HARDWOOD RECORD 



15 



Mahogany suffers or profits little from freaks of fashion. It 

 holds its place in furniture as gold maintains a place in jewelry, 

 though styles change. Just now the influence of early period furni- 

 ture is strong, and the pendulum is still swinging in that direction. 

 This affects all furniture woods more or less, but tlie fine woods most. 

 Those who follow fashions are usually somewhat critical in their 

 choice of material, and this holds with furniture no less than with 

 other things. For that reason, such woods as oak, gum, mahogany, 

 birch, and walnut are just now brought into prominence both in 

 new designs and in the reproduction of period furniture. 



Flagrant Waste for Everybody 



CITING AS AN ILLXJSTEATION the fact that a single plow 

 manufacturer must make over 2,000 types of plows to meet the 

 individual whims of farmers, the Midwest Implement and Vehicle 

 Dealers' Association in convention at Omaha, Neb., recently took def- 

 inite steps toward eliminating waste by the standardization of machin- 

 ery, tools and all types of farm equipment. Tliat the many sizes and 

 kinds of different farm implements tend to increase the cost of 

 articles and make the carrying of repairs for the different patterns of 

 machines burdensome for both dealer and manufacturer goes without 

 saying. Going back even further than mere repair work, it could very 

 easily be demonstrated that there is a tremendous waste in materials 

 resulting from lack of standardization of sizes and types in all classes 

 of farm equipment. In the plow business alone it can easily be seen 

 that with 2,000 types being made by one manufacturer, the waste 

 in all kinds of raw materials going into plow manufacture must be 

 excessive. 



Haedwood Record is not in position to know the minimum number 

 of styles which would be capable of meeting all reasonable require- 

 ments of plow users, but it is altogether safe to say that this excessive 

 number is entirely unreasonable. Say, for example, that 100 different 

 plows would cover the really necessary styles meeting the demands 

 of necessity in different sections and under different conditions. This 

 would mean on the face of it that each part could be manufactured 

 in quantities just twenty times greater than the quantity now made 

 up in building the 2,000 styles. It would mean a much more com- 

 prehensive standardization of purchase of raw material by plow 

 manufacturers, of patterns used for castings and of all parts which 

 might tend to vary with the different styles. No man of ordinary 

 intelligence will believe that 2,000 different plows are absolutely 

 necessary to successfully carry on the farming industry of this coun- 

 try. Considering that this number is excessive and that an equally 

 over-balanced proportion of styles of other articles used by farmers 

 are manufactured and carried in stock, it can readily be seen that 

 there is a tremendous possibility in standardizing this class of manu- 

 factured article so as to make the purchase of raw material as simple 

 and economical as possible. 



Treated Wood in Factory Construction 



THE RECENT CONVENTION of wood preservers in Chicago de- 

 voted considerable space on its program to the subject of 

 treated timbers for factory construction. The matter was somewhat 

 new. It has been the custom to confine discussion and experimenta- 

 tion to timbers used in out-of-doors work, such as paving, fence posts, 

 telegraph poles, piling, cross ties and bridges. It is commonly as- 

 sumed that wood intended for use under shelter needs no preservative 

 treatment. 



The terms ' ' under roof, ' ' and ' ' in dry situations ' ' are quite differ- 

 ent in their meaning. It has been shown that in factories of certain 

 kinds the timbers remain as damp as if no roof sheltered them. The 

 situation in which the factory is placed, or the nature of work done 

 in it, often makes protection against dampness impossible, while 

 the warm temperature maintained causes the fungus to grow the 

 year round, while in timbers out of doors, it does not grow during 

 cold weather. 



Statistics give abundant proof of this fact. Textile mills, most 

 of which are operated by waterpower, are peculiarly liable to injury 

 by decay of floors, beams, ceilings, and roofs. In certain parts of 

 such mills the humidity is always high, and conditions that induce 



decay are at their worst. Investigations by insurance companies 

 have brought out volumes of data on that subject. 



