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New lumber Grqde NAMES Now in Effect (Continued from Page 4)

in the sl inch thickness. No. 15 rule provides that six inch material becomes 5f inches instead of Ssl. This already applies to rvider sizes, 7f,91, and lll inches. The new provision simply extends the practice to (i" nominal width and is in accordance with the American Lumber Standards.

This is a grading rule shaped for the buyer and user of lumber rather than for the professior-ral grader. The longtime user of lumber is not expected to encounter any difficulty in familiarizing himself rvith the new names: Construction, Standard, Utility and Economy.

Copies of rules lvere in the hands of retailers, specifiers and users rvell in advance of the effective date-March 15. _TtrEIM,

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Growth of the Grades.

The first primitive effort at segregation of West Coast lumber into specific groups of grades was made at the Simpson sawmill, Gardiner, Oregon, in 1850. The grades were termed "flooring," "selects" and "refuse." The latter grade term was applied to dunnage lumber for the cargo ships in Pacific trade of that era.

In the period of 1849-1852 the great gold-rush boom brought up a variety of uncontrolled construction at San Francisco, and many fires. Five of the fires became major conflagrations. The last, in 1852, reduced 25 blocks of the nerv business district to ashes and burned docks by the mile.

Soon lumber was selling at $500 per thousand board feet. Sailing ships swarmed north from the Golden Gate for the Columbia River and Puget Sound.

Muley Sawing. .

By the end of 1853 the population along the Lower Columbia and Willamette rivers had increased threefold over the 1849 number. Portland was booming. There were 14 sawmills at rvork on the shores of Puget Sound, from Bellingham to Tumwater. Four were steam plants. One o{ these was the Yesler operation around rvhich Seattle grew.

Most of the lumber that vn'as dumped from the clippers, schooners and barks for the rebuilding of San Francisco in 1853-55 was a conglomeration of random lengths ar-rd rvidths, shapes and grades, all cut from primitive muley or sash saws, mainly porn'ered by'ivatern,heels.

Tapering boards and scantlings, planks rvith u'aves that would put the thickness at three inches in the middle and a half-inch at each end, with many ripples between bulges and tapers, left carpenters fit to be tied. The demand for lumber standards of manufacture that rose from the rebuilding of San Francisco was prolonged.

Mississippi \ralley and Wisconsin lumbermen r,vrote a set of grading rules in 1891, and three years later they were revised and adopted by manufacturers in the white and Norr,vay pines of the Lake States region.

The first lumber grade rules publication of the Puget Sound region was an eight-page booklet sponsored by the Seattle Lumber Manufacturers Exchange in 1902. The