Three Santa Cruz Land Lubbers Cruising With "\(/'est on the Pacific lvis"

By Georse W. \0ood \flood Brothers Co. Santo Cruz, Calif.

(Continued from June 1 issue)

Chapter Iv

On board ship en route Portland, Ore., to Vancouver. B. C.Monday was the day Captain Westerberg had set for loading our car on the steamer. We drove to the pier. Consternationl Our boat has left and "you can't load a car ofi the S. P. dock where she ib"lnow," we are told. Our anxiety doesn',t last long, however, as it develops that arrangements have been made to load our Buick at Rainier down the river a few miles. This change gives us an €xtra day ashore in Portland-a most welcome arrangement.

We are in the lumber capital of America. Log rafts by the hundreds are everywhere. Saw mills line the Willamette and Columbia. Surely there's enough to claim the attention of a retail lumber dealer.

Through Veneering Plant

During the last two years there has been a very marked development in the manufacture and sale of plywood. Plywood is the name given to three-ply veneered fir panels. Until the last few years we sold veneering at 8c to 10c a foot. This made it too high priced for use as walls and ceilings. In 1921, someone in the veneering manufacturing industry, conceived the idea of making a three-ply veneered board with only one good side. They argued that when used as a wall board, one good side was quite O. K. and so it is. So made, the price of plywood was brought down to 4lc a foot retail and more recently we have been able to offer it at 3-6-l0c per foot or $36 per thousand feet right in Santa Cruz. Also there has been developed a second grade plywood board known as "sheathing board" that sells for only 3c per square foot. Let's go through the plywood plant and see how the veneers are made and didcover if we can, why this product is surely the lumber of the future.

Big logs four to ten feet in diameter, known as peelers, are selected and cut-over 90 per cent of them-into 8-foot lengths. The other l0 per cent are six, seven, l0 and, 12 feet long. Great tongs, seven feet in length, similar to ice tongs, pick up each log and transfer it to a steam room. Here the logs are steamed for 24 hours making the wood soft and easily cut. From the steam room, the log is transferred by means of an overhead crane, to a big lathe. The lathe has an enormous cutting knife. kept razor sharp, which peels the log into sheets, while still hot. The veneering sheets are one-ninth of an inch thick, usually eight feet wide and about 16 feet long. Each lathe has a capacity of 300,000 feet per 8-hour day. From the lathe the large veneering sheets are transferred on automatic conveyors to cutters and trimmers where they are reduced to the most desirable sizes, about 90 per cent of them being made into layers four feet wide and eight feet long. Now they go through dry kilns on automatic conveyors where the moisture content is reduied tci 2 per cent. (Dry 6nish lumber contains 12 to 15 per cent moisture.) Then the veneers are patched-knots and defects removed aRd new pieces of veneer put in where knots used to be. This "plugging" process makes it possible to produce veneeis with "solid cores." Now the veneers are cooled and put through the glueing machines. On one side are piled the cores 18 inches wide and four feet long. These are to be covered with hot glue on both sides. On the other side of the machine are the bottom and top veneer sheets, four feet wide and eight feet long. As the cores, all covered with glue, come through off the hot rollers, the operators put one 4x8 sheet underneath and one on top, and there you have your three-ply veneer. Now the three-ply veneers aie transferred to hydraulic presses where they are put under enormous pressure. From here they are sent to. the side and end trimmers. the patchers (who put in "Dutchmen") and the sanding machinCs. The final product is a beautiful thing to one who appreciates fine lumber, big, wide, stash grained sheets, tough and durabte.

Why do we call this the lumber of the future? Well, in manufacturing lumber, 50 per cenf of the log goes into sawdust and firewood, One-half is waste. In making plywood the waste is less than 20 per cent----one operator tells me only l0 per cent. Not for long wilt owners of timber permit this extra 30 to 40 per cent loss. Already sheathing board is used in place of low grade lumber for concrete forms on big buildings. It has no knot holes, it's light, easily handled, tough and requires less labor.

Veneers hive been used for years in furniture and doors. More cently they have been used for auto bodies for ccincrete forms. recently bodies. forms, for walls and ceilings, and even for industrial floors. There's a a spegjal _kind of wateiproof veneer that will interest Bill Johnson Malio Stagnaro and Louis Beverino. This is a marine type o of Jrafrnaro Lours .bevertno. Ihls ts veneer, made with water-proof glue and used for boats. - Louis Wessendorf will be pleased to learn that caskets bv the hundreds pleased by the hundreds are made of inexpensive veneers. In fact, there is a veneer for almost every purpose. It's the lumber of the future, Watch this development. It has big "C.ri"*it+Eh

V

We board the West Ivis Tuesday evening at Rainier on the Columbia river and start on the last leg of oui journey northward. At 8 p.m. we turn about in the stream and head down toward Astoria. We wind in and out, now close to shore. now far out in the channel. The changing lights along the banks, the water traffic,, Portland Sound, the big bridges we glide und6r-all are fasciqating to us. -\Me are reminded of Mark Twain's description of floating down the Mississippi with Huckleberry Finn. We- turn in late b-ut are up next morning at 4 a.m. to sei the pilot leave our boat for Astoria.

