well, they were at that time, consuming fifty million board feet of Ponderosa Pine a year, and having it shipped from out west to 00:33:00Minnesota. And the accountant translated what a twenty percent increase was right away, on fifty million board feet a year, of which they were probably paying, at that time, 300 to 400 dollars for 1000 board feet. And he just leaned back in his chair, practically fell out of his chair. And, because he could see that [it] meant a lot, and you could put a lot of engineer time into investing in equipment to recover that. And that was a fun study. We did that with a lot of the different mills out west [cutting] Ponderosa Pine, and measured the defects and [other characteristics].

The interesting thing at that time was that we got involved with the moulding 00:34:00and millwork industry. And that was a big industry where they were consuming Ponderosa Pine, which is a very valuable wood, but also was one of the woods that they wanted. It turned out that they did want to take [it] out of the woods because they're big, nice-looking trees.

But one of the interesting things, that was a real lesson was when we went to a mill in the Sierras, just outside of Reno [where we would] have access to their lumber. Well, through their association, we met the president of that company, and it was not a huge company, but they processed a lot of lumber. And the 00:35:00president said sure, we'll go along with it, you can use our mill. So you just go there and talk to the vice president and he'll know where everything is at; he'll know how to, what you can do and where to go and so forth--he'll help you. So, we went to the vice president and told the vice president what we wanted. We wanted access to certain grades of Ponderosa Pine, which they brought in in shipments, and they'd be in big bundles, and we wanted help setting those out so we could measure them.

Well that vice president [said], well, I don't have any idea what's out there. The person you want to talk to is the manager of the mill, the production mill where they cut all of this material up. He knows what's going on. So we went to the manager and he looked at us rather blank, and he says, I don't have any idea 00:36:00what's out there. He said, the guy you want to talk to is the guy that runs the forklift truck, and he's the one that brings all the stuff that we need into the mill from the big warehouse. So we went out and talked to the forklift driver, who was kind of the yard foreman, and he as much said the same thing. He [said], I don't have any idea what's going on. He said, all I do is when the mill doesn't have any lumber set and ready to go in the input door, I go get some more and set it there. He says when the trucks come in and when the railroad cars come in, I go out and unload them and I set them in the warehouse. So, none of the four key people, or the five, including the president, had any idea how this company was operating.

And that was just as very typical example of how a lot of the industry ran. 00:37:00Sawmills were the same way. And they made money and that's all that counted. And gave people jobs, and hopefully nobody upset the apple cart. But it was quite a lesson when we found that out.

Then we got into looking at different species of wood, and what kind of structural properties they had. We looked at Red Maple, for example, as an underutilized species, and to see if it had structural properties. So we sampled that. And one of the studies that we got on was going up into Alaska and 00:38:00[looking] at [dead Alaska] Yellow Cedar. Because there were standing dead trees of Yellow Cedar that happened to be this [big], where we went was Wrangell Island. And the buyers of the product, the Yellow Cedar, only wanted live trees. [They did not] want anything that's dead. So, we [to Alaska] to find out whether the dead cedar was worth something, if it still had structural qualities. And it turned out it did. But that was a fun study to work on. I spent some time in Alaska.

LB: Yeah. Well, actually that was going to be my next question. So, you've already mentioned many of the places that you were able to travel. Did you spend any time working elsewhere, other than the Lab?

KM: No, all my working time was at the Lab, 35 years. [I traveled but] didn't have any other employer.

LB: And, I guess, where else were you able to travel?

KM: I was asked to go to Turkey one time. I went with two other fellows from the two grading associations. At that time nobody else wanted to go, and it kind of trickled down from the Washington office to the Forest Products Lab. And I was involved in that area of grading logs, and grading lumber, and in the 00:40:00utilization part. The problem at that time was, it was Turkey's solution to people [who] didn't want to see their forests cut down. And the way the Turkish government [operated], because they own all the forests, they cut the wood, [take] the logs out of the forest, and they would pile them up. And then the sawmills would come to those piles and buy wood. So, the Turkish government decided that it would be easy to go around the world and buy logs, and put them in those piles. And their sawmillers could come and buy those logs, and [wouldn't] care less if they were Turkish logs or someone else's logs. Well, 00:41:00they were buying Southern Pine from the United States, the sawmill people were complaining that it was already dried and checked. And it wasn't good quality. Well, it was probably six months to a year from the time that the trees were cut in the southern United States and hauled someplace to where they finally could be loaded on a big ship and shipped over to Turkey, offloaded, and carried out into the woods, and put in piles in the woods to make it look like it was Turkish wood.

