5.1 U. S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service FOREST PRODUCTS LABORATORY In cooperation with the University of Wisconsin MADISON, WISCONSIN WOOD, A MATERIAL WITH A FUTURE By F. J. CHAMPION Associate Technical Writer flU q UNIV. OF FL LIB DOCUMENTS DEPT DEPOSITORY SCPl F firsipy ! !HPARY mm / Published in WISCONSIN CARPENTER & BUILDER Convention Number, 1936. WOOD, A MATERIAL WITH A FUTURE By F. J. CHAMPION, Associate Technical Writer Wood is the universal material; no one has ever made a satisfactory count of its uses and known where to stop. For instance, the Forest Products Laboratory undertook a few years ago to make an official count of wood uses, and the number went over four thousand. At about that stage arguments began on how general or how particular a use had to be to get on the list. It is hardly fair, when summing up the score for wood uses, to say "building construction, " put down a point for wood and stop there. It would be fairer to enumerate building parts such as sills, joists, studding, lath, moulding, sheathing, siding, shingles, and all the different items of lumber manufacture, since all have perfectly well defined functions or uses in the finished structure. Some are there for bending strength, others for tension, others for compression, still others for protection of various kinds, and some for good looks — that's a use, too, and an important one. r So the score is certainly nearer five thousand uses for wood than one thousand and perhaps nearer a hundred thousand than five thousand if you count some of the new conversion products of wood. There is practi- cally no limit; one well-known cellulose plastic alone claims 25, 000 uses, all the way from doll's eyes to advertising signs. Every day the use of wood fiber as the basis of such products is increasing. / The American nation was founded and built up on wood use. Wood plays an important part in practically every activity of our life today, and its importance in the American scheme of living is increasing and will increase. There is, it is true, an indisputable tendency in many fields today to "get away from wood" — concrete, metals, and all sorts of new materials are coming in. It may be timely to wonder if, in the same fields, there may not be, after some of the "newer" materials have been subjected to service tests by that inexorable scientist Father Time, a balancing tendency to "get back to wood." • R1119 Be that as it may, Science is giving us such freedom of choice that all our materials mean more to us than formerly, while none can he said to he strictly indispensable; that is the advantage of living in a scientific age. There is one thing about wood, however; it is the handiest all-around abundant material, and the use of something else usually carries some kind of job for wood along with it. Even concrete construction has created outlets for thousands of board feet of form material. The more complicated the building, stadium, wharf, or bridge, the more reason for using wood forms. Even in the metals, machinery and other complicated gear of the age in which we live, v/ood does its part in making it all possible — from the mining and smelting of the ore, through the foundry, with its beautifully tooled wood patterns which determine the exact size and shape of castings, and so on to the packing and shipping and the transportation of the finished goods into service. It seems that all the thousands of new uses for metals and machinery are uses for wood at the same time. r Fifty billion — that's a lot of anything and that's the measure of the wood used every year (in the form of lumber, fuel, and every form of wood) in this country. Fifty billion board feet of lumber would build a board walk ho feet wide out of inch boards from the easy chair where you are sitting to the moon. ' Of all the uses into which this vast stream of lumber flows, building, and especially home construction, is easily the most important. From the very beginning, abundant wood resources have enabled Americans to have a roof over their heads and generally a good one. Wood makes a satis- factory home by either the old or the new standards, and work is in progress at the Forest Products Laboratory to adapt wood to what may be the home of the future. Wood is strong, light, economical, adaptable, convenient, and formed by nature in its very microscopic structure to resist the passage of heat and cold. Some of the v/ood houses of the early New England settlers are still standing and in use, and the most famous home in America still stands as an example of wood construction and a monument to the good judgment and good taste of our country's first president. When home building really hits its stride, to make up the shortage that now exists, wood, the traditional American material, will be found doing a big share of the work, and doing it well, as it has always done. Next to building, with its tremendous influence on prosperity, the most important use of wood is probably its service to the intellectual life of the nation in the form of the cheap and abundant paper on which we print our books, magazines, and newspapers. 'Two hundred pounds annually is every man's share of paper goods of all kinds at present, as contrasted with the less than 10 pounds per year per person in the old days when the rag man . was the chief gatherer of paper-making raw materials. About one-third of the paper used carries reading matter, or if you interpret the work broadly, educational material. ^The other two-thirds of the paper pulp makes life easier for us in many ways. It gives us strong shipping containers for all . R1119 -?- kinds of merchandise, sanitary packages for our prunes, breakfast food, "butter, ice cream and edibles of all kinds; it saves labor in the kitchen by giving our wives paper plates and cups, and even paper knives and forks and spoons; it aids public health by furnishing disposable napkins, towels, and handkerchiefs; it wraps or bags all our groceries, meats, and dry goods sold over the counter.^ It is predicted that we shall be using double the present consumption of paper by 1950* J A number of wood uses rank close to paper. To run our trains, wood is as necessary as steel; no suitable substitute has even been found for the hundreds of millions of wooden cross ties. Wooden poles carry our telephone, telegraph, and power lines. To come back home, life is much more worth living because we have wooden furniture, with its strength, lightness, fine appearance, and warmth under the hand. More than many of us realize wood is still the old reliable fuel for both heating and cooking; this is really the first use of wood in point of volume, exceeding even building. And nobody can predict what the future will bring in this matter of wood fuel; both gas and alcohol are already being made from wood that promise a great deal in the way of automobile fuel in times not far distant. Within the year a German scientist drove his car from Berlin to England on the gas from v/ood that cost him only $U. So it goes; implements for work and play, household utensils, toys, boats, ladders, tubs, boxes, barrels, candlesticks, buttons, gunstocks, and conveniences and necessities unnumbered are supplied by wood at every turn -- literally from the cradle to the grave. No, v/e have not outgrown "the age of wood" by any means; in fact, according to present indications, we are only growing into it. A new Wood Handbook, in which wood is defined in technical properties and behavior, is a publication of interest to wood users generally which embodies the results of 25 years of research by the Forest Products Laboratory at Madison, Wisconsin. It treats of all the practical phases of wood use, including the mechanical properties of wood and the facts recently developed in regard to ring placement, fatigue effects, the various factors affecting strength; control of decay and insect damage, classification of woods for painting, timber for outdoor use, preservative treatment, and treating for effective fire resistance. Distinctly modern fields of use are covered in a section on glued, laminated, and composite wood construction. Copies of the Handbook may be obtained for 25 cents (stamps not accepted) from the Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington, L. C. R1119 -3- UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 3 1262 08928 0183 I I 1