16 The Fokest Pkoducts Laboratory 



Equipment 



3Ir. Howard Weiss, director of the laboratory from 1912 to 1917, 

 tells the following story of conditions prior to the establishment of the 

 laboratory : 



"At that time I was in the office of Wood Preservation, and 

 was in charge of the Section of Research, which consisted of 

 myself and the title. Since we had no permanent laboratory, we 

 had to move around from place to j^lace with what little equip- 

 ment we could gather together. 



"It was about this time that I was sent to the great Southern 

 Lumber Company at Bogalusa, La., to show them how to pre- 

 serve timber. All I had was two galvanized iron tanks which I 

 had had made at a cost of about $20 each." 



From this meager outfit has grown the present thoroughly 

 equipped section of wood preservation at the laboratory, with a large 

 pressure treating plant handling several dozen ties at a charge, smaller 

 pressure cylinders, one of which is capable of injecting preservatives 

 at a pressure of 600 pounds to the square inch, and much auxiliary and 

 special apparatus permitting carrying on of preservative treatments 

 according to any commercial or experimental process. 



Handling as it does the glue and laminated M'ood studies, the 

 section of preservation is also suitably equipped with glue mixing and 

 spreading machines, hot and cold presses, strength test machines, an 

 aircraft propeller manufacturing plant and a series of conditioning 

 rooms where temperature and humidity are under control. 



The first efforts at wood testing in this country were strength 

 tests on timbers of several species of American woods. In this sense 

 one may say that the study of timber mechanics of wood was the lead- 

 ing field of research. Today the equipment of this important part 

 of the laboratory is especially complete, and most of the equipment 

 was designed by the laboratory engineers. 



A timber thirty feet in length is readily accommodated in the 

 capacious jaws of the new million-pound testing machine recently 

 erected as part of the equipment of the timber mechanics laboratory. 

 This same giant of wood breakers will test the strength of horizontal, 

 ])uilt-up beams, trusses and girders with a length as great as eighty 