So, we were there to try to work with the top government people, the mayors and governors of the states, to try to convince them that what they really should be doing, not cutting, not hauling logs out of the United States, or anywhere, 00:42:00because they weren't going to arrive [in fresh condition]. It's like buying an apple somewhere, [wood is] a degradable product; it doesn't last in that condition. So, that they really should by timbers, already sawn, and then haul those over to Turkey. And no, no, they wanted their saw millers [to do the sawing], they didn't want to put their sawmills out of business. And, so they just had a set idea in mind. We had some real interesting discussions and even arguments as to what the people. They would look at me [and]say, you are the US government, you change that. And I said, hey, we don't work that way. You know, our government does not make those decisions. And they couldn't quite get it across. And our government is, our policies are different. All our log grading 00:43:00and, and lumber grading and everything are done by private industry. And all the rest of the world, they're all government-controlled, government sets the standards and does this. And it's very unique, in this country, the grading associations do that, and police themselves. Now, our government has been involved some in housing and really more setting up the outline as to how the procedure should be established.

LB: So what came out of that trip?

KM: They, they ended up getting sawn wood, as far as I know. I believe they did 00:44:00continue to buy [logs], but they buy in smaller shipments and get it shipped quicker. And the industry, the sawmills, all they really did with their wood over there was to saw it up for form lumber. So, it didn't make any difference whether it was checked. They have a very low respect for wood, because all their houses are built out of concrete. So, all they need wood for is to make the forms for the concrete. So, they don't really need a lot. And I think that may have been some realization too, that they, that their forests are beautiful. You 00:45:00go into their forests and it was like being out in Colorado. It was quite a [trip], and the food [was] fantastic [laughs].

LB: I'll have to go there someday.

KM: Yeah. I would like to back because it was very unique.

LB: Any other exciting trips that you had the opportunity to go on?

KM: Oh, there's probably a lot of them. None of them just brush right by my mind right now.

LB: Or conferences?

KM: The best ones were [probably when] I was involved in the Forest Products Society and on as a board member there. There were some very good trips to conferences. [I] had been involved, helped, or initiated getting the 00:46:00Non-destructive Testing [of Wood] Symposiums, going again on a regular basis. And we had one in Sopron, Hungary, and another one in Switzerland, and the rest of them I think were held here in the United States. But [there] were people from all over the world who were interested in non-destructive testing of wood in various forms.

LB: And how does one go about non-destructive testing?

KM: Well the ultrasonics was one of the things that got me into the non-destructive testing. It was looking at a piece of wood and trying to measure, predict its qualities, a variety of qualities depending on what it 00:47:00might be--either the strength, or where the defects were, or where the better wood quality was. And that program has continued, and back to what initially the Navy guy said was, if you hit it, you get an echo back. And, so now we continue with that [idea] with work that's going on now. Bob Ross and some of the people here at the Forest Products Lab, where they'll try to--they know they can take a piece of wood, like a two by four, and, and send sound through it and decide what the modulus of elasticity is, because of how it vibrates. And, so now they're looking at whether they can actually look at the log and decide whether 00:48:00it has good structural lumber in it or not. And if they know that ahead of time, then they won't go to the expense of trying to saw it up into something that you're not going to get out of it anyway. So, it saves on a lot of expense. And you divert that log to something that it's more useful for. And they're also looking at trying to determine what the quality of the wood is in the tree itself. Then the other side of it, in the other direction is to look at sawn products--maybe it's material that's been in a bridge for a long time, you [wonder], is it still safe? Is it still structurally ok? Because if it has some decay, then that dampens the sound down to where the sound won't pass through decayed wood. It has to have solid wood to go through, and the sound actually goes through the cell walls--it doesn't go through the wood itself--it travels 00:49:00through the cell wall. And that was the key to why sound and wood worked so well, because it propagates very well through a wall, a solid wall, but if there's any fracture there, then the sound can't get across that air-break. Other examples of that are mine timbers and things like that, where wood is used and you want to know that it's still structurally ok. Up until we started working with the sound thing it was just a visual decision. Someone would look at the piece of wood and say, well I think that's strong and not really have any idea. Having some instruments that will determine that is a better way to go.

