How was it done in 1910?

[flip]

I keep trying to figure out how they did it a long time ago, specifically drying.  The old Craftsman style house I restored a couple years ago had the most beautiful quarterd white oak I've ever seen.  I can't figure how they dried it, did they have kilns back then or was it all air dried?  Some of the flooring in the main room was 1" wide 3/8 thick with a 1/8" tongue and groove and you couldn't slip a dollar bill between the joints.  When we tore the walls out the true 2X4 studs were wavy and you could tell they were probably put up wet because of the notches they used to straighten out the thin edges.  It just amazes me because how primitave things were back then and how things turned out so well.  So in quest for knowledge, I gotta ask, "How'd they do that"?

Flip

[Gary_C]

That is an easy question to answer. They had one thing we do not have today.  PATIENCE   ;D ;D

They would dry wood by bringing it into the shop and stacking it behind the wood stove for a year before they used it. Of course the quality of the old growth wood was better, but even then if a piece of wood warped or twisted, it became firewood along with all its related boards. Now days the wood costs so much and we just don't have the time for all that "nonsense."   ;D

However not all "old craftmanship" was good or better than today. I once helped my BIL fix up an old house that he owned. The two story house was built on four big flat rocks for a foundation and they were sinking slowly. The upstairs floors had so much sag that I did not like to walk across them. The back entry way had a dirt floor and was basically just hanging from the house. You could swing the walls back and forth so we backed pickups against them and poured a "basment mix" in there to hold the walls.

Not everything that is old is better than what we make today.

[Bro. Noble]

Our family operated lumber yards during that period until the 60's.  According to my great uncle,  the early kilns consisted of stacks of lumber in a shed that had a fire underneath.  The fires and hot air were somewhat controlled,  but you can imagine that the results were less than perfect and there was a high risk of losing everything to fire.  By 1910,  steam boilers were used to provide a much safer and better controlled source of heat.  The lumber in your old house may very well have been dried just as professionally as any you might buy today.

[flip]

I was always curious when the start date was when steam was used.  I guess that all makes sense why all the trim and flooring finished out so well.  I just couldn't see how stuff could have been put down green and stayed together so well. 

Flip

[limbrat]

Down here railroad barrons brought in the steam powered mills and developed the timber industry. Because they owened so much timber land on each side of the track and they also had the best way to transport the finished product to market. Towns like Pollock (named after a plant foreman) grew up around what was advertised as the largest and most modern pine saw mill in the world. That was in the 1860s. Another reason that wood from that period was so fine was not only that they were cutting from virgin timber. But also getting the logs out of the woods and traporting them to the mill ws so difficult and labor intensive that only good logs made it out of the woods,and not always the big butt cuts unless they were near the trax or a creek. When they were processed a lot of the sap wood was cut off with the flic and used the feed the boilers.

Here's another town name that i get a kick out of Dry Prong. This fellow came through here one fall and found a good place on big creek to build a gris mill. With plans to sell to pollock which was booming at the time. So he hired some hands damned the creek ordered the stones and built the mill. In the spring he started milling and every thing was good, untill summer and the creek dried up. He had built on the wrong fork of the creek he built on a dry prong. no joke

[iain]

In house's with out central heating the requirement for drying is not so severe

very well air dried and properly installed planking was normally ok
in the environment of a 1910 house


iain