38 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



Hardwood Flooriog in England 



An inquiry lias been received by Consul Horace 

 Lee Waslilngton ol" Liverpool from American 

 manufacturers of hardwood flooring in oak and 

 beech as to the sales prospects for this material 

 in England, to which he responds : 



In this section hardwood is used only to a lim- 

 ited extent for floors. The condition existing 

 here is quite the reverse from that throughout 

 the continent of Europe, where even the most 

 modest apartment houses are equipped with hard- 

 wood floors. Here the great majority of resi- 

 dences are carpeted, and it is principally in mod- 

 ern office bnildings, which are of recent date in 

 Liverpool, that hardwood flooring is used. Q'he 

 hardwood flooring used is principally of oak and 

 maple. Very little beech is used. The usual 

 sizes are as follows : Mostly 1 inch thick, some 

 IVi inches; widths, 3, ai-2. 4 and iu. inches, 

 chiefly .'sy™ and 4 inches: lengths, practically all 

 3 feet and up. Two-foot lengths have been called 

 for, but do not represent more than S per cent of 

 the trade. Prices, £30 to £40 ($145.99 to 

 $194.60) per standard, Liverpool. 



In parquet flooring the sizes are : Thickness, 

 1 to 1 i/ii inches : width, 2 to 3 inches ; length, 9 

 to 12 inches. It appears that while ordinary 

 flooring is tongued and grooved with matched 

 ends, parquet flooring is grooved on the sides for 

 mortar, or tongued and grooved, and end grooved 

 on both ends (but not tongued on the ends). 

 Parquet flooring is steel polished, not sanded on 

 the face. The price paid in carload lots is about 

 5s ($1.21) per cubic foot. It is shipped in 

 bundles or sacks and in uniform lengths only. 



Only ordinary flooring is bored for secret nail- 

 ing. All flooring is hollow backed. 



The hardwood flooring used in this market is 

 imported prepared, chiefly from Ohio and West 

 Virginia. 



"These cableways, so far as d.;lays from 

 breakage or repairs were concerned, while work- 

 ing twelve and one-half hours per day, have been 

 kept up to an efficiency of 99 per cent." 



That is to say, that during this whole period 

 only 1 per cent of time was lost on account of 

 making repairs. 



The cableways referred to are eight of the 

 thirteen designed and built by the Lidgerwood 

 -Manufacturing Company for the Isthmian Canal 

 Commission. The other five are used for handling 

 the broken stone and sand for the concrete, tak- 

 ing It from barges and delivering it to the 

 storage yards some 600 feet away, on on aver- 

 age. The total to be handled will be 2,000,000 

 cubic yards of broken stone and 1,000,000 cubic 

 yards of sand. 



The eight cableways for building the locks 

 are used for placing the concrete and reinforce- 

 ment, and also for handling forms. 



They are traveling cableways of 800-foot 

 span, operated electrically. They are handling 

 on every working day more than 3,000 cubic 

 yards of concrete. Up to June 4 there had been 

 placed in the Gatun locks and Its auxiliary 

 plant 437,461% cubic yards of concrete. The 

 amount placed in the five days from May 31 to 

 June 4 inclusive was 16,809 yards, an average 

 of 3,301 cubic yards per day. 



An Enviable Becord 



A letter of endorsement, recently given by a 

 high official of the Isthmian Canal Commission 

 to the operator who had charge of the eight 

 Lidgerwood cableways used in building the 

 Gatun locks during the preceding eleven months, 

 contains incidentally a remarkable record of 

 efficiency of the cableways. This passage read 

 as follows : 



A Valuable Machine 



Shown on this page is a cut of the Defiance 

 Machine Works' No. 8 Variety Sawing, Shaping 

 and Boring Machine, designed for all general 

 wood shop purposes. It will rip, miter, cross 

 cut, groove, plane, shape and bore, making it 

 a most desirable combination machine for sash, 

 door, furniture, pattern, carriage, wagon and 

 other shops where wood is worked. 



