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Hardwood Record — Veneer & Panel Section 



August 10, 1922 



A Dependable Source 

 For Your Requirements 



About One Million Feet of 



PLYWOOD 



3/16 to 1 2 in Thickness 



AND 



Over One and One-half 

 Million Feet of 



VENEER 



in Stock. We make Panels 



to Your Sizes in Car or 



L. C. L. Lots. 



QUALITY & SERVICE 



Write or Wire for Price List 



Geo. L. Waetjen 8C Co. 



717-723 Park Street 

 MILWAUKEE WISCONSIN 



Hoffman Brothers Company 



ESTABLISHED 1867 



INCORPORATED 1904 



VENEERS 

 HARDWOOD LUMBER 



800 W. Main St., FORT WAYNE, IND. 



I^lants: Fort Wayne, Ind. Kendallville. Ind. Burnside, Ky. 



if'untiuuitl from iiii'/f lUt) 

 Austin Is Optimistic 



S. J. Austin of the S. j. Austin Veneer Company, takes a partic- 

 ularly optimistic view of the situation. Mr. Austin said, though, 

 the strike situation seemed to have interfered somewhat with the 

 normal run of furniture business though his company is getting 

 a very satisfactory volume of business. In w^alnut he says he is 

 making a very fine line and selling it as fast as he can make it, 

 while in mahogany although June w^as an excellent month, he has 

 turned over little of this stock since, with, however, consider- 

 able prospect for the future. The Austin Company is making 

 arrangement to put on a w^ell-known man to cover primarily the 

 Michigan territory in the near future. 



The veneer market is extremely unstable, according to the 

 opinion of R. A. Smith of the Mound City Veneer Mills. It is 



as variable as the moods of April and as jumpy as a nervous 

 horse. Business one week may be booming and the next it may 

 drop off to almost nothing. Buyers seem to be suffering from a 

 nervous disorder, which might w^ell be called depressionitis. 

 They live in constant apprehension of being caught again like 

 they w^ere when the post-war bubble burst. They buy only w^hat 

 they must have and when something happens, like the cancella- 

 tion of an order or a coal or railroad strike, they scurry back to 

 cover and stay there until everything is serene again. The 

 coal and rail strike situation had driven, and was keeping, some 

 of the veneer buyers under cover when Hardwood Record talked 

 to Mr. Smith. Buying had fallen off from a state of good business 

 to very slow business, according to Mr. Smith's experience. "But 

 when the strike is settled, 1 believe business is going to pick up 

 again big," said Mr. Smith. "Business will continue to fluctuate 

 considerably, and w^e will have good w^eeks and bad for a long 

 time, but in the aggregate we'll do pretty well. The piano in- 

 dustry is swinging back into production and is buying in sub- 

 stantial quantities for the first time in two years. The furniture 

 people have a good many orders on their books and they w^ill 

 probably get a good many more this fall. So 1 don't see w^hy 

 demand for veneer and plywood is not going to be pretty good for 

 the next few months." 



Mr. Smith left on July 29 for northern Wisconsin, intending 

 to spend a tw^o -weeks' vacation fishing and playing golf around 

 Merrill and other points in that part of the country. 



Miss Virginia Bernero, who has been bookkeeper for the 

 Mound City Veneer Mills and the Hardw^ood Mills Lumber Com- 

 pany for the past six or seven years resigned in the latter part of 

 July, and early in August w^as married to A. E. McDonnell, of the 

 firm of Gubbins & McDonnell, one of the leading real estate organ- 

 izations of the Rogers Park district in Chicago. Miss Bernero is 

 known to a great many of the lumbermen. 



S. D. Rowe of the Veneer Manufacturers Company, has gone 

 East to join his family for a vacation at their summer home at 

 Hyannesport, Mass. 



Modern Finishing Methods 



There are two ideas which have been brought into action in the 

 woodworking industry to do the work of the hand brush in paint- 

 ing and varnishing. One is dipping, but the more modern is 

 that of spraying. There seems also to be some combining of the 

 two, but the tendency of the times is strongly toward the use of 

 the spray, especially in the making of furniture and other case 

 goods. The spray is used not only for the finishes proper but 

 also for the stain and filler. 



There goes with both the spraying and dipping a new order 

 of things in the making of finishing materials, and incidentally there 

 has been developed with it a much wider use of alcohol and 

 spirits and quick drying solvents for finishing materials. 



These modern methods have helped make it more easily practi- 

 cal to get protecting coats on the inside of furniture as well as on 

 the outside, for to do all this with hand brushes now would make 

 it much more costly. And it is being also generally recognized 

 that the protecting coat on the inside of work is well worth w^hile. 

 As a result many furniture factories put at least tw^o finishing coats 

 of material on the inside of their work. 



The point of main interest to veneer users about this, that is 

 aside from those employed in the work of finishing, is in the 

 effect the differences in the finishes and method of application 

 may have on the woodwork itself. Whether it causes any letting 

 lo'^^e of veneer, raising of grain or distortion of w^ork that must 

 be guarded against. A little more studying of finishing room 

 methods and what happens during the process of finishing should 

 be good supplementary education for those in charge of the 

 veneer work and the gluing. 



