Pressure-Treated Lumber

By Jack

Twenty years ago, and more, I was making serious but ineffectual efforts to find some practical manner and means for getting pressure-treated lumber to the average consumer through the retail lumber dealer.

I talked and wrote, and wrote and talked both to the lumber dealer and to the operators of treating plants, trying to get them together on some common ground' I loaded my editorial columns with discussions on the subject.

I got nowhere. Which didn't please me in the least, and I've been grumbling about it ever since. I knew then and know now that there is a big field for treated lumber. I knew then and I know now that a mighty boost can be given lumber if we can secure a proper and practical distribution of treated lumber for use where it is, and has always been, badly needed.

My thought was and is that worlds of lumber is used for purposes where treated lumber would be ten times more useful and satisfactory. Treated lumber used in proper places would long since have headed off the use of substitutes, increased the consumption of lumber, and saved wood many a black eye.

Twenty years ago pressure-treated lumber meant creosoted lumber treated under pressure at a creosoting plant. The creosoting plants were always busy selling, and treat-

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ing the kind of materials they had always been accustomed to, timbers, poles, piling, and heavy stuff for heavy use. They were willing and eager to sell more stuff, and to sell the smaller stuff if they knew how, but they didn't. The retailer of lumber was willing to sell treated stuff also, but could think of no practical ways and means for stocking, seliing, and delivering it.

Today there is a great change, and it is going on everyrvhere. In the first place, we NEED more attention to the subject because in this modern day of shoddy we are manufacturing and selling and allowing to be used lots of shoddy lumber that desperately needs the applied'alliance of pressure-treatment in order to help it withstand the ravages of time and weather. In the second place, new thoughts and new things have come into the lumber treating world that make distributing and use of pressure-treated lumber more practical than iu years gone by.

The very important thing that has happened is the development of preservatives other than creosote for use in pressure-treating lumber, such as Wolman Salts and Chromated Zinc Chloride, which leave the lumber clean, odorless, paintable, with no objectionable conditions or features, yet which protect against the ravages of decay and of insects.

A determination has arisen to overcome the obstacles

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