Out.at sea again steaming northward along the Washington state coast line! Before late afternoon we are opposite the Jnow clad OJvmoi_c mountains, rising a few miles bacli-from the shore line. About 5 o'clock our steqaid points out Tatoosh Island, marking the and are entrance to Puget Sound. At dinner time we turn inland an entertained by the appearance of five bie sharks on our port bv ig port beam.

Inside the headlandi we steam along thiough the itraii ;i j";a; Fuca past the southern end of Vancouver Island. We retiie earlv as $'e want to be on deck at daylight to see the most of thesi beautiful shore lines. Early next moining we see dozens of salmon fi.shing..boats. One_-pa-ss.es quite close ind I'm sure I see a big silverside salmon pulled in.

The entrance to Vancouver harbor, passing Stanley park on the starboard side and North Vancouver on our left, beggars description by such an amateur author as yours truly. We st6im to Kineslev terminal and at noon my car is ashore. The Canadian customi of- ficials go through my baggage, inquire into my life historv and want to know "what I'm here for anyway." We get by and i hunt up Brackman-Ker Milling Co., the- folks who frave -been selline Charters Incubators since 1920. Never will I forget my firJr silE to these people. -I was.a_young, untried American"sal.si""n,-i"iio_ ducing a new product. "With the courage of ignorance,', as Samuel Leask.would say, I brought an incubator alon-g with ine ""d.;ld it to these rather conservative Canadian busineis men.. Since then they have bought hundreds of our machines and I always have a warm welcome on the rare occasions that I visit British Cotumbia.

At Vancouver we take on flour for Porto Rico. The middle hatch is just_aft of gur cabin. The captain's Bobby and our fatte.ini (each 5 years old) have been using the hatch cover as a olavsround on the way up. Now this hatch cover is roughly torn up'an'd"Kath- erine comes out at the end of_th_e_passage wafoverlookin^g tfre tratitrway down into the empty hold. She rushes back to'her mother with. the .rather indignant.inqu-iry, "Mother, why did they make -a Drg nore rn our tront yard tor/"

I have business in New Westminster, B. C., lZ miles south and ijr .Bellingham, Ev^erett_ and Seattle. Our boat is tg go ""itt io Brittania Beach, 33 miles from Vancouver, where she Is to untoad two thousand tons of steel rails. It will take two davs to discharce these rails, days that I can use very profitably, so I- leave -r, *if. and daughter on the boat and drivi southward. It will be ;icked up next Sunday at Port Gamble, site of one of the McCormic[ tu-_ ber mills, about 20 miles from Seattle.

A Modern Broodins Svetem

A few miles north of Bellingham, Wishington, I called on a good friend and customer of ours. He has a big poultry farm with s"omi 3000 chickens. He uses 12 of the Wood-ridiant etectric brooA.ii made in Santa Cruz. During the last 15 years I have visited ooul- try plants from Vancouver to San Dieg-o and from petaluma -io

Boston. Never have I seen such a.modern, labor-saving brooding system as that used by our friend, Mr. Griffith. All his brooding work-feeding, cleaning, watering, culling-is done at waist level. I.t's a.clever system and should be written up for some poultry magazrne.

At Everett I visited another satisfied customer who uses Art Wood's brooder. He has just sold the last electric he had on hand and wanted more.

The drive along the Sound just south of Bellingham is rather famous in the northwest. It's known as the Chuck-a-nuck. Whet was most interesting to me were the oyster booths along the way. It was 6 o'clock and I was hungry. I stopped at one of these oyster dispensaries and looked over the stock in trade, There were large oysters in the shell and small ones, too. Besides these there were three other sizes, some in the shell, others in cartons ready to eat. I bought a pint of medium size---Z,S cents for the oysters and five cents for the lemon and tomato sauce. I ate a out two dozen right then and there for my supper and still had two-thirds of my pint left.

Tell This One to Andy Balich

These I took to Seattle where I left them with the cook at my hotel. I can't resist telling you here just how I disposed of them, I came in about 5 o'clock Saturday afternoon after a rather long day-tired and hungry. After a refreshing shower bath I called up the kitchen. "Mr. Wood speaking." (You know, just like that.) "Oh, yes. How do you wish your oysters prepared?" "Wetl," I said, "make me a nice oyster stew--ah-use cream and butter, flavor with salt and pepper-about two dozen oysters, please. And the rest of them you may serve raw-ah-with cocktail sauce," "Ye9, Mr. Wood, in about 15 minutes?" "O.K." A few minutes later my 6rst course was ra\r oysters all arranged on a big plate, with sliced lemon, ice cotrd radishes and garnished with parsley. And the cocktail sauce, was it good? Not too strong or peppery. Then my creamed oyster stew! And the bill-2s cents for service.

Now, George, that'll be enough for today.

(Next installment of Mr. Woods' article will appear in the July 1 issue)

H. H. BARG VISITS LOS ANGELES

H. H. Barg, Barg Lumber Company, San Francisco, attended the meeting of the Philippine Mahogany Manufacturers Import Association, Inc., held in Los Angeles, June June 11,