The Chronicle-star combined with the Moss Point advertiser., 1948-06-11
Making Of
Paper Is
Huge Investment
In Machinery And
Plunt Is Required

The Transformation Of wood to
pulp and pulp to paper is a conn
plicated chemical and mechanical
process requiring millions of dol
lars worth of equipment. Paper is
cheap only because it can be pro-
duced quickly and in vast guam
tity. In its Southern Kraft Divis-
ion Mills, International Paper
Company will turn out 100000
tons of paper products this year.
The sulfate process Of making
paper is used in the southern
states to produce pulp from pine
wood. Two other processes for
making pulp and paper are used
by International Paper Company
in its mills in the northern states
mechanical and sulfite. Sulfate
pulp is used in the South to
make Kraft paper and container
board. To the Impractical eye,
Kraft board looks like heavy
brown wrapping paper. It is
called Kraft paper and Kraft con-
tainer board because "kraft" In
Germany, where the process orig
mated, means Strong, and the
product is used primarily to make
corrugated shipping containers,
where strength is of major im<
portance.
Southern Pine Ideal
The making of paper or board
starts in the woods. Pine makes
excellent pulp for Kraft, and
long-leaf pine. abundant in the
South, is one of the best pines for
pulpwood. But all Of the South
ern pines make excellet pulp.
Cutting pulpwood for paper mills
is a fine art. Three harvesting or
selective cutting is now a general
practice of pulp and paper COM
panies. Trees grow so thick in
many parts of the South that .
periodic harvest of . pulpwood
crop is a. benefit to the forests.
Selective cutting weeds out a for
est area to permit seedlings to
grow. Where forests are so thick
that they choke seedlings, the
yield of the land in terms Of ac-
tual cords Of wood produced is
seriously. diminished. Selective
cutting gives nature a hand.
Wood obtained from the COM
pany's own acreage is all selec-
lively cut. Company foresters go
through miles of forest land with
spray funs filled with paint. They
mark trees to be cut with a blast
from their guns. A cutting crew
follows. Some crews operate by
hand with saws and axes; many,
however, have small circular
power saws which can cut down
a tree four inches in diameter in
little more than q minute. Power
cutting saves wood by leaving
short, uniform stumps and even
ends at the base of logs.
Trip 70 Mill
Trees are trimmed where they
fall. Long-ieaf pines have few
branches and are easily trim
med. The trimmed trees are then
sawed on the spot into five-foot
three-inch logs which are more
easily transported from the wood
lands than fuil-length tree
trunks. The logs from the wood
lands move by truck directly into
the mill or to barges or railroad
cars and thence to the mill.
AT the mill, wood is unloadec
by cranes to the stockpile and
thence by conveyors running to
the mills woodroom. The con-
veyors are heavy steel endless
chains at the base of open
troughs. The conveyors chatter
and jerk as they lug their heavy
loads to the ~de-barking equip
ment.
When pulpwood reaches the
woodroom, the conveyor ends at
barking drums into which the
logs fall. The barking drums are
heavy, slotted, steel cylinders. As
the logs tumble about and knock
against each other the bark is de.
tached and drops out onto con-
veyors which take it to the boiler
furnaces to be burned as fuel. The
din and the constant motion
would terrify ordinary citizens.
Meanwhile the clean pulpwood
is conveyed from the barking
drums through q water spray to
the chipping equipment Here the
logs slide into covered clippers,
devices with four to twelve heavy
whirling blades which almost in
stantly slice the logs into thin