92 
House & 
G a r d 
JVhat is under the Paint? 
Some day the house you are planning to 
nuild may become the house you want to sell. 
Now, of course, it is the house you have 
planned for years—the house that will fit the 
needs and desires of your present family. 
Conditions, and the desires of your family 
may change,—thousands of “owner built” 
homes are in the market every year. And the 
owners must find buyers who feel the same 
about those homes as the owners did when 
they built them. 
So, now, when your new home is to 
be built,—isn’t it a good time to give 
thought to whether anyone else would 
want that house, if you should desire 
to sell it? 
“What is under the paint?” Ask 
yourself that question, as the next 
buyer will surely ask you. Because 
the answer too often is just “wood,” 
build your home so that your answer 
will be—“a wood that Nature made 
self-preservant, that resists rot, decay 
Rot and decay 
start under porch 
columns, porch 
posts and floor- 
ing, exterior sid¬ 
ing, eaves, glit¬ 
ters, door and 
window frames, 
rails, roof or side 
shingles, mud 
sills — wherever 
there is exposure 
to earth, air or 
water. 
and fire. Tha t wood is Red wood—free from resin 
and pitch, and containing a natural preservative 
that permeates the entire wood structure.” 
Redwood is the wood that meets all specifications 
and answers most satisfactorily the question—“what is 
under the paint ? ” And even though you never have to ask 
anyone but yourself that question,—how satisfying to 
know you have protected yourself from worry and your 
bank aqcount from unnecessary repair bills, by building 
with Redwood which resists rot and decay. 
Put Redwood “under the paint,” especially in porch 
columns, porch posts and flooring, exterior siding, eaves, 
gutters, door and window frames, rails, roof or side shin¬ 
gles, mud sills, fencing,—wherever there is exposure to 
moisture, earth and climatic rigors, in all extremes of heat 
or cold. 
Write to Chicago for Redwood Information Sheet No. it 
on "Residential Buildings.” Also tell us the name of your 
architect, for whom we have special Redwood data. 
i 
7k Pacific Lumber Go. 
77-r Largest Manufacturers and Distributors cf California Redwood 
San Francisco Los Angeles 
Jit California St. Central Bank Bldg. 
Eastern Sales Organization 
THE PACIFIC LUMBER CO. OF ILLINOIS 
The Knife-Life of the Kitchen 
(Continued from page 90) 
to keep their handles fastened to them ; 
and so balanced (even as a golf club) 
as to be not only easy but pleasant to 
use. Pleasant tools make light work. 
The knife has three or four main 
parts—the blade; the tang (that part 
which fits into the handle); the handle 
itself, or haft, as it is sometimes called; 
and in some cases a metal ferrule. Much 
depends upon the way these parts are 
made and fitted; they must be so mar¬ 
ried that nothing can divorce the knife 
from the handle, so that they will pre¬ 
serve their oneness indefinitely. The 
great Reno for the knife is the huddled 
drawer in which it is for the most part 
kept, but more of this later. 
Variety in Knife-Life 
The kinds of knife in which the 
housewife is particularly interested are: 
carvers, vegetable slicers, parers, fruit, 
cleavers, etc. Subdivided, they are: 
paring, bread, meat, poultry, carving, 
cake, boning, paring (small pocket type 
style), spatula, lemon, grape and orange, 
curved in French, German and Ameri¬ 
can fashions, cleavers and scrapers. 
Where it is necessary for a knife to 
conform to shape in paring, a flexible 
knife is more comfortable than a stiff 
one. Therefore, if you want a vegetable 
knife for slicing potatoes never think 
of buying a long stiff one because your 
work will be seriously impeded. If you 
have the right tool the job of paring, 
or what not, will be as much fun as 
carving is for the artist who in his turn 
always has the correct tool. 
“Gracious, I can never slice a ham 
that it doesn’t look as if some one bit 
it up,” said a friend of mine. 
As gently as I could I told her it was 
because she was trying to do the im¬ 
possible. She used a knife for bread 
and cake, broad and short, and expected 
it to do the work of a long, thin blade 
slightly curved off at the end. The 
heavy, wide-bladed knife cleaves to the 
surface of the meat and makes it a 
practical impossibility for any ordinary 
mortal to push it through. The narrow 
blade is what you must have, as it re¬ 
quires less strength and cuts therefore 
more efficiently. The knife with the 
almost scimitar formation makes it sim¬ 
ple to cut around a bone. 
Most everybody has a bread knife, 
so we need not bother about that fa¬ 
miliar object, but the only thing neces¬ 
sary is that the bread knife should be 
kept for bread (and kept sharp) as far 
as possible, unless it is adapted by hav¬ 
ing a medium wide blade, to cut meat 
and cake. 
