A Quarter Of A Century ln Plywood

By Charles E. Devlin Managing Director, Douglas Fir Plywood Association

The national housing shortage has caused an increased demand for Douglas fir plywood . a demand that began in 1938 rvhen architects, builders, lumber dealers and home owners first recognized the potentialities of the versatile panel and increased in tempo during the war years rvhen the greatest part of the supply was being channeled into war industry. Now, although the estimated production for 1947 is considerably greater than any other peacetime year, the demand is far greater than the supply.

Specifiers of plyrvood are again designing and building homes of all sizes and types. Plywood is being used both for inside and outside walls, office buildings, factories, service stations, prefabricated structures and forms for concrete buildings, bridges and reservoirs. Demands for these applications plus those for industrial uses has primed the industry to increase its production capacity three-fold. There is no doubt that plywood is a peace-time material that was just drafted to do a job during the emergency and is now again in its own field.

For the first time since August 1941 the Douglas fir plywood industry is free of all government controls. The final fetters were, lifted with the discontinuance of gov_ ernment allocation lvhicl-r recluirecl a high proportiou of the panels to be channeled clirectly to the reconversion housing program.

Before going into the history of plywood's development it should be understood that this article pertains only to plywood made from giant Douglas firs. All thirty-three factories producing Douglas fir plywood are located in Western Washington and Oregon.

Standardization and mass production nf products always has differentiated this industry from the manufacturers of other plyr,r'oods (principally the hardu,oo<ls). Fir plywood is manufacttired in large, flat sheets of stanclar<l sizes (ustrally 4' by 8') and grades and accounts for the great btrlk of all plywood production. In 1942 the producers of Douglas fir plyrvood shipped 1,800,000,000 square feet of the panels.

While plywood may be neu's today, this widespreacl recognition has been long in accumulating. The first Doug- las fir plvwood panels were manufactured expressly for display in 1905 and attracted iittle attention. However, those dozen panels represented the birth of the Douglas fir plyr,vood industry today valued at more than 100 million dollars and employing 10,000 men and women.

At first the manufacture of Douglas fir plyrvood rvas carried on in a crude manner. The presses, lr'ith jack screws to supply pressure, rvere made from timber. Animal glue was applied to the veneers with a hand brush, as the first mechanical glue spreader was not installed untl 1906. Similarly, drying at first rvas accomplished merely by air drying supplemented by use of an ordinary lumber kiln with home-made veneer racks. ft n'asn't until 1915 that the first veneer drier was installed.

The panels were manu{actured in trvo grades: .,two- sides" and "one-side". The "two-sides" panels, lvhich indicated the 'panels with trvo clear sides, rvere sold to door factories and this was the primary use of plywood for several years. "One-side" panels had a back with imperfections and wer:e used primarily as stock for drawer bottoms.

Tlie most commorl construction of Douglas fir plywood until about 1911 was of three-ply panels in thicknesses of s/s-inch and half inch. A price list issued by Portland Manufacturing Co. about 1913 listed /g-inch panels 40 to 48 inches 'ivide and 48 to 84 inches long, 22 cents a square foot if good one side and 26 cents if good two sides. An interesting contrast in cost is offered when it is realized that current prices for panels quite similar are less than half that much.

It was 192O before the first plant.was erected as a plyrvood mill, separate and apart from any other enterprise. Before this, plywood operation was always a part of a door factory or a plant making boxes, crates etc. Gradually the plywood industry developed until in 1925 the production figures of output in square feet based on panels ol /s-inch thickness was 150,000,000. fn 1946 the figures had increased to 1,390,000,000 and the estimated production for 1947 is r,600,000,000.

Of course, production alone does not characterize the development of the industry. Manufacturing fir plywood today is a highly specialized undertaking geared to machine procluction of a high quality, nniform product. Plyrvood is an engineered u,ood that capitalizes on the advantages of rvood and overcomes the shortcomings of lumber rvith the skills and machines of America's mass-production technique to produce consistently higher quality panels.

Nerr' machines and impror.ements to older equipment have cansed constant increases in production and provided moro efficient utilization of the rarv material. Today with the careful selection of every piece of fir veneer so it will be used to the best advantage, and with the utilization of machines for repairing defects and joining together narrow \/eneers, the recoverl' ratio in plyrvood manufacture is about 2.3 to 1. That is, from a log scaled to bring a given board footage of lumber there will be about 2.3 times that many square feet of plywood recovered

The most important single advancement in the production of plyu'ood since it r,vas first introduced is the manufacture of Exterior or completely.lveather-proof type panels. Harbor Flywood Corp. was the first to produce Exterior fir plyu,ood, and norv it is being produced by 72 of the 33 factories in the industry. In 1942 there rvere nearly 300,000,000 square feet of Exterior plyrt'ood produced which was nearly three times the amount produced the year before; in 1946 the Exterior production accounted for a third of the industry's volume.

This development rvas due to a apply heat and pressure at the same hesives, as well as to the formulation

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IThe variety of uses for PLYWOOD has increased tremendously each year. During the war many different uses wete uncovered for this pliable material.

All of these users can now be supplied from instock merchandise. Plywood is a wonderful, easy material to handle--it's a great wood to SELL. Reach out to all the users.

Fill your stock from "The Best in Plywood" .

. Remember, too, that our in-stockl merchandise also includes SIMPSON INSULATING BOARD.