The column, of neat design, is a heavy cast- 

 ing in one piece with cored center and a wide 

 floor base insuring rigidity. 



The table is 36 Inch by 44 Inch, of iron, in a 

 single piece planed true, and it can he set to a 

 scale to varying angles up to 45 degrees for 

 1/evel and mitoi sawing. It is supported on a 

 heavy frame gibbed to the side of the column 

 and vertically adjustable to suit the thickness 

 to be sawed by a convenient hand wheel with a 

 screw and bevel gears. \ portion of the table 



around the siw is removable to allow of plan- 

 ing, grooving, gaining, rabbeting and other cut- 

 ter heads up to 6 inches wide being used. The 

 ripping fence is gibbed to the front edge of th& 

 table, standing square or Instantly set to a 

 scale to auy angle with the saw. The front edge 

 of the table is laid ofif in inches and fractions, 

 to quickly set the gauge the desired distance 

 from the saw for narrow or wide ripping with- 

 out the u.se of a rule. The greatest distance 

 between the saw and fence is 18 inches. The 

 table has dovetailed grooves each side of the 

 saw for cross-cut fence and miter gauges. 



The boring table, of iron planed true, is 10 

 inch by 22 inch. It is fitted with an adjusta- 

 ble fence that can be set square or to any angle 

 with the boring bit and to gauge the depth of 

 boring. It will bore holes in hard or soft wooa 

 up to 10 inches deep. It slides to and from the 

 tit with the greatest ease and is adjustable 

 vertically by a screw and hand wrench. 



11. B. SMITH TRIPLli-lJlUJ.M SAiNDlil! 



HKFIANCE no. 8 sawing, SHAPING AND 

 BORING MACHINE 



The arbor, of ground steel 1 7-16 Inch diam- 

 eter, rotates in genuine babbitt metal eelf-luhri- 

 catlng bearings. It is supplied with a 12-inch 

 combination cross cut and rip saw that will saw- 

 through material 3'^ inches thick; also four 

 boring bits and one slotted cutter head witb 

 4-inch knives. 



The counter is furnished as follows : Shaft, 

 111-16 inch by 44 inch; two No. 2 floor stands 

 20 inches high ; one driving pulley, 12 Inch by 

 5% inch; one pair of tight and loose pulleys, 

 10 inch by 6 inch ; speed, 750 rotations per min- 

 ute ; with the loose pulley fitted with bronze 

 bearings. 



The machine requires but 2 horsepower to 

 operate it and it occupies 90 by 59 inches of 

 floor space. Further information on application 

 to the manufacturers at Defiance, O. 



A New Wood Polishing Machine 

 Within the last decade the II. B. Smith Ma- 

 chine Company, of Smithville, N. J., has de- 

 veloped a new triple-drum sander which is so 

 difl'erent from others that it deserves special 

 mention in these columns. 



From the accompanying engraving it will be 

 seen that the feed is an endless bed faced witb 

 rubber pads, and the polishing drums are over 

 the work, somewhat similar to a single surface 

 planer, which arrangement affords many valu- 

 able advantages. For this machine the com- 

 pany claims that it will do better work, and 

 from 200 to 600 per cent more work than the 

 best standard roller-feeding sanders, and it will 

 polish short and narrow pieces, which cannot 

 be done on ordinary sanders. 



The principles of operation are those of an 

 inverted hand planer with closely fitted platens 

 between the drums, and the feed like that of 

 many hundreds of yielding fingers holding the 

 materials to the platens, pushing them under 

 the polishing drum and delivering them at the' 

 discharging end of the machine in a finished 

 state, hence the quality of work is unsurpassed. 

 The excellence of the work is due to the fact 

 that the feed-bed Is slightly yielding, so that 

 the operator can keep the entire bed full of 

 work ; even if the pieces are short and narrow 



