STRAY NOTES

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 51, 24 November 1926, Page 17

STRAY NOTES

TIMBER GRADING

In an address recently cn ‘‘Timbers in Relation to Architecture,” Mr F. E Hutchinson said that timber vas now obtained from the mill in two grades—clean and 0.8. No board which contained any knot, shake, pitch, pocket wave or any other defect could be classed as clean but must go into the category of 0.8. This grade included all boards containing defects of all forms and degrees. In building, while it was well known that a good deal of 0.8. Timber was eminently suited for a great many purposes in building, a great deal, due to excessive defect of one kind and another, was quite unsuited for the particular purpose in hand. Therefore the canny builder played safe and specified clean, not because clean timber was essential for the purpose, but because were he to order 0.8., some of the timber would be quite satisfactory, while other of it would be quite useless. In other words, the classing was so broad that one was never sure what one was going to get. When it was borne in mind that the mills were turning out 45ft. of clean and 55ft. of 0.8. to every 100 ft., and that present building practice for wooden houses consumed 53ft. of clean or 47ft. of 0.8 , while the demand of the furniture trade was entirely for clean, an explanation was found for much of the economic instability of the timber trade, and for the fact that the millers to-day cut 100 ft. of timber where it was possible to cut 115 to 120 ft. In the United States, for every’ broad kind of timber they had a set of grading rules, adopted by all millers in that region, defining the grades which they put able in each grade. All boards were graded by a competent classer as they left the mill, while the association had inspectors who constantly checked the graders and gave expert rulings in cases of dispute. The grades were based on the uses to which the timber would be put, while the fullest publicity was given to the grades adopted, so that the purchaser might buy intelligently and get a product which he knew would be suitable for his use.