March 25, 1919 



Hardwood Record — Veneer & Panel Section 



23 



Hen Explains Cause of Blisters 



March 14, 1919. 

 Dear Jim, 



1 was glad to get your letter and to know that you 

 all are well. 1 am tip top, and Sue's looking better 

 than she was. We had her mother here now about 

 three weeks and she sure is a good scout and her visit 

 is doing Sue a lot of good. Guess more than anything 

 the kid was sick for her mother. 



You say you dint heard anything lately about how 

 the vegetable glue is going, and you are some interested 

 because they have begun to talk about it where you 

 are. Well, Jim, today I can say it is going fine, but 

 about a month ago it had me feeling like a nigger with 

 one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. 

 The cabinet room was slamming me hard with panels with 

 blisters and loose edges. They said that new glue was 

 all vv^rong, and we better throw it out. And me, like 

 a cussed fool, instead of using my head 1 got stage 

 fright and laid the fault to the glue. The old man in- 

 sisted that we were at fault somewhere, but said he 

 would telegraph the vegetable glue people we were hav- 

 ing trouble. 



Jim, it sure is funny how things work out. That tele- 

 gram hadn't been sent an hour before one of the com- 

 pany's men came around. Said he had dropped in to 

 see how we w^ere getting along. Then 1 just told him 

 we was having all kinds of trouble, and his glue sure 

 wasn't much good. But he didn't seem at all startled. 

 Said he guessed we would find the trouble was vvfith 

 ourselves instead of the glue, and that we probably had 

 slipped up in following instructions. Then I got hot 

 and told him we done what Warren told us. So he said, 

 "All right, let's go over and see. " We went over near 

 the press and the guy stood around with his hands in 

 his pockets for over twenty minutes before he said a 

 word about our glue troubles. We talked about the 

 weather and the war, and I was beginning to think he 

 was one of those smooth guys that was going to throw 

 a bluff and make a getaway. Then he surprised me 

 by taking off his coat and throwing it on a truck load 

 of core stock. It was just as the last panel of that par- 

 ticular bundle was laid, and the men were about to 

 push the bundle into the press. He walked over and 

 stopped the spreader and showed me some small pieces 

 of veneer that had been mashed into the corrugations on 

 the rolls. He said those were what caused blisters, and 

 that he was sure that Warren had cautioned us to keep 

 the rolls clean and not let the corrugations get filled up 



with veneer slivers and chips. Told him 1 couldn t see 

 how those would cause blisters, and he told me that the 

 corrugations were put in the rolls to carry glue to be 

 spread on the material that was run between the rolls, 

 and that if those corrutrations got filled with something 

 besides glue there could be no glue in them to be spread. 

 Then he put a piece of cross-banding through and took 

 it over where there was more light and showed me the 

 spots where the glue was spread very thin, or not at all, 

 on account of those veneer slivers on the rolls. Then 

 he got hold of an old three-cornered file and used it to 

 take all the pieces of veneer off the rolls, and run an- 

 other piece of cross-banding through and when 1 looked 

 for the thin spots I couldn't find any. He told me that 

 practically all the causes of blisters where vegetable glue 

 was used could be traced to unclean rolls. But he also 

 mentioned that if core stock or cross-banding had de- 

 pressions in it such depressions were apt not to be cov- 

 ered with glue, and in such case there would be blisters. 

 In few words that all means that there are sure to be 

 blisters if there is no glue on the material to hold the 

 stuff together. Of course 1 knew that from my use of 

 animal glue, but 1 had to get up in the air like 1 had no 

 brains at all. 



Then this glue fellow, whose name sounded like Moon- 

 man, said that most of our loose edges were caused on 

 account of our taking so long to get the panels under 

 pressure. 1 asked him how he knew when he hadn t 

 seen a bundle made yet. He laughed and said that was 

 how he knevif. He said that when v^^e came over to see 

 what was doing there was nearly half a press full of 

 panels laid and it took over tw^enty minutes to lay the 

 rest of the bundle and get it under pressure. 1 tried to 

 tell him that was an exception and that most of the time 

 w^e got the whole bundle under pressure within twenty 

 minutes, but he only smiled and remarked that was what 

 they all said even when they were caught with the goods. 

 And of course I didn't have a leg left to stand on be- 

 cause 1 knew if it happened once it was bound to happen 

 often. 



Moonman said we were spreading the glue all right, 

 and that he was sure that if we got the stuff under pres- 

 sure in twenty minutes we would not have a loose edge, 

 except now and then when a piece was not laid abso- 

 lutely in place and stuck out so that the pressure could 

 not be applied to the edges of that piece and the ones 

 on top and under it. 1 knew he was right. But you 

 see, Jim, we got careless when we had been using the 



