You Can Buy Lumber With Muscles and Shape

Bv H. V. Simpson Executive Vice President \West Coast Lumbermen's Association

All over the country the swing is from steel to timber.

To help conserve scarce steel for military and munitions use, the Douglas fir lumber industry has stepped into the breach as it did in World War II and since with an accelerated production of structural lumber, heavy timbers and industrial items.

No change-over or plant conversion was necessary as hundreds of West Coast sawmills turned their production might to cutting structural lumber and heavy timbers.

Normally timbers and structural lumber make up about ten per cent of the production at West Coast fir mills. Now, at many mills, as much as 50 and even 60 per cent of the entire output is going into this urgently needed heavy construction lumber. Not all. logs will make this type of long, strong timbers so mills are limited in their ability to manufacture structural lumber by the available logs that will make timbers.

Structural timber construction is now serving adequately with outstanding success where steel once had a clear field. This is due in large part to irnproved engineering, better fabricating and erecting techniques of trusses and beams built up from wood.

The development of the TECO ring connector during the past decade has had substantial influence in enlarging lumber's tlse as an engineering material. The gratifying strides rnade in perfecting glues and glueing technique has created the fame,1 glue-laminated wooden members which have opened up whole new fields of use for wood.

Glue-laminated beams, trusses, columns and solid wooden lrrer.nbers can be built up in a wide variety of size, shapes, lengths and styles. Thus, we can literally mal<e big one out of little ones. We can put muscles in lumber that nature has never been able to do. We can also give lumber some amazing shapes and curves to give it unusual beauty in long, graceful structural beams.

\\re can improve on nature by using the natural fibre strength and stiffness of wood. We can glue one and two-inch boards into almost any shape, size and length timber piece. The glued-up truss or beam is as strong is not stronger than a solid wooden metrber of the the same size.

We can compete successfully with steel from a cost standpoint on much construction work.

Some fabricated wooden trusses have been built well over 200 feet in length and are serving with distinction in such clemanding tasks as in single-span, bow-type-truss wooden bridges and, in large buildings especially where column-free space is needed.

The lumber industry, in effect, has given the country an entirely new structural material-the built-to-order, giant timber.with muscles and shape, the amazing glue-laminated beam and truss. All of the remarkable features which nature has built into wood in strength and workability has been captured and improved upon in this new construction material.

Wood is stronger pound-for-pound than steel. Where weight is a factor, wooden beams and trusses particularly fill the bill. Wooden trusses are easy to install and can be fabricated and assembled with a minimum of delay.

Contractors have found the case of on-the-job fabrication, assembly and erection one of the attractive recommendations for wood as a structural material. Wood is easy to work, can be cut, shaped and fit on the job with a few light tools, and almost any carpenter can do the work. The completely assembled beams can be lifted into place with travelling cranes ur hoists and quickly fastened.

Some of our companies out here in the West which specialize in glue-laminated beams and trusses are doing double the business today they did before Korean difficulties arose.

Wooden trusses are being used in an endless variety of heavy duty jobs. The government is buying timbers in ever increasing amounts and a recent innovation is the pre-fabrication of bridge timbers rvhich are packaged 1,000 feet to a pacl<age with nails, hammer, bolts, nuts and ship's auger complete in each package and shipped overseas.

The navy's ship building program calls for increasing volume of Douglas fir timbers. Some will be glued together in curved ribs for a host of small craft needed in present-day warfare. The army likes timbers for. pontoon bridges, and many field and combat uses.

Roof trusses, fabricated highway bridge trusses, church and school beams shaped in beautiful curving structural members, wooden columns and fabricated piers, glued-up curved ribs for small commercial structures, barns and auditoriums-these are but a few of the multiple uses for this fascinating new construction material.

This is big business for the Douglas fir lurnber industry. One large proposed warehouse in Ohio called for 1,500 tons of steel. Steel was not available, so the engineers turned to wood and 835,000 board feet were used in trusses, columns, and rafter supports. The story is the same all over the country.

This u'ood-ward swing is bringing a large volume of business to our Douglas fir mills. Shortage of steel because of Korean fighting needs has served to accelerate the trend to wood which (Continued on Page 60)