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Hardwood Record — Veneer & Panel Section 



July 25, 1918 



he is correct in stating that the majority of large veneer 

 manufacturers are using vegetable glue, and that more 

 square feet of laminated wood products are glued up with 

 vegetable than with animal glue at this time. There are 

 reasons meritorious. This article, however, is not a brief 

 on vegetable glue, but a consideration of the longer 

 known product. 



Eliminating generalities, methods are more to be 

 blamed than glue. Glue salesmen will say that they 

 could as profitably spend their time trying to educate 

 a mosquito to bore a hole in the shell of a cocoanut as 

 in trying to instruct most glue users. This seems true 



when one considers the results attained during the many 

 years glue salesmen, and trade papers, have been decry- 

 ing evil practices. Ever since the writer of this cau 

 remember he has heard that glue could be cooked at too 

 high a temperature and heated too long; that fresh pre- 

 pared mixture was best; that reheated glue lost much 

 of its original strength. The story is old, and yet one 

 can visit glue room after glue room and find the user 

 killing the strength of his glue by these and other long 

 iamented evil habits. Then when the glued-up stock 

 comes apart, woe be the man who sold the glue and d — d 

 be his product. 



Veneer Timber Sizes 



The Probability That Smaller Trees Must Soon 



Rotary Cut 



Help Meet the Demand for 



|OME ATTENTION has been given heretofore to 

 the smaller timber for veneer making, but little 

 general action in this direction has been taken. 

 Now, however, the time is here when the veneer in- 

 dustry will need to consider the possibility of utilizing the 

 smaller sizes and shorter lengths in timber for veneer. 

 It is not the present purpose to argue against the larger 

 timber, the sizes that have been considered veneer timber 

 in the past, ranging from sixteen inches in diameter up. 

 This is good timber and every veneer man naturally will 

 and should obtain all of it that is practical for use in his 

 work. It is the purpose here, however, to argue earnestly 

 in favor of using not only all that is available of the 

 larger timber, but to supplement this supply of raw mate- 

 rial by bringing in the smaller timber and using it to the 

 best advantage. 



All students of the industry will readily admit that the 

 time will likely come when it will be imperative to use 

 lighter machines to work smaller timber into veneer. 

 Perhaps the trade as a whole has looked upon this too 

 much as a distinct possibility and not as an actuality 

 which is confronting the veneer industry. The demands 

 being made upon the timber resources of the country for 

 government at present are such as to seriously curtail 

 the amount of desirable large timber available for various 

 uses. There is not only a practical government requisi- 

 tioning of such woods as mahogany and walnut, making 

 exception only of figured and crotch woods, but the gov- 

 ernment needs call for enormous quantities of oak for 

 ship building, car work, vehicle and truck making and 

 various other uses. Much of the oak demanded by the 

 government is of a size and class heretofore supplying 

 the main source of raw material for the veneer industry. 

 It means that so far as oak is concerned shorter lengths 

 and smaller sizes will have to be used. Meantime, while 

 in some of the other woods the government demands 

 may not cut into the veneer needs so seriously, there are 

 other factors making it important to utilize the smaller 



timber. Whether it be in gum, poplar, elm, birch, beech, 

 sycamore or any other wood, there is found almost every- 

 where a shortage of raw material traceable to a shortage 

 of help. Only a limited amount of help is available and 

 a limited amount of transportation can be undertaken, 

 which properly interpreted means that we must get more 

 timber out of a given territory and stumpage, and this 

 in turn points to utilizing the smaller sizes with the larger 

 ones as a matter of economy and efficiency as well as 

 helping save the situation today. 



Fortunately, conditions in the machinery world are 

 such as to make it comparatively easy to develop this 

 idea. Some of the enterprising veneer machinery people 

 have been arguing for several years that there is a place 

 for the small rotary machine. There is really a sort of 

 double place for it. It can be used with the larger 

 machines for working up the cores of large size and thus 

 reclaim a lot of timber that might otherwise be lost so far 

 as veneer making is concerned. Then the same equip- 

 ment can be used for working the smaller timber. 



The history of all of our saw milling and woodwork- 

 ing shows too much gathering of the cream of forest 

 resources, snd passing on only to learn later that much 

 of the timber neglected in the original cutting is really 

 available and should have been handled in the first 

 round. The sawmill industry went through this in the 

 early days, and even in the later days it left much small 

 and short timber that furnished raw material for stave 

 and heading mills, and these in turn often realized more 

 profit from the timber that was left than was obtained 

 from gathering the cream of the forest. 



There has been much of work in the veneer industry, 

 and the time is now here to study the possibilities of the 

 thorough clean-up of stumpage. It will likely be found 

 that just as good results will be obtained from working 

 small timber into veneer as have been obtained in the 

 past from working the larger timber. 



There are two main factors making for better satisfac- 