For hot meats a rather flexible, but 
not too flexible, knife should be used, 
especially in the case of hot steaks and 
ham. It is a real comfort to have a 
good knife for these things; the meat 
is not chewed before its time and is not 
wasted in formless gobs. 
For the person who must economize 
on the number of utensils, a knife about 
8 " or 9" long with rather wide blade 
can be bought which can very comfort¬ 
ably be used for cold meat slicing as 
well as bread and cake. A set of six 
knives, two spatulas and two forks, will 
fill most kitchen needs. Other knives 
and forks can be added as specials. 
Here is the 2" paring knife, 3" for split¬ 
ting. The general household keeps a 
fork with the French pattern blade for 
general work and the heavy 6" blade 
for cutting vegetables such as turnips, 
pumpkins, squashes, etc., where a thin 
blade would snap; the fork has har¬ 
dened blades with needle points. The 
spatula for pastry works as well as the 
wide spatula. The carving knife in 8" 
short blade, and the flexible slicing knife 
with 9" blade usable for cold meats, 
cake, bread, etc., and the general utility 
knife. 
For tough cutting and broad surfaces 
the narrow, stiff knife is best, for 
crumbly broad surfaces the broad, stiff 
knife. For rather tough, small surfaces, 
to be pared and trimmed, the medium 
flexible, narrow blade is best. Use the 
narrow and stiff and short knife for 
tough small surfaces like squash and 
turnips. With these simple logical sug¬ 
gestions the knife problem is easy. 
“Had I only learned the use of the 
spatula in cooking school I should have 
thought my course to be a lifelong 
economy.” This was said somewhat in 
jest, but it shows just what the value 
of the spatula is. It is an economy. 
It is not a cutter but a very flexible, 
bendy blade with round corners which 
can assume the curve of any vessel and 
pick up dough or anything left behind 
in bowl or pastry board which is worth 
saving. It is a scraper and saver. You 
need not waste a bit of the precious 
egg on the sides of your dish or a bit 
of batter if you use the spatula. It 
also lifts comfortably the egg, griddle 
cake, fish, etc., from the pan. It is 
really a joy unbounded. 
A larger sized spatula is a conve¬ 
nience, too, for scraping and cleaning 
large kettles and also for a cake or pie 
lifter. Being larger it is a trifle stiffer. 
One corner of the end of this blade is 
sharp and the opposite corner is round. 
The reasons are obviously for attack¬ 
ing corners and not scratching surfaces. 
Home Butchering 
In some homes a certain amount of 
butchering is done in the kitchen, some¬ 
times to save expense and sometimes 
for certain very fine results if the chef 
is a jewel. 
To this end there are some good im¬ 
plements on the market: strong, well 
balanced and riveted to give good ser¬ 
vice. Knife blades for this work range 
from 5" to 14" in length and are in 
various styles. 
The cleaver is a good thing to have 
should the butcher sometimes neglect to 
break a furtive bone. These come in 
pleasant weights and dimensions, the 
one with blade 6" long by 2J4" wide, 
weighing in all one pound. 
In connection with knives for fruits 
and vegetables we cannot but tell the 
story of the late product of steel which 
is so fast coming to the markets of the 
world. It is stainless steel. A steel 
(with an admixture of chromium) which 
resists rust, does not corrode or scale, 
and is impervious to food acids (with 
the exception of the mustard plus vine¬ 
gar plus salt combination which makes 
a muriatic acid, which is the acid with 
which steel is etched). 
It keeps a fine edge and is of fine 
temper and hardness when made by 
accomplished manufacturers. The steel 
we use now is a carbon steel. Before 
the war, both in England and America, 
it was rapidly coming into our markets, 
but the value of such steel was so patent 
to governments that the war and con¬ 
struction departments used it all. Now, 
however, it can be bought even in some 
department stores. 
Think of not having to scour or 
polish your knives. Think of the knife 
having an indefinite life and always 
looking highly polished. Soon, too, even 
the handle will be made of this steel 
and the knife will look like a highly 
polished silver utensil. 
No cleaning powders must be used 
to clean this steel; only warm water 
and a mild soap. Its advent reminds 
one of the early days of aluminum uten¬ 
sils, doesn’t it? The manufacturers are 
planning to make kettles, pots and pans 
of it, as they will wear well, and will 
not scale and wear as do iron ones. 
As this steel is non-staining, the hands 
are not stained as much when it is used 
with fruit juices; the factor of the juice 
(Continued on page 94) 
