At Builders' Servtce for 40 Years

A great oak from a little acorn!

Forty-odd years ago M. William Davis, widely known as "Carload" because of his record as a lumber salesman, established a small hardwood business in San Francisco. Today the Davis Hardwood Company, at Bay and Mason streets, occupies an important place among the city's major industries. Its offices, warehouses, mills and yards cover an entire block. It imports woods from the four corners of the earth and markets them, or products made from them, throughout the coast states, in Nevada and Utah, in Alaska and even in Hawaii and some of the South Sea Islands. Since the death of the founder, a year or so ago, the enterprise has been managed by his two sons, James and William.

The Davis company handles about 100 types of hardwoods ranging from lignum vitae, so heavy that it won't float, to balsa wood, so light that a youngster can tote a good-sized timber. The list includes teak from Siam, mahogany from Central America and the Philippines, iron bark from Australia, rosewood from Africa, zebra wood from Brazil and Africa, and all the domestic varieties. These woods go into the making of thousands of articles from plow beams to fine furniture and objects of art.

Davis Hardwood Company Important in San Francisco's Industrial Life

The firm specializes in all kinds of veneer work for residences, clubs, hotels, apartment houses, banks, office structures, public buildings, liners and yachts. All the teakwood finishing and veneer in Templeton Crocker's yacht, the Zaca, is the product of the company's mills. There is a Davis-made oak door in the palace of the Emperor of Japan-a door for which a Japanese battleship came all the way to San Francisco. And other examples of the concern's handiworlc are,to be found in hundreds of buildings in the Bay area and up and down the coast.

The veneering process requires a week of painstaking effort. First thin strips of hardwood are perfectly matched as to grain and taped together to form sheets of the de- sired size. These are carefully glued to "cores" of the same dimensions, the grain of which runs crossways to the grain of the hardwood. This is to prevent warping and increase strength. Next the panels are placed in a hydraulic press and kept for 24 hours under 100O pounds pressure. From there they go to a drying chamber to stay three days in a temperature of 95 degrees. Then they are "finished off" between drums covered with sandpaper, and are ready for delivery.

Erhibit building of Davis Ilardwood Company. It's constructed of Philippine mahogany. Below, veneering ex- pert operating motor-drivcn glue-spreading machine.

Electricity simplifies and speeds practically all of these operations in the Davis plant, to say nothing of insuring uniformly perfect results. It operates the taping machine and the device which applies the glue, the hydraulic press .and the sanding machine, the cranes which move the panels from one department to another. Also it heats the drying chamber.

Another demonstration of the versatility of Pacific Service.

(Reprinted from. P. G. and, E. Progress, May, 1934)

Corpton Resigns From NRA East B.y Meeting June 11

Wilson Cornpton, manager of the National Lumber Manufacturers Association, resigned his NRA official post as Chief of Trade Associations and of the Chairman of the Code Authority Organization Committee, on April 17. Mr. Compton will continue his special advisory connection with the Industrial Advisory Board. In his letter to Mr. Compton accepting his resignation, General Johnson said: "I hdve made it a rule not to urge anybody to stay on this sacrificial job one moment longer than their personal affairs would permit. You have done a great job. I regret your going but you best know your own circumstances."

Lloyd E. Graybiel, assistant vice-president, American Trust Co., San Francisco, will be the speaker of the evening at the next dinner meeting of East Bay Club No. 39 to be held at the Athens Athletic Club, Oakland, Monday evening, June 11, at 6:09 p.m. His subject will be "National Money Troubles."

N. H. HUEY VISITS SAN DIEGO

N. H. (Hawk) Huey, Phoenix, Ariz., was a recent visitor at San Diego, where he spent a few days fishing. Mrs. Huey made the trip with him.