HARDWOOD RECORD 



17 



'Builders of Lumber History. 



NUMBER XXXVII. 



Wilmer H. Dawkins. 

 (See portrait supplement.) 



The biographical sketch and the portrait 

 supplement accompanying it in this issue 

 of the Hardwood Record are of Wilmer H. 

 Dawkins, of the W. H. Dawkins Lumber Com- 

 pany, Ashland, Ky., who exemplifies in its 

 finest acceptation the phrase "Builders of 

 Lumber History. ' ' 



Mr. Dawkins is of the best Virginian 

 strain. His mother was a native of that state 

 and a distant relative of Stonewall Jackson 

 of Civil War fame. His father was au 

 Englishman. He was born on a farm near 

 Parkersburg, W. Va., on Feb. 13, 1863. The 

 house in which this interesting event took 

 place was built of poplar by his grandfather 

 nearly a century ago, and is still in a good 

 state of preservation. His boyhood and early 

 youth were spent at the family homestead 

 and he attended the school in Parkersburg 

 up to the time he was sixteen years of age. 



At that age, in common with most other 

 American youths, he became anxious to enter 

 the battle of life and secured his first em- 

 ployment with W. H. Sherwood & Co. at Kan- 



CONE AND STRAW OF SHORTLEAF PINE. 



awha Station on the B. & 0. railroad. His 

 intelligence and natural aptitude for the 

 work quickly won him recognition and when 

 he left the employ of the company six years 

 later he was superintendent of its sawmill 

 plant. He worked for the Little Kanawha 

 Lumber Company of Parkersburg for the 

 next four years, and in 1889 moved to Ash- 

 land, where he entered the service of the 

 Yellow Poplar Lumber Company. He re- 

 mained there until 1893 as superintendent of 

 shipping for their three mills. At this period 

 of his career an opportunity for a more in- 

 dependent position presented itself and he 

 became a partner in the Central City Lum- 

 ber Company of Huntington, W. Va., which 

 was doing a planing mill and jobbing busi- 

 ness. He retained his interest in this con- 

 cern but a short time, however, disposing of 



his holdings in 189."j and leaving the enter- 

 prise to go on the road selling lumber for 



the Alexander Lumber Company of Alexan- 

 der, W. Va. 



The year 1897 marked a turning point in 

 the career of Mr. Dawkins for at that time 

 he organized the W. H. Dawkins Lumber 

 Company at Ashland and associated in part- 

 nership with himself R. D. Davis, president 

 of the Second National Bank of Ashland, and 

 \V. E. Berger, the latter being office manager 

 of the concern. The successful business done 

 by the W. H. Dawkins Lumber Company is 

 .1 matter of general knowledge in the lum- 

 ber world of the eastern part of the United 

 States. The company has confined its opera- 

 tions exclusively to the manufacturing of 

 poplar lumber, obtaining its supply of logs 

 from the Big Sandy and Guyandotte rivers. 

 It does not own a mill, but leases by the 

 year several large band mills, and has the 

 timber manufactured exactly as though the 

 mills .were its own property. In this way 

 none of the capital is lying idle but is in- 

 vested and active all the time. Its extensive 

 business has made the company one of the 

 best known and most powerful factors in 

 that particular branch of the trade and the 

 magnitude of its output has steadily grown 

 until it has reached the total of from 15,000,- 

 000 to 18,000,000 feet of lumber annually. 



Mr. Dawkins ' promotion and masterly oper- 

 ation of this enterprise alone would have been 

 sufficient to insure his reputation as an alert 

 and successful business man, but his interests 

 have branched out into other fields. In con- 

 nection with other Ashland capitalists he has 

 recently organized the Citizens' Bank & Trust 

 Company of Ashland, which begins business 



on Jan. 14, 1907. Mr. Dawkins is president 

 of the new institution, which has the largest 

 capitalization of any bank in Ashland and 

 which, viewed in the light of its personnel 

 and financial equipment, starts business un- 

 der the fairest possible auspices. 



Mr. Dawkins is much interested and exceed- 

 ingly active in association work. His ef- 

 forts along this line have been very fruitful, 

 since he is largely responsible for the forma- 

 tion and existence of the Hardwood Manu- 

 facturers ' Association of the United States, 

 of which he is a director at the present time. 

 He was the prime mover in bringing manu- 

 facturers together for the three preliminary 

 meetings held before the association was for- 

 mally organized, and they convened in his 

 office. 



Mr. Dawkins is married and has one child, 

 a daughter now approaching womanhood, who 

 is a student at Fairmount College, Washing- 

 ton. Personally he is a man of unassuming 

 manner, devoted to his family, and of edu- 

 cated tastes. He likes to surround himself 

 with artistic things, even his office, which is 

 handsomely furnished and arranged, reflect- 

 ing these tendencies. 



The career of Mr. Dawkins has been a very 

 successful one and since he is still a com- 

 paratively young man much can be expected 

 of him. His business life has been scrupu- 

 lously clean and there are none more ready to 

 attest his commercial probity and worth than 

 his competitors. His preseut success is a 

 striking example of what can be achieved 

 by a strong personality, a wholesome respect 

 for the rights of other men and strict devo- 

 tion to duty. Mr. Dawkins is a man who 

 has aided much in the progress of his town; 

 is esteemed by his fellow citizens and by his 

 associates in the lumber industry, and in his 

 home and social life is as fortunate as in his 

 business relations. 



A Study in Planer Practice. 



When one sees hardwood flooring come 

 through a machine at the rate of ninety 

 lineal feet a minute almost as smooth as if 

 it had been scraped, and then sees other 

 stock, dressed more slowly, that shows waves 

 suggestive of washboard corrugations, one 

 begins to speculate about the reason. When, 

 with the best machine with the finest adjust- 

 ment, flooring is produced, the unevenness of 

 which, with poor matching, makes the task 

 of the floor scraper almost impossible, it 

 shows that something is wrong. There are 

 new hardwood flooring plants being estab- 

 i constantly, making competition keen, 

 and the operator who puts out the best manu- 

 factured stock is the one who will capture the 

 orders. 



Without presuming to diagnose the case in 

 hand, it may bo well to make a little study 

 of planers and their work. A simple method 

 is to take a compass and draw a few seg- 

 ments of circles touching a line. The line 

 represents the itace of the board, and the 



segments the circle of the planing knives in 

 their travel. For the sake of even numbers 

 and so that it may be worked out readily and 

 the difference seen plainly, assume that the 

 planer head has a diameter of six inches and 

 the .stock and head are traveling at such a 

 rate that the stock moves forward a hajf inch 

 at each revolution of the cutter head. Then, 

 set the compass three inches, draw two 

 straight lines, one just touching the compass 

 marks and the other intersecting, say one- 

 eighl b inch 01 one qua rtei Inch in from the 

 first one. Then draw a line through the 

 center compass stand, parallel with this, so 

 that when one segment is reached yon 

 move along this line in steps of a half inch 

 each and strike other segments intersecting 

 this one until you hi :iough 



ti give you a clear idea of how the lines 

 travel across each other. This will illustrate 

 how the cutting is done when only one knife 

 mi tin; head is doing the work, and it will 

 show the wherefore of waves. Then, to un- 



