PRECUT \TALL FRAMING

By Kenneth Smith Secretary-Manager, Lumber and Allied Products ln*itute, Los Angeles

In his addrcss, "Foundations-Is Your Business Founded on the Rock of 'Identifiable' Standards ? Or on the Sands of All Lumber is 'Just Lumber'?" delivered at the thirty-sixth annual convention of the Western Retail Lumbermen's Association at Portland, Oregon, on February 23, L939, Kenneth Smith discussed the Precut Wall Framing program developed by his organization in the Los Angeles territory, which follows in part:

"'We have, after nearly two years of work, developed a Precut Wall Framing program which ultilizes 2 inch No. 3 in a thoroughly practical manner that is a natural outgrowth of our ten year fight to prevent the substitution of No. 3 for No. 1 and No. 2, and to prevent the misuse of lumber by jerry builders, which we are confident is going to be the greatest contribution to the disposal of the surplus production of No. 3 and to the ultimate better utilization, or more complete utilization, of the log than anything which has been offered the industry in a dozen years.

"In 1936 we participated, along with the local manager of the West Coast Lumbermen's Association, and the representatives of all other types of building materials, in a very ambitious study conducted by the Construction Industries Committee of the Chamber of Commerce, on how to lower the cost of small dwellings. This was an outgrowth of th'e Committee's famous Federal Housing Administration campaign and of the industry-wide drive to stamp out jerry building.

"The findings of that Committee presented many practical possibilities for cost reduction, principally in the direction of eliminating waste by designing for standard lengths of lumber and stock sizes of doors and windows' One definite recommendation was that the cost of construction of small dwellings could be substantially lowered by cutting framing to lengths at the mill or by power saw on the job.

"After this report was published in 1937, T. C. Combs of the West Coast Lumbermen's Association, started out to find what he could do with Precut Framing and particularly with the precutting of wall framing from No. 3 Douglas fir, which was first actively advocated, I believe, by Clint Laughlin, secretary, Southern California Wholesale Lumber Association, and which appeared to all of us the most practical of the several possibilities, particularly because it ofiered a feasible and sensible way to utilize the increasing quantities of 2 inch random No- 3 with which the manufacturers continually overstocked us.

"Harry T. Kendall, general manag'er' Weyerhaeuser Sales Company, in a brilliant analysis of our industry before the Hardwood Association last year, emphasized that the road to progress for the manufacturers and, naturally, for the retailer who insists upon selling lumber, lies in the di- rection of finding a way to reduce the average of $35 per M, which it costs to utilize lumber, after it leaves the hands of the dealer, rather than spending all of the executive energ'y of the manufacturing industry in trying to reduce the cost of manufacture 25c per thousand.

"In a recent progress report, Mr. Combs developed the fact that, on the experimental job which we had been running in Los Angeles, using shop cut wall framing, with some 75 carpenters using it for the first time in their lives, the savings in labor averaged $30 per 5 room house. This amounted to $10 per M board measure on the wall framittg. A minimum of 20 minutes was saved in framing each door or window. The net result was that Precut studs, plus Precut bundled short framing, resulted in a 4O% reduction in labor cost in wall construction. This ties in most definitely with the major industry problem as outlined by Mr. Kendall, of reducing the cost of using lumber 'and with the great need of the producers for a substantial outlet for low-grade dimension.

"Let me give you a quick picture of h,ow very substantial an outlet this is, or can be developed to be. fn our market alone there was an estimated 5,800,000, 8-foot studs or some 30 million feet used last year. Add another 20 million feet to this for the wall framing members which are shorter than studs (about 2 f.eet of short members for each 3 feet of studs) and then add to that the possibilities if it becomes standard practice in all of the markets served by the northwest manufacturers and you commence to have a picture of how very substantial an outlet for No. 3 the adoption of this practice of Precut Wall Framing can become.

"The great merit of the plan is its extreme simplicity. It simplifies the estimating of the contractors in the first place and is so simple a shop operaton in the second place that it has been successfully done in all types of plants. It Iends itself to the most modern streamlined shop cutting plant and it can be done in the smallest yard that has a mill, in idle time.

"The rough frame of an average one-story, five-room house, contains over 2,O0o'pieces of lumber. The walls contain one-third of the board footage and represent threefourths of dll the pieces in the entire job. More than half of them are less than 7 feet long. The average length of all members shorter than studs is less than 2 feet, 6 inches. Half of the wall space is doors and windows which require, on the averag'e, 1O pieces each. Cut these in the shop out of No. 3, bundle the 'pieces for each window and door together, bundle runs of bracing and convenient parcels of fire blocking, and you deliver to the contractor about 250 or 300 studs (a quarter of which were developed out of No. 3 while cutting the shorter pieces) 12 bundles of windows, 12 of doors, 2l of bracing and 17 of fire blocking, out of which he builds his wall frame for $30 less labor cost than by using random length No. 1 or No. 2. The sole thing necessary to make Precut Wail Framing a stock operation is the adoption of a standard stud length. We have adopted in Los Angeles 7 foot, 9 inch as the standard after careful consultation with the contracting fraternity.

"The practical feature of the program is that it leaves the same wide latitude to the designer, except for ceil- ing height and restricting himself to standard stock sizes of doors and windows, neither of which interferes with the development of any floor plan. It is hailed by practical contractors and students alike as an outstanding contribution to building technique and to the reduction of the cost of the small dwelling. The Architectural Forum for December carried a two page story of the progress of the program to that date and made the statement that it is universally applicable. They are going to fbllow this with further studies. In addition to this, it was featured in a conference of the nation's most important technicians in the field of building at Yale University in January of this year.

"You may have noticed a picture of this Precut Wall Framing exhibit in Life's recent story of this important conference.

"As a result of these studies, the West Coast Lumbermen's Association has issued two manuals which are thoroughly descriptive. One is for the use of the retail dealer or the manufacturer and describes the production process. The other is for the use of the contractor and describes its use in construction. They describe the proposed standards and provide all of the information that is now available from the experiments which we have been making in Los Angeles for both shop production and job construction. You can get them from the West Coast Lumbermen's Association, 364 Stuart Building, Seattle. Just ask them for the two manuals of "Precut Framing for Light Frame Walls."

"What is needed now is general adoption in the field. During the past year, a tremend,ous amount of effort has been put into proving the practical possibilities of Precut Framing through shop cutting. This has been accomplished. From now on the task is to sell the idea to the dealers, who will do much of the precutting and who have to visualize the possibilities before it can be sold to contractors and project planners.

"A number of large builders have already adopted Precut Wall Framing."

S. J. Sharp Named Redwood Ass'n Manager

San Francisco, March l-Directors of the California Redwood Association today announced the appointment of Selwyn J. Shanp as acting manager of the organization. He will replace Carl W. Bahr, who has resigned to take a position as head of an eastern Redwood sales company.

Mr. Sharp comes to the position after ten years' experience with the Association in statistics, structural promotion and the Bureau of Inspection and Grades. He is a graduate of the University of California, where he majored in forestry economics. After graduation he polished off his formal education with logging experience in the pine region, before going to the Western Pine Association, where he served as statistician for seven years.

His appointment to the new position will take effect immediatelv.

Karl Luke Promoted

Karl Luke is now in charge of the shipping department of American Hardwood Company, Los Angeles, succeeding Jim Chase.