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Hardwood Record — Veneer & Panel Section 



May 25. 1919 



The figure of sycamore is one of the strongest of our 

 native woods. It instantly attracts attention, and it is 

 displayed in some fine musical instruments and furniture, 

 but it cannot be said to be particularly popular. 



The largest portion of sycamore is put to common 

 rather than to exacting uses. This statement holds true 

 of both sycamore veneer and lumber. A rather large 

 part of the lumber is used in the rough, for building pur- 

 poses, while box and crate makers use both lumber and 

 veneer in relatively large amounts. More than two 



million feet a year are taken by furniture makers, and 

 about one-sixth of that quantity goes to factories which 

 make musical instruments. Makers of doors are large 

 users, and even more is consumed by manufacturers of 

 store and office fixtures. The wood is liked by makers 

 of refrigerators, while a rather large bill of sycamore is 

 purchased by manufacturers of sewing machines. That is 

 where some of the best quartered stock goes; and stock 

 of the same kind is purchased in fairly large quantity by 

 makers of carpet sweepers. 



How the Ancients Cut Veneers 



Crude Appliances Which Were Used by Workmen Long Ago 



|T WOULD BE INTERESTING to know just how 

 the ancients cut veneers, in the absence of 

 power machines, and with the crudest of saws 

 and with no knives larger or more powerful 

 than could be operated by hand. 



They did not use a great deal of veneer, but what 

 they used was often of very high grade, and the work- 

 manship was good, so far as it can be judged by the few 

 specimens that have come down to the present time. 



Our knowledge of ancient veneer is derived princi- 

 pally from what has survived from Egyptian and Roman 

 times. Excavations at Pompeii have uncovered veneered 

 furniture; yet that is not the most ancient. Remains of 

 Egyptian veneer work are older than anything that has 

 come from Rome or Italy. One of the oldest of the 

 Egyptian samples of veneer is a chair, finished with sheets 

 of veneer of some hardwood, apparently ebony. 



But how did they cut the veneer? There is no ques- 

 tion that they had it and knew how to use it. 



There is evidence that each sheet w^as hewed with 

 an adz or ax, as thin as it could be made without danger 

 of breaking or splitting the wood, possibly to a thinness 

 of a quarter of an inch; after which it was rubbed and 

 scraped until it was reduced to the desired thinness. 



Samples of Egyptian carpentry in the Field Museum, 

 Chicago, show^ traces of smoothing tools for polishing 

 surfaces, rubbing down high places and reducing inequal- 

 ities. The scratches left on the surface of the wood are 

 proof that the tools were not very sharp. There is reason 

 to believe that much of the rubbing was done with stones, 

 perhaps with flint. The plane, such as carpenters now 

 employ, did not seem to be in use then; or the rubbing 

 stone was its prototype. 



Doubtless the adz was the veneer cutter's principal 

 tool. It vsfas the carpenter's chief dependence, at least in 

 ancient Egypt. The investigations of Flinders Petrie have 

 brought to light much information concerning tools and 

 methods of work in ancient Egypt, and the adz v^^as 

 much more common than either the saw or ax. Car- 

 penters are shown, on old monuments, at v^fork with the 

 adz shaping all kinds of wooden articles; but it appears 

 that no workman has been shown in the old pictures 



actually making veneer. Perhaps it was seldom made, 

 and for that reason was not represented on the ancient 

 monuments, and we are left to do some guessing. 



The small size of ancient tools, so far as we know 

 their dimensions, is astonishing. That is true particularly 

 of Egypt, where w^orks of enormous proportions were 

 made. One naturally associates vast works with large 

 and strong tools; but that is a mistake, if we base con- 

 clusions on what v/e know of Egyptian tools. Take the 

 saw and the adz, which were doubtless the chief reliance 

 of the veneer maker. The saw was about as broad as 

 the blade of a table knife and not much longer than the 

 knife. The teeth were merely notches, apparently shaped 

 with a piece of flint used as a file. With such a saw it 

 is doubtful if a workman could produce the equivalent of 

 one square foot of lumber in a day. The saw would not 

 reach through a large stick, and it was necessary to saw 

 in as far as possible on one side, then from the other, 

 and make use of all sorts of makeshifts and devices to 

 separate a thin board from the side of a log. 



Such a board was probably the raw material of which 

 the veneer was to be made. After the saw had separated 

 the plank, it was the function of the adz man to smooth 

 the surface and work it down to the desired thinness. 



The blade of the Egyptian adz was about an inch wide 

 — about like a medium size carpenter chisel. The handle 

 was adjusted about in the same angle as the handle of the 

 modern adz, but it was only a few inches long. The 

 adz was a one-hand tool. The board or surface to be 

 dressed was stood upright, and often the workmen held 

 it with one hand while he manipulated the little adz with 

 the other — like Japanese carpenters worked a century 

 ago. 



The work of making enough veneer to cover a table 

 top, by that slow method, can be imagined. Some of the 

 veneered furniture bought by wealthy Romans cost fifty 

 times as much as the finest Circassian furniture costs now. 

 The chief item of cost was the labor bill, though work- 

 men then earned only a few cents a day. The wood 

 Itself must have cost a fortune. The Egyptians brought 

 their ebony from eastern Africa, south of the equator; 



(Co)iliintrii on f^tiift-' ,iO) 



