Re: Slab wood

Keith,
I don't know for sure how they did it in eastern Oregon or the pine country but in western Oregon slab wood was always cut to four feet. Home stoves or furnaces would always accept 16" wood, 1/3 four foot, this was the accepted length in most of the fir country. I would suspect the wood in La Grande was also cut to 16" rather than 12". Slab wood was put in long rows and allowed to air dry or season before delivery if posable. Wood yards could be several acres, stacked usually eight feet high in rows sometimes hundreds of feet long. When delivered it was then cut from four feet to the desired length. In the Eugene area the wood yards had an old car or truck with two saws mounted 16" apart on a wide conveyer, it's posable some had three saws but I don't remember that. The wood was loaded on the lower end, three or four feet off ground, three chains with wide cleats moved it up the ramp thru the two saws then on up to a height, twelve feet or more where it would fall into a truck for delivery. Some of the loaders used stationary engines like a Fairbanks hit and miss, but in later years they used old auto engines. In old aerial pictures you can see wood yards around saw mills with acres of wood stacked seasoning. I have no doubt different areas did it differently, however this is the way it was done around Eugene, OR with it's wet climate. In the dryer areas they may not have needed to let the wood season. After WW2 wood for home use became less popular. The slabs were then run thru a "Hog" to make Hogged fuel which was used in large boilers to produce steam for drying wood, electricity or steam for heating larger building. Later the logs were barked then the wood was chipped to make paper.
Plainer ends, blocks from the timber saw or scraps from the box factory were a whole different class of wood and could come in any length.
I hope this helps
Jim