34 



Hardwood Record — Veneer & Panel Section 



June 25. 1917 



Made in Si. Louis by 



St. Louis Basket and Box Co. 



WE MANUFACTURE 



a complete line of Built-up Stock in most 

 any size or thickness, including Walnut, 

 Mahogany, Quartered and Plain Oak, 

 Ash, Gum, Plain or Figured Birch, Yellow 

 Pine, Sycamore, Cottonwood, etc. 



ESTABLISHED 1880 



WRITE FOR COMPLETE PRICE LIST 



means of a hand lever and cut veneers 1 1 6" thick, about 

 four inches wide. Today the mammoth slicer with its 

 draw cut will make a veneer anywhere from 3 1 6" thick 

 to 1 300 of an inch. The latter, however, is hardly 

 practical. One hundred and twenty veneers to the inch 

 is termed as thin as practicable in the present-day 

 methods. 



A short time ago we asked one of the leading manu- 

 facturers of veneers in this country to give us his opinion 

 of the sawed versus the knife cut veneer. His reply was 

 as follows: 



In the cutting of quartered oak with a slicing machine it is 

 quite possible to obtain good results from a good machine it the 

 operator is skilled: but to obtain the very best results where the 

 wood to be cut is absolutely on the quarter grain, a veneer saw is 

 necessary. The same condition holds good in hardwoods of rich 

 figure, and while it seems, from a careful examination of the sub- 

 ject from every angle, that if it were not for the fancy woods 

 which come in from tropical countries, that are more or less of a 

 cross-grained figure in which the body of the grain itself is par- 

 ticularly hard, veneer saws could be practically abandoned in 

 manufacturing veneers. 



In the present state of the art, however, veneer saws still have 

 their useful purposes. They do work w^hich is absolutely impos- 

 sible for a knife to do, and the veneer resulting can be worked or 

 polished without showing serious defects, whereas the same log 

 steamed or boiled by the most approved methods, and cut with a 

 knife on the best machine and best operator, sometimes comes off 

 with the grain either shattered or pulled. 



In the consideration of the subject of sawing or cutting 

 veneers, the economic objection to the veneer saw is the 



All Three of Vt Will Be Benefitea if 



loss of material in the form of sawdust equal to the thick- 

 ness of the veneer. To this must be added the markings 

 on the sawed veneer caused by the set in the teeth neces- 

 sitating a heavier veneer to permit the removal of these 

 marks in producing a perfect surface. it is, therefore, 

 evident that the only particular advantage of sawing 

 veneers is in cases where the character of the wood re- 

 quires its being cut on the quarter or where a veneer is 

 required to be used in places exposed to the weather — 

 like the outside of storm doors or front door vestibules — 

 the sawed veneer having a decided advantage over the 

 cut veneer for these purposes. It will thus be seen that 

 the development of cutting veneers with a knife has still 

 a long way to progress before the sawed veneer is utterly 

 driven from the market. 



So in looking backward to the days when rosewood 

 was the proper wood to use in making pianos, this wood 

 gaining its name from the odor of the wood, down 

 through the cutting of satinwood, which like all yellow 

 woods, w^as extremely poisonous to the sav^fyers, often 

 incapacitating for a time the men who cut it; the cutting 

 of walnut which now seems to be returning to popular 

 favor; amaranth, a reddish wood from South America; 

 sabicu, a wood like mahogany coming from the West 

 Indies; prima vera, a white mahogany from the western 

 coast of Mexico; to the present day, where we find 

 veneers cut from almost any kind of wood, vast quan- 

 tities of poplar and gum being cut profitably. We look 

 back over the limited capacity of the veneer sawyer of 

 fifty years ago v/ho could cut a maximum of 1,700 feet 

 of oak veneers in an hour, to the present-day slicing 

 machine which can produce 100,000 feet of splendid 

 mahogany veneers in a day. In this vista we can see the 

 possibilities of future improvements in this line far be- 

 yond that now dreamed of. 



Gum Veneer People Adopt Code of Ethics 



At the second quarterly meeting of the year, the Commercial 

 Rotary Gum Association, Hotel Chisca, Memphis, Tenn., June 8, 

 adopted standard terms of 30 days net from date of invoice with 

 a vie\v to putting the veneer business on a more stable and more 

 satisfactory basis not only for the manufacturers but also for 

 buyers and consumers. 



It was pointed out, however, that individual sellers and buyers 

 might agree upon 90-day acceptances provided these were made 

 out on the forms prescribed by the Federal Reserve bank and that 

 they bore interest for the overdue period. This ^vas done to 

 facilitate business and to prevent .the fixing of hard and fast rules 

 from which there could be no variation. 



A code of ethics was adopted by the association and the revised 

 inspections rules, as reported by the committee appointed to bring 

 these up to date, v^ere likewise adopted. It was ordered that this 

 code of ethics and the revised inspection rules be printed in the 

 same pamphlet and distributed to members of the association and 

 to the trade press. 



In connection with the discussion of standard terms of 30 days 

 net, it was emphasized that veneer manufacturers have to pay 

 cash for their logs, for their labor and for other items entering into 

 the cost of manufacture, while, under present indefinite selling 

 terms, they are out of their money for 30, 60, 90 or even I 20 days. 

 It was pointed out that there was much confusion regarding the 

 date from which discounts granted under the old regime were to 

 You Mention HARDWOOD RECORD 



