PRODUCTS OF AMERICAN FORESTS MISCELLANEOUS PUBLICATION NO. 861 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE FOREST SERVICE PRODUCTS OF AMERICAN FORESTS PRODUCTS OF AMERICAN FORESTS By F. J. CHAMPION, Information Specialist (Retired) Forest Products Laboratory, Forest Service, Maintained at Madison, Wis., in Cooperation With the University of Wisconsin Miscellaneous Publication No. 861 UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, FOREST SERVICE Revised April 1969 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington D.C. 20402 Price 50 cents Acknowledgments For the illustrations in this publication thanks are due to many generous friends, including the following: Blackhawk Restaurant of Chicago, The Borden Company, Brown Palace West Hotel, California Redwood Association, Champion Paper and Fibre Company, Douglas Fir Plywood Association, Eggers Plywood Company, Insulation Board Institute, Mergenthaler Linotype Company, National Homes, National Lumber Manufacturers' Association, Society of the Plastic In­ dustries, Southern Railway System, Tennessee Eastman Company, Tennessee Valley Authority, Unit Structures, Inc., West Coast Lumberman's Association, and the Weyerhaeuser Company. IV Contents Page Frontispiece—the Forest Products Laboratory at Madison, Wis., where research is in progress to make the products of the forest serve the Nation better. Importance of forest resources 1 Wood—the material 2 Solid and composite wood products 4 House construction 4 Veneer and plywood 7 Insulation board, hardboard, particle board, and sandwich materials 8 Furniture 10 Laminated timber construction 11 Dimensionally stabilized wood 12 Railroad uses 13 Poles, piling, mine timbers, and posts 13 Wood chemical products 14 Pulp and paper 14 Other cellulose derivatives 17 Technologically promising products of chemical wood conversion 18 Wood and charcoal fuel 20 Seasonal crops and extractive materials 21 Naval stores 21 Canada balsam and other resins 23 Maple sirup and maple sugar 23 Tannins and dyes 24 Nuts 25 Pharmaceuticals 27 Volatile or essential oils 28 Christmas trees and foliage products 28 Fruits 29 Future demand for forest products 29 V Importance of Forest Resources The forest is a perpetual source of wood and other to agriculture. They continue to pour out a great tree products that are vital to American well-being. tide of fiber without which our present high stand­ The forest collects and regulates the flow of water ard of living could not be maintained. needed for domestic and industrial uses. It provides In this pattern of comfortable living the average a home for fish and game, and offers outdoor recrea­ American uses, one way or another, 65 cubic feet of tion to those who wish to retreat from city pressures. wood in a year. This is 50% more than the citizen l Within and about the forests are open areas where of timber-rich Russia uses and 3 /2 times as much livestock can be grazed. as the Englishman. Not all of this wood is in the This publication deals only with wood and other form of lumber, of course, but lumber is the largest crops that come directly from trees. It describes the item. About 1 out of every 20 employed persons forest materials in general groups and points out in 1958 obtained his living in some phase of timber their many uses. While the account is far from production and fabrication. In that year the complete, particularly with regard to fabricated and timber industries accounted for about 1 dollar in manufactured articles of wood, the examples pre­ every 18 of the national income—a total of about sented are intended to outline the major types of $25 billion. utilization and throw some light on groups of prod­ Lumber used for housing is the most vital forest ucts that are often overlooked. Accordingly, fa­ product. The success of builders in their efforts to miliar products such as lumber and plywood, which provide about l|/2 million or more new houses per are fully described in numerous books and trade year will depend largely on a continuing use of wood. publications, are mentioned but briefly, whereas Wood will continue to be used because it is highly walnuts, maple sirup, and essential oils are treated efficient as a construction material, craftsmen are in more detail. familiar with it, and houses built of wood can be re­ From an early day the use of forest products in paired and remodeled at a low cost. Closely related this country has been on a scale that probably has to plentiful housing is the use of forest products in never been equaled elsewhere. Forests provided the the manufacture of house furnishings, which also pioneers with most of their basic necessities, even make up a large part of our total industrial effort. when the trees were being cleared away as obstacles The American housebuilding industry, based on wood, is When