LB: So, was the ultrasonic testing the majority of the lab work that you did in here. Because you've been talking a lot about your field work; or did you do other sorts of lab testing? KM: I guess you'd say the majority of it was that. But then again, you get on to different projects, and it was a matter of, when you're on those projects, is try to wind them up as fast as possible and get it into a publication. They rate everybody on number of publications, and numbers count. Most people can only add up numbers, simple numbers. They try to boil everything down to numbers.

LB: Was that the administration here or in Washington?

KM: It's just the way everything is. It just happens that way. No matter where 00:51:00you go; you'll be able to say ok, they've got it down to numbers, because that's the third grade level that most people understand. And, to try to get them to think about something, and I wouldn't say that I'm all that different, but still, you get beyond a certain point and it takes too much brain power to. So it's the psychology of the thing, I think. Just drifts to that direction.

LB: Were there any projects that you worked on that you felt were particularly challenging, or your most difficult day that you had working here?

KM: I guess the only thing that was difficult was trying to figure out how to 00:52:00work other people, and work with other people. Not that I had any problem working with people, but there were, I mean everybody has, that you're working for, has different objectives and different goals. So you're always trying to work your own objectives and interests and things that you wanted to work on, with how they fit with someone else's. So, you could put it real simple and say it was a game. And I enjoyed it the whole time. I didn't have any days where I didn't like coming to work.

LB: That's good. Were there any people that you worked with or colleagues that you have particular memories of?

KM: Oh, many of them.

LB: Particular stories about any of them?

KM: They were [many] I enjoyed working with, there were a lot of people here that, not any that I guess in particular I'd point out. But there was a sawmill man here that was an expert in his field, and he and I were hunting partners and very good friends. And we'd stand toe to toe and argue about something until we were blue in the face if we each thought we were right and the other one was wrong. But we stayed good friends. But all in all the people that were here at the Lab were a lot of fun to work with. And I met, and I worked with many, many people in and across the Forest Service. Good friends.

LB: And so, how did you feel about working for an agency that's, I guess, part of the Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service?

KM: Well, I, I definitely felt good about what I was doing. I have my opinions about an overload of government, and I've got my own opinions about government workers; I don't usually include myself in that, other than I knew I was a government worker. But, I tried to account for my time as a benefit to the public, not as a hanger-on, one that was just feeding off of it. But, I decided 00:55:00that my interests and things I liked to do were [things] I could do here at the Forest Products Lab. But again, that boils down again to where I guess I was always able to play my own game. And for the most part I didn't feel that anybody was leading me around. And that kind of freedom is nice to have. And it was the atmosphere of the Laboratory. It was the atmosphere of doing research. And if you're interested in a certain area of research, and you think that you can justify [it], and get the funds to do it, and show that there's a place where it can benefit, then you get to do it. So, and I felt very fortunate to 00:56:00have the support from many who would let me do that, and there were others that was the same way. And there were others that were jealous that you were getting some of the funds and they weren't. So, they had to adjust too, and accommodate as well.

LB: So, I guess we already--what were your impressions of the Forest Service, I guess before you started working here? Did you go into the industry to start working for the Forest Service, or did you not have an idea about that?

KM: Well, when I was in high school, I was always going to go into farming. And, 00:57:00I grew up in Iowa, and farming was what I liked. Then I decided that I should go to college and take something there, and had an aptitude test that was given, a rather simple one. You answer a lot of questions and low and behold they came up and said, oh you're interested in agriculture. Well, yeah, duh. What else? I answered those questions that way. So, but on that list of possible things to do was farming and a number of things, and then they said forestry. It never had dawned on me that there was anything that even existed like forestry. So, I decided then that instead of going to college in engineering, I would go to forestry. And I did, and one of the first--the first summer that you're in the 00:58:00forestry program you have a forestry summer camp. And ours, fortunately, was down in New Mexico. And forty guys go down there and spend ten weeks in the forest. And we were at an old CCC camp, and it was a lot of fun. It's what, 40 guys can get in to all kinds of trouble at that age. But one of the things our professors lined up were visits with Forest Service people, rangers on districts and so forth. One of the things that they stressed was that if you become a district ranger in the Forest Service, then you usually move every five years, because they think that a district forester has a lot of new ideas, and it would take them about five years to accomplish putting those ideas into effect. And 00:59:00after that time, they figured the effectiveness of those ideas was pretty well spent, and get somebody new in and send that one to another district. Well, I didn't like this idea that I was going to be somewhere five years and then peddling off somewhere else. I don't know why but it didn't appeal to me. So, I didn't know what else I might do other than I was interested in the products program. And then this possibility for summer employment here came up. So it kind of fell into place for me anyway, to move to Wisconsin, and I wouldn't want to go back to Iowa.

