Hi Dennis,
In your latest newsletter Lynn Osika spoke of his 1980 Biltmore stick, used by forestry students. I also still have mine, but it dates to the summer of 1962. It was the year the class of 1964 held their forestry summer camp at Camp Alberta (Ford Forestry Center), practicing field forestry and surveying techniques . At that time we had to make our own Biltmore sticks. They gave us a blank of maple about three feet long, and we had to mark and enter the scales for four functions: linear inches, tree diameter, tree height measured in 16-foot logs, and board feet in logs of various sizes. Then we varnished it and it has held up pretty well (see pic). Modern-day foresters still use some of the same manual tools, but some functions now use laser technology and the like. I’ll let one of the more recent and active graduates explain how those might work.

Ted Reuschel, Forestry 1964