INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH IN FOREST PRODUCTS 



403 



MANUFACTURE OF AIRCRAFT PROPELLERS 



The experimental manufacture of aircraft propellers at the Forest Products Laboratory, Madison, Wisconsin, and subsequent storage under 

 controlled humidity and temperature conditions, gives an excellent opportunity for a study of stresses of laminated construction as influenced 

 by manufacturing methods and climate. 



products that the Forest Products Laboratory was es- 

 tablished in 1910 by the United States Forest Service 

 at Madison, Wisconsin, in co-operation with the Uni- 

 versity of Wisconsin. This laboratory is an institution 

 of practical research and, with the exception of a sim- 

 ilar, though much smaller organization in Canada, is the 

 only institution of its kind in the woild. Its organization 

 of trained specialists conducts investigations into the me-' 

 chanical, physical, and chemical properties of various 

 woods and wood wastes and of processes and methods 

 of manufacture and handling to secure greater efficiency 

 and economy. When it is considered that the value of 

 the products of the primary and secondary wood-using 

 industries of the country aggregates over $10,000,000,- 

 000 annually, the importance of such an institution is 

 apparent. Indeed, the hearings state' that the lumber 

 industry is the second or third largest industry of our 

 country 



"In the early years of its operation, the laboratory's 

 small organization of eighty-odd people devoted its at- 

 tention primarily to the development of fundamental 

 and correlated information of the properties of the varied 

 available species of timber and to improvements in the 

 more well-known and standard processes and methods 

 in its utilization. ,, 



"At the outbreak of the World War, the importance 

 of forest products to a successful national defense pro- 

 gram from the airplane propeller to the charcoal in the 

 gas mask, and from the wood alcohol in the high explo- 



sives to the wooden container for the shipment of the 

 shell made necessary not only the use and application 

 of the knowledge already gained, but a vast amount of 

 further information which necessitated increasing the 

 prewar organization. Since the close of hostilities, it 

 has been found that the results of this work during the 

 emergency are practically all applicable to industrial 

 needs, and while lack of funds has made it necessary to 

 reduce the organization over 50 per cent, the industrial 

 requests for the wider effective dissemination and demon- 

 stration of the results already secured and also for fur- 

 ther studies and investigations are sufficient to justify 

 an organization far greater than is at present possible. 

 These requests and opportunities are becoming increas- 

 ingly broad and numerous, and failure to meet them is 

 causing incalculable losses annually to the country. For 

 example, one of the conspicuous lines of work which 

 should be greatly expanded is the investigations to dev- 

 elop the general laws for box and container construc- 

 tion, the relationship between the size and contents of 

 the box, the kind and thickness of material to be used, 

 methods of nailing, strapping, and so forth, and further, 

 special tests to check the application of general laws to 

 special classes of containers. Tests of this character 

 with proper co-operation with producers and shippers 

 will rapidly reduce unnecessary losses, now amounting 

 to millions of dollars annually. As one example of the 

 value of forests products investigations, work of this 

 character is known to have saved to the United States 



