HARD. WOOD RECORD 



II 



Makers of Machinery History. 



NUMBER V. 



Barter D. Whitney. 



{See Portrait Supplement.) 

 With this issue of the HAEicn-oOD Record 

 is published in supplement form the portrait 

 of the dean of woodworking machinery 

 manufacturers, Baxter D. Whitney. 



Mr. Whitney is eighty-eight years old and 

 is a native of Winchendon, Mass., where his 

 extensive woodworking machinery plant is 

 located. 



As a lad he early showed a predilection 

 for mechanics, and it was in the repair shop 

 attached to the woolen mill owned by his 

 father that he acquired his first practical 

 knowledge of what was to be his most suc- 

 cessful life work. At the age of ten he con- 

 structed a small sawmill operated by water 

 collected in a pond he formed by damming a 

 tiny stream. While the sawing capacity of 



PRINT OF BUCKEYE LEAF, ACTUAL SIZE. 



the mill was limited even in proportion to 

 the power expended, the effort showed the 

 early bud of mechanical genius and the bent 

 of its future activity. Before Mr. Whitney 

 had reached manhood he was able to hold 

 his own with skilled mechanics of years of 

 experience, and he had ingrained and fos- 

 tered habits of prudence, forethought and 

 self-reliance. When he decided to build his 

 own plant, he selected a site a short dis- 

 tance from his father's woolen mill. Hear- 

 ing that others were looking at the land in 

 question on account of its most desirable 

 water power, he quietly surveyed it himself, 

 choosing a lowering afternoon when promise 



of snow was in the air. His weather prog- 

 nostications were correct and his footprints 

 were soon obliterated, and he made his pur- 

 chase easily before his competitors had time 

 to formulate their plans. 



His first business venture, however, was 

 the building of machinery for the manufac- 

 ture of tubs and pails in a corner of his 

 father's factory. Here, also, when he was 

 twenty years old, he built sixteen looms for 

 weaving cashmere. 



His first planing machine was built in an 

 old building that stood back of the present 

 factory, and although it was not the first 

 cylinder planing machine ever made, it was 

 certainly the first practical one, and em- 

 bodied original ideas which insured the 

 proper pressure and adjustment of the feed 

 roils, so that the clipping of the ends of the 

 lumber was prevented. It was, however, a 

 somewhat primitive machine, only two feed 

 rolls were employed and there was no pres- 

 sure bar, one of the important features of 

 the modern Whitney planing machine. In 

 the year 18-16 the first Whitney planing ma- 

 chine was constructed in about six weeks, 

 and when completed was sold to Murdock & 

 Fairbank of Winchendon. 



The great stone dam at the Whitney plant 

 was built by Mr. Whitney in 1845 and it has 

 furnished the water power and withstood 

 the winter frosts and spring freshets for 

 sixty years. 



Mr. Whitney is a man who has always 

 built on the principle of "not for my time, 

 but for all time to come." He is so thor- 

 ough a believer in doing thiiigs well that in 

 many instances he has lost sight of the 

 money expended. He was once asked what 

 the dam cost him. "I don't know," he an- 

 swered; "all I do know about it is that the 

 dam is right! " He has carried out the same 

 policy in the building of the high-class 

 woodworking machinery for which his insti- 

 tution is famous. It has happened that after 

 spending thousands of dollars in the crea- 

 tion of a piece of machinery, which he 

 thouglit would answer a specific purpose, 

 that it did not exactly suit his ideas of 

 what it should be, and he has ordered it 

 destroyed. It is only the tried out tool that 

 is ever sold or shipped from his factory. 



In 1857 Mr. Whitney made his first 

 scraping machine, and about that time the 

 Whitney shaper and the WTiitney gauge 

 lathe were designed. 



Mr. Whitney has been the recipient of 

 numerous gold, silver and bronze medals, 

 and has received the compliment of having 

 his machines purchased abroad at one exhi- 

 bition and imitated at the next, but his com- 

 petitors reckoned without their host, as in 

 every instance the imitation lacked some 

 important improvements that Mr. Whitney 

 had made in the meantime. 



To estimate the influence of Baxter D. 

 Whitney on woodworking machinery in the 

 last sixty years would be almost impossible. 

 Certainly to him much credit must be given 

 for a great deal of the progress made. 



His business life has been that of a master 

 craftsman always determined to do his best. 

 Purposeful and self-reliant, only his own 

 standard was high enough for the machines 

 he built. ' ' Good enough ' ' is never recog- 

 nized in the technical vocabulary of his 

 workshop; "as good as possible" is there 

 the watchword of both master and workman. 



For the past few years Baxter D. Whitnej- 

 has allowed the active management of the 

 works to devolve entirely upon his son and 

 partner, William M. Whitney, a fit represen- 

 tative of the integrity and business sagacity 

 of his father. 



William M. Whitney is devoted to the 

 same aim and the same ideals as his father, 

 and he intends to keep the Whitney plant 

 a model of its kind, and to maintain for the 

 Whitney machines the same high position 



FOLIAGE, FRUIT AND FLOWER OF BUCK- 

 EYE. 



they have always occupied in the woodwork- 



ing world. 



Increasing Capacity. 

 The W. I/. McManus Lumber Company of 

 Petoskey, llich., is doubling the capacity of its 

 maple flooring plant. A new Hoyt 129, the 

 fifth machine of this kind purchased by this 

 concern from the American Woodworking Ma- 

 chinerj- Company, has just been Installed. 

 The company is adding to the size of its plant, 

 and has recently remodeled its drj* kilns and 

 increased the capacity by one hundred per 

 cent. The entire improvements will be com- 

 pleted within a few days, and it is expected 

 that by January 1, at latest, teh plant will be 

 iu full operation. 



