Author Topic: Huber Norman Lumber, Marietta, GA (Read 5837 times)

Don P · « **on:** December 12, 2020, 07:47:55 AM »

Anyone know of them or their history?
We are digging under the old farmhouse at the local farm museum ca ~1900. I looked up the other day and we have an interesting situation. The majority of the old hall and parlor house is on hewn 8x8 sills with log joists. The end bedroom we are under right now is on sawn 8x8 sills with sawn 2x8 joists. Something is going on, this floor system appears to be newer. Yet in an old photo that is supposedly from the turn of the century that end of the house is there. I'm not sure yet what is going on. Did the floor system fail, was there a fire, is the photo misdated, not sure yet. Looking at the exposed underside of the single layer floor there are stamps on the underside of the syp floorboards with the above black inked stamp. I'm wondering if anyone knows of this company, their history, dates of operation? Is it related to the modern JM Huber of Advantech and other engineered products?

nopoint · « **Reply #1 on:** December 12, 2020, 08:36:39 AM »

Building with an axe and crosscut saw took a long time. There was potentially other work to do. Money for supplies like nails may have been tight. I would suspect that it may have taken several years for some homes to be complete. Over that time local sawmill may have became an option. Got a stone basement? Think about the work of digging the basement by hand. Then laying up the stone. It takes a lot of stone to build a wall. Like dump truck loads!

Don P · « **Reply #2 on:** December 12, 2020, 09:42:33 AM »

That is one thing we were wondering, are we seeing phases of original construction or a repair. One thought was a fire but I've been through the attic and see no signs of smoke or char below or above. I'll get some answers when we unside at the second floor plate, whether it is continuous or broken at that room. We entered at the old root cellar which was stoop height. The foundation is dry laid stone on the ground, including on the surface grade around the root cellar. That section was collapsing into the pit so we are digging it out to 8' under pretty much the whole thing and will install a reinforced 12" block foundation to just below grade and then recycle the stone for a mortared stone foundation wall for the visible part outside. Trying to keep appearance as close as now possible to the original. I'll probably refill the root cellar area floor with dirt over the slab and restore that area to original appearance and hide the rest of the basement beyond with access through an interior closet or a set of moveable shelving in the root cellar. In the basement we'll install a beam down the center under the floor to break the joist spans in half and probably install some new joists to strengthen that floor without disturbing what is seen above. Modern utilities and storage can then hide in the basement. The flooring also changes to wider plank flooring over the log joist section we are just getting under, so at least at the first floor level there is a definite break in the construction. Looks like a nice day, heading over to service the bobcat, we're giving the old girl a workout. We had to stick a fan under there yesterday get in and out and give it a few, the exhaust was starting to hang in there. I'll probably open a hole at the far end and set up a blow and suck pair of fans.

donbj · « **Reply #3 on:** December 12, 2020, 12:51:33 PM »

"We had to stick a fan under there yesterday get in and out and give it a few, the exhaust was starting to hang in there. I'll probably open a hole at the far end and set up a blow and suck pair of fans"

Absolutely! Carbon monoxide is a silent killer. Take care in there.

LogPup · « **Reply #4 on:** December 13, 2020, 12:38:55 AM »

Don, Huber was Inc. in 1906 in Moultrie, Ga.

LogPup · « **Reply #5 on:** December 13, 2020, 12:41:35 AM »

Don, this is from the Sept. 21, 1912 American Lumberman

David

Don P · « **Reply #6 on:** December 13, 2020, 08:20:18 AM »

Awesome! Thank you David. That sounds like this floor went in after the original date I have for the house but certainly early, or it took a few more years to finish than originally thought.

It was such a nice day yesterday, after changing oil I went ahead and dug some more, happily the shale got a little easier and I got in under the front entry floor that is over the log joists. It is wider T&G and unplaned on the underside showing circle saw marks, definitely a different animal. I crossed under a hewn sill running in the direction of the joists entering that area and it is lapped and tied in with the hewn sills. The sawn sills that carry the sawn joists and Huber floor are simply butted and nailed to the hewn sills. At least at this point I'm thinking a growing family and an addition. We'll know more when we get to the beams at the second floor and see how that is tied together.

I took some fork measurements yesterday. I need to kick around in the scrap pile, I'm thinking of taking some box scrape shanks and inserting them in square tubes that mount to the fork plate on the bobcat for working up the floor, I'm in about 20' so far and down around 7' and would like to kind of sneak up on the last foot.

Don P · « **Reply #7 on:** December 14, 2020, 10:05:43 PM »

I got the scrapers fabbed up today in the rain. I'll take them tomorrow and see if it is dry enough to try them out, or if we have a new indoor pool

.

I found a neat geology website that has a good map and descriptions, you can zoom in to your location, click on a point of interest and it pops up with info. I was calling this shale but it appears I'm in deep schist again.

Macrostrat

samandothers · « **Reply #8 on:** December 15, 2020, 10:42:53 AM »

That is a neat map! I enjoyed reviewing. In the area of Floyd county we're in we appear to be near a line but predominately Amphibolite across the line is Biotite gneiss. Helps to explain some of the quartz we see.

jbpaxton · « **Reply #9 on:** December 15, 2020, 03:05:38 PM »

+
I was @ Southern Tech. the fall of 65, while I was there the Feds had a raid on stills,
said they closed down a couple of hundred in Cobb county. They drove the price of White Lightning from 25 cents a quart to 50 cents, but it was still available easily in Marietta. Lockheed got the contract to build the C5A while I was there, the whole Town celebrated for about a week.
JB Paxton

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #10 on:** December 15, 2020, 06:25:12 PM »

Prospector, renovator, inspector, investigator and blasting crew.