The suggested remedy consists in treating with preservatives the 

 timbers used in factory construction. Supplementary suggestions 

 caU for a little more care in the selection of woods for use where 

 conditions favor decay. Some woods resist attacks from decay many 

 fold better than others, when no preservative treatment has been 

 given, and there are differences even when preservatives are used. 



Manufacturers of building materials other than wood are taking 

 advantage in every way possible of the reported instances where 

 factory timbers have failed because of decay. These cases are used 

 in arguments in favor of substitutes. Cement and steel are wood 'a 

 chief rivals in factory construction, and their advocates slumber not 

 nor sleep in the campaign to push these substitutes wherever there 

 is an opening. The advocates of wood can best meet this situation 

 by nullifying the arguments against wood. That can be done by 

 rendering it immune to decay as far as possible. It is a new field, 

 and a large one, for the use of treated timbers. 



Longleaf Pine Suitable for Kraft Papers 



THAT LONGLEAF PINE treated by the sulphate process and 

 properly handled will give excellent kraft pulps and papers, es- 

 pecially the very tougli, lightweight brown wrapping papers, is the con- 

 clusion reached by the Department of Agriculture after a series of 

 tests to determine the wood's possibilities as a source of pulp. This 

 conclusion is of signficanee at this time, because war lias cut off the 

 German supply to this country. The high specific gravity of the wood 

 and the resultant high yield of pulp per cord, according to a recently 

 issued bulletin, give longleaf pine an advantage possessed by few other 

 commercially important woods suitable for pulp making. 



This new use for longleaf pine furnishes a means of utilizing the 

 waste in slabs, edgings, and trimmings from southern mills. Tops 

 and defective logs left in the woods and small logs which at present 

 are converted into lumber with little or no profit would furnish a 

 supply of raw material for pulp making even greater than that 

 derived from the mill waste. 



The tests were made at the Forest Products Laboratory and were of 

 two kinds, those to determine the effect of varying the cooking 

 conditions in the sulphate process, and semi-commercial tests carried 

 on by both the sulphate and the soda process. The sulphate process 

 was found to be superior to the soda, at least so far as longleaf pine 

 is concerned. In the former process the pulp can be very much 

 undercooked and still produce a fair quality of paper, while a soda 

 pulp must be comparatively well cooked before a good paper can bo 

 made from it. The best sulphate kraft pulps were obtained with a 

 total duration of cooking of only 3.5 hours, against 6 hours for the 

 best soda pulp. 



Sulphate kraft pulps of fairly good strength and toughness can bo 

 obtained from longleaf pine with yields as high as 61 per cent or 

 2,170 pounds of absolutely dry pulp per 100 solid cubic feet of wood. 

 For the production of high grades of kraft wrappings the yield of 

 pulp could be approximately 51 per cent, or 1,800 pounds of abso- 

 lutely dry pulp equal to 2,000 pounds air-dry pulp per 100 cubic feet 

 of solid wood. The yield per cord would be somewhat less than tho 

 weights given since an ordinary 4x4x8 foot stacked cord may contain 

 from 75 to 100 cubic feet of solid wood. 



The rather indifferent attitude displayed by the lumber trade 

 toward the Forest Products Laboratory since the opening of that 

 institution has indicated that the lumber trade is still governed more 

 or less by the old-fashioned belief that the scientist, or as he is some- 

 times called, the tlieorist, cannot teach the practical man anything. 

 Busines is getting more and more in sympathy with scientific pro- 

 cedure, the result of scientific investigation. There is no reason 

 worthy of consideration why the lumber trade should not be equally 

 benefited by such investigations of the problems confronting that 

 industry as in any other line of business. Lumbermen have rather 

 held back because they have not seen tho practical problems worked 

 out themselves. It should require but very few such instances as the 

 above of the practical value of the laboratory to convince the trade 

 that it would bo profitable to them to call upon it for assistance more 

 frequently than in the jiast. 



