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Hardwood Record — Veneer & Panel Section 



February 25, 1917 



Passing of the Wide Flitch 



Quality and Figure Now More Sought After Than Excessive Width 



I HERE ARE SEVERAL interesting features in the 

 quartered oak veneer business at this writing. 

 For one thing this product is in very active 

 demand and there is quite a scramble for logs 

 and flitches with which to supply it. A more impressive 

 feature than this, however, is found in the tendency to 

 pass up the wide flitches that heretofore have brought 

 premium prices. 



A year or two ago the writer was visiting an important 

 veneer plant specializing in quarter-sawed veneer. He 

 was invited to go out and inspect the big stock of flitches 

 being brought in. There w^ere several remarkable fea- 

 tures about these flitches, the most noticeable being that 

 many of them were from very large logs; consequently 

 they were thicker than usual and some were very wide, 

 the widths running up as high as nineteen inches. Re- 

 cently while visiting the same veneer mill it was noted 

 that in the flitch stock on the yard and in that being 

 sawed, there was none of great width, in fact the flitches 

 seemed to be narrow^, ranging from six inches to twelve 

 inches. 



To a remark that the flitch stock now did not show 

 flitches of the great width found during a previous visit, 

 the plant manager replied: 



"We don't want them any more. Nobody seems to 

 care anything about a flitch more than fourteen inches 

 wide now." 



Then he went on to explain that wide flitches used to 

 be the sought-after things and the product from them 

 commanded such a premium that all were willing to pay 

 very high prices to get good wide flitches. He said he 

 could recall instances where they had sold the product 

 from well figured, extremely wide flitches for two and 

 three times the price they were able to obtain for veneer 

 cut from flitches ranging from six to twelve inches. 

 People wanting to make up sample pieces of furniture 

 would pay enormous prices to get single piece faces in 

 wde stock. Naturally under these conditions they were 

 anxiously seeking wide flitches and were paying con- 

 siderably more money to get them. 



"Times have changed now^," he said, "and instead of 

 buying wide stock the veneer users take narrow stock 

 and joint and match it up, getting more satisfactory re- 

 sults in many cases." Naturally, therefore, they are not 

 disposed to pay big prices to get wide stock. 



This may not be the experience of every veneer manu- 

 facturer and the suggestion that the w^ide flitch is passing 

 from favor may meet with strenuous denial from some in 

 the trade. Still the fact remains that the man making 

 the above assertion has been in the business for a long 

 time and is quite an authority on the subject. His expe- 

 rience ought to be a fair gage to conditions in the trade 

 as a whole. 



He said that the taping and jointing machines had 

 finally robbed the wide flitch of its great value. These 

 machines have been available for use for about the past 

 ten years but it has taken considerable time to beget that 

 confidence in their work and general use of them which 

 has cut into the value of the wide stock in veneer and 

 made it comparatively easy and more satisfactory to use 

 narrow stock and build up the widths. 



For a long time even after the jointing and taping 

 machine was perfected and wdely exploited as a labor 

 saver, many veneer users were skeptical of its efficiency. 

 In the jointing some trouble had been experienced with 

 joints opening and showing up bad but time has helped 

 eliminate this trouble and sufficient confidence in the 

 machines has developed to turn operators to them volun- 

 tarily now instead of grudgingly. They find that often 

 they can get a better general face result by building up 

 a wide face from a series of narrow units in quartered 

 oak than they could obtain with one wide piece. There- 

 fore attention is given to the matter of so assembling and 

 matching up narrow widths with a view to getting beauty 

 in the wide face from these narrow units. 



Some pretty strong evidence has been encountered that 

 the wide flitch has had its great day. Of course it is still 

 a desirable thing. No veneer man is going to object to 

 width in a flitch so long as it carries figure with it. Be- 

 sides, the average veneer man will be inclined to pay a 

 little better price for good wide flitches than for narrow 

 ones and he will ask his customer a higher price for wide 

 veneers than for narrow stock, but for all that the extreme 

 range of difference in price between narrow quartered 

 oak veneer and wide stock is being trimmed down 

 considerably. Finely figured narrow stock of good 

 texture; that is, stock ranging say from six to twelve 

 inches, is a more desirable veneer product today than 

 wide stock showing good figure in only a part of the 

 width. This may sound startling to some millmen who 

 have found it difficult to sell flitches under seven inches in 

 width, but there is an evident tendency in the quartered 

 oak veneer business to pass up the old wide flitch, with 

 its extremely high range of prices because of the extra 

 width, for good figure in veneer is today a more desirable 

 thing than great width. C. T. 



Sycamore in the form of veneer has become an item of some 

 importance in door manufacture, which suggests that one of the 

 j;oo(i wavs to utilize sycamore is in the form of veneer. 



One of the nice things for the sawmill man about oak veneer 

 flitches is in that they are used green and he can re.alize upon them 

 prompt!}'. Also the flitches properly cut and marketed will often 

 prove more profitable than converting certain high-grade trees 

 into regular lumber. 