J.M. Huber has a mill near here, aspen tree length . Never hear them cry to government to bail them out of the hole, been quite successful compared to many. They've bought a lot of NB wood over the years. Must be close to 40 by now.

Don P · « **Reply #11 on:** December 15, 2020, 08:01:52 PM »

Mud baler and mechanic

.
Got there this morning after starting late, it was too nippy for 2 old farts first thing. It was a lake under there after the sprinkles predicted became a downpour yesterday. I rounded the corner to go under and the tail end of the bobcat was under water. It fired up fine and backed out no problem. It looked like my pet groundhog had cleaned out his tunnel and fallen down the sheer face of my dig, I assume he got wet feet last night

. I scooped out several buckets of water but was sloshing and about to end up with a lapful of icewater so started pulling down more dirt to make mudpies. About then my partner arrived with the dump truck and loader to remove the pile I've been making in the barnyard. As we were unchaining it we heard an ominous air leak from under the cab. I had almost thrown my toolbox off this morning, glad I didn't. He had to remove the shifter floor plate and the range selector air line had let go. So he took my truck and headed to the parts store about 20 miles away. I went back around to keep mucking out and the skidsteer wouldn't start. I thought the battery had died so threw it on the charger, hopped on the loader and started using some of our pile to build a diversion berm up on the hill behind the barn where they had a water issue. Got that done and went back to a fully topped off battery and still no joy, the lightest of clicks. I grabbed a pair of pliers and was going to jump the solonoid when I realized with all my digging and banging around the solonoid was dangling by its wires, no ground. About then DonC returned with his parts and we flipped up the cab on mine and we commenced to wrenching on our respective projects. It was about 3 by then so he loaded the truck and I continued to muck and dig. More weather tonight, ice, rain or snow. We had intended to build a temporary roof over my entrance ramp today but it looks like we'll have another round before that happens. I'll need to take silt fence and a truckload of shavings for filter out tomorrow, my mud got loose which is a no-no. Today was one of those days where one of us looks up and says "You'll have some of this on these big jobs

".

Don P · « **Reply #12 on:** December 15, 2020, 08:19:25 PM »

Sam, your comment brought back a memory and I had to dig out one of my treasure boxes. Years ago we were planting white pines on one of the knobs beside Buffalo Mt. in your neighborhood. It was really a kind of miserable plant, rhododendron hells, rock plants, steep as all get out. At one point I swung the hoedad and sheared all 4 bolts, had to walk out with trees, hop in the truck and go get bolts, we had already been through all our grade8's, and lost about half a day. Anyway, at one point we were planting away and one of the guys yelled "chips!, clear quartz!" everybody's packs hit the ground and sure enough there was "ice" all over the ground. Someone had been making arrowheads out of a very fine quartz crystal, and it must have been a whopper, we were all picking up handfuls of "ice" and hoping to find a point. Of course we never did, he had probably been making quarry blades, rough worked to carry back to camp to finish but it had us going for over an hour. Later as we were about to finish up I was on top of the knob and couldn't have stepped in any direction and been higher, and I looked down. That gray/green point was laying there. I fantasized that he sat there, watched the sunrise and left it there as a thank you to the day.

samandothers · « **Reply #13 on:** December 15, 2020, 08:36:35 PM »

Great story and quite a find!

Southside · « **Reply #14 on:** December 15, 2020, 09:46:25 PM »

That or he dropped it chasing a heifer around and realized it a half an hour later and spent the rest of the day trying to find it. There is a titanium Leatherman somewhere between one of my fields and a cedar patch here on the farm that some day in the future will have your story attached to it.

Don P · « **Reply #15 on:** December 22, 2020, 06:17:22 PM »

I was looking back up at the floor and stamps this afternoon, somewhere between reading the label and making my post Moultrie turned into Marietta. David had it right, the company was out of Moultrie.

We started leisurely this morning, we had fairly strong winds overnight and this morning and I wasn't that excited to be a crash test dummy but no problems with anything. I did look up some points on the windspeed table and did a little math while dawdling this morning. We potentially had about 4 tons of lateral force bumping into the building during gusts. A ~60 mph wind produces around 10 lbs of force per square foot of area. At 90 mph it is 20 psf, typical design speed and load for most of the country. At 110 mph it goes to 30 psf, notice it is not a straight line relationship.

I'll dig tomorrow and it looks like we have weather coming in Thursday so I'll bring the skidsteer home and repack one of the lift cylinders, it's slight weep under serious work turned into a pretty good dribble today, time for a TLC day.

Don P · « **Reply #16 on:** December 30, 2020, 05:27:12 PM »

We got the lift cylinder apart and the end cap/gland had the same damage that the curl cylinder had when I repacked it a year or so ago. These are the kind of cylinders where you twist the cap and feed in or out a soft square piece of keystock that holds the cap in place. The damage looks to me like that piece of keystock shears off pieces of the soft aluminum cap when there is load on the return stroke. Am I diagnosing this right and is there anything that can be done to reduce this, short of not abusing the machine

Here's where we are so far, we ended up tacking a temp roof on the back porch roof to keep water out of our ramp in, this was the old root cellar entrance before I highly modified it

.

Once in take a hard left and go forward about 30' and this is the end of the dig at present, I'm about to a chimney footing rock. You can see the floor joist support "post" dangling from the ceiling there, they had this thing practically on the ground

.

Spinning around and looking back towards my entrance, you're seeing daylight through the loose stacked rock foundation. One of the 2 fans and I'm taking a third for when we turn under the kitchen wing.