The Forest Products Laboratory 



647 



her become available as, for example, 

 new processing plants for fabricating, 

 laminating, fiber processing, and con- 

 verting to fodder, molasses, and yeast 

 farm wood lots in the locality will 

 become more profitable. 



An example of what waste-utiliza- 

 tion measures have in store for concerns 

 too small to run individual recovery 

 operations is a recent step toward the 

 organization of a wood-waste coopera- 

 tive in one of the Central States. The 

 prime movers are a number of wood- 

 working plants in a metropolitan area. 

 Each member company proposes to 

 contribute capital in proportion to the 

 weekly tonnage of scrap wood it will 

 ship to a central conversion plant for 

 making pressed board and other prod- 

 ucts from sawdust, shavings, and other 

 residues. Each member will take out 



finished converted products for use 

 or sale, paying to the State, as required 

 by State law governing agricultural 

 cooperatives, a restocking fee, in this 

 case a fee sufficient to plant trees cal- 

 culated ultimately to produce a volume 

 of wood equal to the wood residue 

 handled. 



Regardless of whether the proposals 

 are carried out, the plan represents a 

 new approach to the utilization of 

 wood wastes by means of which small 

 concerns can do together what they 

 cannot do alone. 



C. V. SWEET was born and edu- 

 cated (in forestry and wood technol- 

 ogy) in New York State. After a period 

 of work in industry and for the Gov- 

 ernment of India, he joined the Forest 

 Products Laboratory 25 years ago. 



THE FOREST PRODUCTS LABORATORY 



GEORGE M. HUNT 



The Forest Products Laboratory, 

 which is maintained in Madison, Wis., 

 as a unit of the United States Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, conducts research 

 to help conserve the Nation's timber 

 supply and make it serve more satis- 

 factorily the needs of the people for 

 wood products of all kinds. 



For nearly 40 years the Laboratory 

 has been doing this work. Today virtu- 

 ally every use of wood known to man is 

 directly affected by it. 



Hardly a day passes without visits 

 from representatives of forest-products 

 industries seeking information about 

 wood : What is the correct temperature 

 and relative humidity to use in drying 

 magnolia for Venetian blinds? Can the 

 new resin glues be used in piano pro- 

 duction? What is the best type of wood 

 sheathing for house construction? 

 What grade of plywood is best for out- 

 door use? How do you bag mold a ply- 

 wood boat? What will happen if I ap- 

 ply white paint to my red barn? Am I 

 entitled to the free use of the Labora- 



tory's patents on the semichemical 

 process of paper making? How does the 

 Laboratory make molasses from wood? 

 And many other questions about the 

 thousands of uses to which wood is put. 

 Each day brings fresh batches of let- 

 ters, telegrams, and telephone calls 

 from every State from great corpora- 

 tions and Government agencies, home 

 owners, farmers, and operators of small 

 sawmills, woodworking establishments, 

 and factories. The questions range 

 from the complex problems of aerody- 

 namic design to paint peeling off a 

 house or lumber warping in the sea- 

 soning pile. But fundamentally they 

 are alike in that they generally involve 

 the basic problem of wood use an un- 

 derstanding of its fundamental prop- 

 erties, such as strength, wood-moisture 

 relations, and the physical and chem- 

 ical structure of this common but high- 

 ly complex substance. It is toward a 

 better understanding of those funda- 

 mental properties that the Laboratory 

 has aimed its scientific inquiries, on the 