LB: And, I guess we're sort of getting to about the end of our time; we're at 01:00:00about an hour right now. But just a couple of quick questions about your time post-Forest Products Lab. What made you decide to retire? Or was it just time?

KM: Oh I got to the point where I decided that it was time to do something else. And there were still interesting things going on here, but I just figured that the time was right. So, and the possibility to retire was good, so I did that ten years ago, in '98, January of '98. And I haven't regretted it a bit.

LB: And it seems like you've been keeping busy, at least from our phone conversations.

KM: Oh yes.

LB: And have you been keeping up with, I guess, forest products research or industry? Or does that still interest you?

KM: I still do. You can do that very easily with the internet, and definitely stay involved with the internet. I've done some consulting. I'm probably not a good consultant as far as [making it] a business. Usually, when someone has a problem I'll look at it and very often it's an obvious problem that they have. But I'm too quick to give an answer; there's no business in that. But, there's 01:02:00[where a successful] consultant will say ok, well we need to work on this, we need to spend some time on this, and time is money. I can't do it that way. Or someone will come, [like] a lawyer, with a problem and they say, this is my client's problem, and will you be an expert witness. Well, usually I'm not going to be saying something that I don't really believe in. If they're on the wrong side of the fence, which seems like most of the time they are. They're trying to prove something happened when you really know that's probably not what happened. I just tell them right up front what my thoughts are, and some will still retain 01:03:00[me] as an expert witness. But that's a game in itself too, because a lot of times you have two sides, each side, the first thing they try to do is to line up all these expert witnesses on their side. They're never going to call them. They're just going to have them on their side. So it's back to numbers again. And, and if they, and as much as possible, at least I've had it where I've found out who's all on someone's team. Well they've got all the experts that you would call as an expert witness already lined up. And, and that's probably what settles everything, is the, the other side doesn't have any, they don't have any of those expert witnesses, and so they just throwing those numbers back and forth and scare off the other side. I guess there was a Trojan horse one time 01:04:00that was so big that it scared everybody, or something like that. So that, I haven't done a lot of a lot of consulting, but I could have. But, I don't enjoy spending my spare time that way, too many other projects, and I've got a forest [with] trees [to] play around.

LB: Sounds great! Do you feel that your work has left a mark on the Forest Products Lab, or the Forest Service?

KM: Oh, I do, yeah. I feel that some of it I would have liked to have seen put into place faster, but very often, and we grew up that way too. When I was early 01:05:00in the research it was research that was done thirty years ago was just being implemented, so its probably much the same way. Very seldom do things happen fast. Our, our original thoughts of putting computers in the sawmills, that probably happened within ten years, which was fast. And, and some of the other work, there were immediate [results], like the accountant at the window company, that was fast. But that was by accident that we happened to be talking to the person that really counted, [as] the one. Engineers in companies really have 01:06:00their feet to the fire, and they can't propose and make big changes. They can make very little, minute changes, are usually what their involved in. And usually it's like trying to cover themselves for the immediate time, and look good. And, unfortunately, they don't get a chance to blow up a bigger picture that really can do some good with a company. So yeah, I don't regret any of the work that we did. I look at it, I could say ok it was way too much fun, and I shouldn't have had that much fun but I did.

LB: Work should be fun.

KM: Yeah.

LB: I guess before we wrap up do you have any last stories or memories or comments that you'd like recorded?

KM: Oh probably a lot of them will come to mind. We could probably talk for another twenty-four hours and probably still tell new ones.

LB: Well, thank you very much for doing this today.

KM: Yeah, thank you.