the homeowner uses imagination in designing a fence fundamental to the market for important classes of manu­ of lumber, a feeling of privacy is created without a shut-in factured goods such as furnishings and appliances. atmosphere. M-115745 M-118238 M-118208 M-32606-F The importance of the farm woodlot as a source of forest products Wood pulp is the raw material for the daily news­ cannot be overestimated. More than a third of all commercial paper which, for the average citizen, is his most forest land in the United States is owned by farmers. important source of education. The normal economic and cultural activities of This is a part of the picture of wood in America— the United States also require large amounts of but only a part. Wood is also of great importance wood fiber pulp. The average American now uses as a raw material in industrial construction and in 514 pounds of paper products annually. Fifty years the railroad, mining, and power industries. The ago he used 93 pounds. Europe now uses 84 pounds American farmer has always been both a great per capita. Latin America now uses 18 pounds producer and a great user of wood. He benefits per capita. Asia now uses 13 pounds per capita. from communities based on the forest industry be­ Large quantities of woodpulp are used in the dis­ cause here he can sell his produce and often find a tribution and marketing of products—in the form job in winter. of durable shipping containers and the glamorous To meet the great and growing needs for forest shelf package. Outside the market place woodpulp products there is a total area of nearly 510 million is the principal raw material for the printing and acres, about one-fourth of the continental United publishing industry with its scores of textbooks, States, that is either in forest or suitable for growing journals, and literary works. timber for commercial use. These forest lands ought The use of paper and board is almost certain to to be managed so that enough timber of high qual­ expand radically with development of its use for ity is furnishea to meet the Nation's needs. Proper structural purposes. Its production and develop­ management of forests is the responsibility of many ment are aided by much careful research and its ordinary citizens because for every forest owned by products may be depended upon to serve well in new an industrial company there are nearly 150 wood­ as well as older uses. lands owned by farmers and other individuals. Wood—The Material Although woody material is found in many plants, and between 20 and 30 percent lignin, a cementing wood is produced by nature in its most familiar material between the cellulose units. The rest of form in the trunks and limbs of trees. The chloro­ the wood in a tree consists of extractives and various phyll in the leaves of trees uses the energy of sunlight carbohydrate materials. to make starches, sugars, and cellulose from carbon, Extractives are materials, like those that give the hydrogen, and oxygen. The three elements—car­ red color to redwood, that can be soaked out with bon, hydrogen, and oxygen- -come to the tree in the water or other solvents. form of carbon dioxide from the air and water and minerals from the soil. As a result of its own chem­ The chemist's symbol for cellulose is COHIOOB. ical processes, a tree is about 50 percent cellulose This symbol little indicates the complexity of the 2 Miscellaneous Publication No. 861, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture cellulose molecule or the variety of ways in which in practice, since it is difficult to take advantage of the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms can be the full tensile strength of wood because of the lim­ separated and reassembled into useful materials. itations of fastenings. But compressive strength is a Chemical conversion offers the possibility of using most useful form of strength, because it can be fully the edible sugars from wood as food, of using all of used and it has many practical applications. A the wood-sugar groups to fabricate a wide range of piece of wood 12 inches long and 2 inches by 2 industrial chemicals, and of growing yeasts that inches in cross section will sustain endwise pressure might be cultivated as sources of protein, fats, and of 40,000 pounds before failing. vitamins. By altering the cellulose molecule to Wood has high strength under a wide range of chainlike proportions, it is possible to produce conditions. In most strength properties, dry wood plastics that can be spun into textile fibers for is stronger than wet wood but wet wood is tougher. clothing or molded in an almost limitless variety of Wood heats so slowly that it does not change plastic articles. The wood fiber is also the raw strength rapidly when the surrounding air tempera­ material from which most pulp and paper are made.