26 



Hardwood Record — Veneer & Panel Section 



September 10. 1917 



or made smooth. If one fleece of the wool is removed, 

 another takes its place. The defect is in the wood, not in 

 the machinery, nor is it due to bad manufacture. Some- 

 thing is wrong with the fibers or cells of which the wood 

 consists; they did not grow in the usual arrangement, and 

 their free ends, when the knife has passed, rise up like 

 fuzz. 



No matter what the exact cause may be, the effect is 

 to lower the value of the veneer and bar it from certain 

 factories where it is not wanted. It is not a very common 

 defect and loss on account of it is moderate, but it is 

 occasionally met with. Probably it occurs in mahogany 

 as often as in any other wood, but it is found sometimes 

 in walnut, and more frequently in cottonwood. 

 TENDENCIES IN PRICES AND PRODUCTION 



When all things which may degrade wood are taken 

 into account, it becomes evident that the veneer manu- 

 facturer does not have smooth sailing all the time. Many 

 items must be charged to the loss side of the ledger. It 

 is not encouraging to be told that these undesirable items 

 are ant to increase in the future because the timber in 



the future will not measure up with the past or the present. 

 Inferior trees will increase the pro rata output of defec- 

 tive veneers. Manufacturers will be compelled to scout 

 far and wide to find good logs, and, of course, they must 

 ask higher prices to make up for increased cost of pro- 

 duction. 



The use of veneers seems to be increasing in spite of 

 the tendency toward higher prices. Calls for veneer 

 come from so many places that the manufacturer of 

 veneer must exert himself constantly to meet the demand. 

 The cheapest class of shipping box or berry basket is 

 made of veneer, and also the finest panel demanded by 

 the furniture factory. The call extends to all interme- 

 diate grades. This opens a market for every class of 

 stock, cheap or fine, high or low, and while the difficul- 

 ties in the way of producing the best are on the increase, 

 the demand for lower grades increases also. So far as 

 can be seen, the tendency is toward greater production, 

 with every commercial wood coitribut-ng to the supply 

 and with higher values for the higher grades because of 

 greater cost of production. 



Veneer Lengths and Shrinkage 



There are many things which can be said about lengths in 

 connection with the veneer business, such things as which lengths 

 are most convenient to cut, what lengths work up best in various 

 lines of uses, etc. Right now, however, there is a special and 

 perhaps heretofore unconsidered point in the matter of veneer 

 lengths to which attention is directed. This is the matter of 

 exact lengths in stock cut to dimensions. 



In promulgating its code of ethics the Rotary Gum Associa- 

 tion said among other things that all dimension stock should be 

 cut length speciified, and if the buyer wishes an allow^ance he 

 should specify stock to be billed at actual length cut. 



Another paragraph in this same code pertaining to the matter 

 of thicknesses insists that the machine gauge or the thickness 

 when green shall govern, which may be regarded as implying 

 that lengths taken when green will also govern. This point is 

 not specifically set forth, and because of this and the fact that 

 it may be the source of trouble, it is worth a little going into. 



Back in the earlier days of the veneer business, down near the 

 foot of Arsenal street in St. Louis, in that plant where the St. 

 Louis Basket & Box Company has wrestled with many ideas and 

 learned from experiments and experience many things about the 

 veneer business, including everything from basket splints to built- 

 up lumber, we once had a set-to about this very matter of length 

 virhich comes vividly to mind upon reading the code of ethics of 

 the Rotary Gum Association. This was back in those pioneer 

 times. One day the superintendent came down from the office 

 into the cutting room and pretty soon had Al Schmidt ("Smitty," 

 w^e called him), the peeler boss, into a pretty warm argument. 

 The argument waxed back and forth pretty much all day before 

 the rest of us got on to what it was all about. 



It developed that complaint had come in from a customer that 

 veneer cut to specified lengths, drawer bottoms or some other 

 form of insert in grooves was too short. Naturally the office 

 climbed the collar of the superintendent, and then the superin- 

 tendent came down in the cutting roonn v/ith blood in his eye. 



"Smitty," the peeler boss, insisted that the stock was cut ex- 

 actly to the lengths ordered, and to settle this argument there 

 was finally a checking up of the orders to verify them. Then 



finally there was a bringing in of some dry stock that proved 

 to be short. 



The superintendent thought this clinched the argument and put 

 the onus on the peeler boss. "Smitty" was a hard-headed Dutch- 

 man and he insisted that he had set his scoring knives carefully 

 and had cut stock to exact length specified. If it had shortened 

 afterward, he said, it must have shrunk up in drying. 



The superintendent pooh-poohed this kind of argument, for he, 

 like myself, had been trained in the old school of faith that lumber 

 does not shrink endw^ise. 



They finally settled the argument by taking some freshly cut 

 stock, breaking a sheet in half, putting half of it through the dry 

 kiln and retaining the other half intact. When the sheet came 

 through the dry kiln it was found to be a full eighth of an inch 

 short. 



The veneer at that time was cut from cottonw^ood and gum. 

 I do not recall positively whether the particular stock w^as cotton- 

 wood or whether it \vas gum, but it was immaterial, as both will 

 shrink endwise in drying. 



We had this matter w^ith us as a subject of pretty warm noon- 

 hour discussion and as I had charge at that time of the sawmill end 

 adjoining the veneer cutting room, I still had some faith in the 

 old doctrine taught by my father in the days when I was appren- 

 tice for a millwright, that there was no end shrinking to w^ood. 

 In response to "Smitty's" insistence that he had proved it, proved 

 that there w^as shrinkage by putting some of the veneer stock 

 through the dry kiln, I told him that it might do with veneer 

 stock but it wouldn't do with saw^ed stock, and we laid a wager 

 on it. 



Then we took a cabbage crate strip, sawed of elm, a half inch 

 by three inches, 36 inches long, took two of them, in fact, cut 

 exactly the same length, but we marked one and let him put 

 it through the dry kiln next day, and I kept the other one for 

 comparison. In the end I lost, because they shrunk that elm 

 cabbage crate strip an eighth of an inch in length during the 

 drying process. 



All of this incident came back to me very clearly in reading of 

 the rules laid down by the manufacturers of rotary gum veneer and 



