20 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



December 10. 1920 



(e) Civic or municipal aids or restrictions to manufacturing. 

 The actual site will also be selected having the following considera- 

 tions in mind : 



(a) Shipping facilities. 



(b) Adequacy of area. 



(c) Levelness of site. 



(d) Availability of water supply and sewage disposal. 



(e) Nearness of adequate housing or jjossibility of providing ade- 



quate housing for labor. 



10. Having chosen the site the problem then devolves into one of 

 designing the most efficient plant which the site chosen will permit. 

 For many years it was the custom, and still is to a great extent, to 

 allow the plant superintendent to design an entire new plant. While 

 the superintendent may be an expert in manufacturing furniture and 

 entirely competent to select the necessary tools and machinery, yet 

 in most instances he is poorly informed regarding the most economical 

 practice in power-plant construction, heating, lighting, construction 

 of buildings, and the many other important questions entering into 

 the design and construction of the entire plant. While the superin- 

 tendent will be of great assistance in the work, yet in this day of 

 specialization the design and layout of the plant should be intrusted 

 only to engineers recognized as experts in this particular line. 



Provision for Proper Arrangement of Machinery ' 



11. Making provision for the proper installation and arrangement 



of the necessary tools and machinery presupposes that the kind, 

 quantity, and quality of the product have been decided upon and 

 that due and proper care has been given to the selection of the ma- 

 chinery required in the manufacture of this product. 



12. Naturally the first consideration is the location of the lumber 

 yard and dry kilns in relation to the incoming lumber to the factory. 

 The location of the lumber yard will, of course, depend on the arrange- 

 ment of railroad sidings. Several different plans for location of 

 sidings may be possible for any given site and the most efficient lay- 

 out can be determined only by close study of the factors entering 

 into any given situation. 



13. After deciding, at least tentatively, on the location of lumber 

 yard and kilns this will ordinarily determine the point of entrance 

 for the raw lumber into the proposed plant, and the next procedure 

 will be to make a routing chart and thus establish the amount of 

 floor space required for manufacturing purposes. 



14. Having determined the entry point for the raw material, con- 

 sideration should be given to each factory operation with the sequence 

 required for manufacturing the product. The routing chart should 

 list each separate part entering into the finished product, with the 

 proposed volume of manufacture per unit of time, say, one year, and 

 the sequence of operations required. Such a routing chart giving 

 the sequence of operations will establish in a general way the sequence 

 or arrangement of the various tools and machines throughout the 

 plant. 



15. As stated above, it has been assumed that all machinery has 

 been selected and the next procedure would be to make a templet to 

 scale of each article of equipment, such as all machines, tools, benches, 

 racks, etc. Each templet of a machine should indicate the path of 

 the product through the machine, the point of application of power, 

 the position of the operator and position of helper, if any. 



16. It will be assumed that the proposed main manufacturing build- 

 ing will be of the mutli-stoi'ied type, for reasons which will be men- 

 tioned hereinafter, and consequently the width should not exceed 50 

 to 60 feet to obtain proper daylighting. In laying out the templets 

 of the machines, however, it may be assumed temporarily that the 

 building will be but one story high and the machinery arranged as 

 though in a long building with everything on one floor. By using 

 templets of the various parts of the equipment to determine the 

 arrangement it allows the units to be moved about until a satisfactory 

 arrangement is found, the marks on the templets allowing the machines 

 to be set in proper relation to flow of product, power, supply, light- 

 ing, etc. 



17. After a tentative arrangement of the equipment has been com- 

 pleted a careful study should be made of how the product is to be 

 transported from machine to machine, making proper provision for 

 aislewayg and location of truck.? at machines to allow of efficient han- 



dling of material in and out of machines. Consideration should also 

 be given to the necessity of providing spaces for accumulation of 

 material between machines where the speed of handling varies. 



18. The final arrangement of the templets will determine the amount 

 of floor space required for machine rooms, and careful consideration 

 should then be given to the location and size of store rooms, assem- 

 bling, finishing, upholstering, crating and shipping departments, fac- 

 tory offices, toilets, locker rooms, etc. With the approximate total 

 amount of floor space decided upon, a tentative layout of the build- 

 ing may be made. The product of a furniture factory being com- 

 paratively light in weight, and consequently easily transported, a multi- 

 storied building will in most cases be found the most economical from 

 all standpoints, although 4 or 5 stories in height should probably be 

 the limit. The various departments may then be arranged with ma- 

 chine room and shipping department on the first floor, additional 

 machine room, if required, on the second floor, and assembling, finish- 

 ing and upholstering departments on the upper floors, care being 

 exercised to so arrange the various departments that the flow of prod- 

 uct may be as direct and uninterrupted as possible through each de- 

 partment and then on to the next. 



19. Upon completing the arrangement of the various departments 

 the next problem will be one of transportation between the several 

 departments on the different floors, which is accomplished ordinarily 

 by means of elevators. In connection with the transportation prob- 

 lem, thought should be given to the possibility of using chutes, con- 

 veyors, or small elevators from one department to another, thus 

 establishing more direct paths of flow than could be obtained by using 

 the main elevators and als.o reducing considerably the amount of 

 handling required. In general, one elevator at each end of the build- 

 ing will be sufficient if the building does not exceed about 300 feet 

 in length, particularly if the elevator equipment is augmented by moans 

 of conveyors or small auxiliary elevators, as mentioned above. 



(To be continued in Dec. 25 issue) 



Laminated Handles to Conserve Wood 



Considerable saving of ash and other woods used in the manu- 

 facture of handles for shovels, axes and other such tools may be 

 affected in the making of a laminated handle which Charles H. 

 Eieth, a lumberman of St. Louis, Mo., has recently patented. The 

 inventor also claims that by virtue of the utilization of the wood 

 which would otherwise be wasted the laminated handle may be 

 made in quantities cheaper than the solid wood handle, and, accord- 

 ing to engineering advice, will be much stronger. 



Mr. Eieth described his process in comparison with a "D" handle 

 for shovels and other tools. This handle is commonly made from 

 a billet of ash wood approximately five inches wide by two inches 

 thick at one end, and tapering down to two bj' two inches square at 

 the small end, in rough. This billet must be clear and straight-grained 

 on a direct line through the center, so that in most cases it is 

 necessary to cut the handle blank out of a billet five inches wide at 

 both ends, which is done on a band saw, and while the two short 



Laminated Baseball Bat 



pieces cut out on each side are not wholly wasted, they do not 

 recompense for the difficulty in securing these five-inch billets as 

 compared with the small strips required in the laminated handle. 

 Mr. Eieth says he can cut six strips, making three handles out of 

 the same billet, now required for making a "D" handle, thereby 

 not only making a direct saving- in material, but using smaller bolts 

 of wood than are now required for making billets. 



The inventor has been using casein glue in the making of his 

 new handle. The accompanying drawing of a baseball made accord- 

 ing to Mr. Eieth 's process of lamination will help to visualize the- 

 new handle. 



