Arizona weekly citizen., 1890-04-26
MAKING VENEERS.

An Invention Which Will Add to the Beauty of Plain Woods for Fancy Work.
 For a long time manufacturers of veneers have been trying to secure a fancy grain from straight grained wood. Of course, the more wavy and intricate the line of the grain is, the more valuable is the veneer. A meth cd has at last been secured of prOduc- ing fancy vcneers from plain wood.
 To understand the new process one must first know what the old one was. It was simple enough. A log seven feet long or less and of almost any diane ter above seven inches had its bark clipped off and was then steamed over night in tank made for the pur- pose In the morning 1t was ready to be fastened into the big lathe, and knife blade as long as the longest log used-seven feet-was kept pressed against the wood so as to cut of shaving or ribbon about one thirtieth of an inch thick as the log revolved toward it. Two men rolled up the ribbon and carried it away as it was turned out. Of course the knife had to be set parallel with the axis of the log or the wood would not all be cut up, and so. if the grain of the wood were straight, the the ribbon could not have a variegated appearance, even had the long, straight knife cut the grain at an angle.
 The inventor of the new process mo- ticed that the growth of no two differ ent years in tree had exactly the same color and grain, even when the log was perfectly straight grained. So if knife were made that would strip off a ribbon that dipped in and out through the growth of say two years, the ribbon would have two kinds of grain. To get the ribbon the inventor made a knife with a wavy edge. The waves were a guar ter of an inch high. However, this did not produce a sufficient variety in the grain of the ribbon Co suit the inventor, and he added to ii by giving the knife an oscillating movement in the direction of the length of the log by cam of hali inch stroke. Now, if the log revolved against the knife a ribbon was cut which contained waves that zigzagged up and down and exposed a grain not only variegated in color by the vary ing depths to which the knife had cut, but which was at the same time very :gavy, if not cnrly, in appearance. The variegations in the color even of plain black walnut log were remark able and beautiful.
 There was one objection to this re- maining, and that was that it did not lie down flat on the surface to which t was glued This was remedied, however, by stacking up the ribbon in a hydraulic press that squeezed it with q pressure of forty tons to the square inch. It came out of that press flat.
 At present three kinds of knives are used in these machines. There is no telling what new forms of knives will be invented The machine itself is but little more expensive than the old style, but a knife costs several times as much. Besides, when a knife gets dull a man has to labor over 1t for month with emery wheels to get 1t in order again.
 When a reporter was looking at one of the machines in East Eighth street the other day 1t was cutting plain log. The superintendent of the works said that the product would bring s22. 50 per 1000 square feet, against S5 per 1,G00 were q straight knife used. The corrugated knife, as it Is called, will improve the appearance of grain tlat is naturally variegated to some extent, but when the grain is found that is just right nothing is so good as the old fashioned straight edged blade. New York Times