STANDARD PLYWOODS INC history

The back of this chair, manufactured in around 1860, is surprisingly made of moulded plywood.

In 1863 London opened the world's first underground railway, an incredible feat of engineering but with several fundamental flaws – it was very expensive to build underground and the air quality in the tunnels was poor.

Plywood was introduced into the United States in 1865 and industrial production started shortly after.

In 1867 a 107-foot long prototype elevated railway, made entirely as a moulded plywood tube, was exhibited at the American Institute Fair in New York.

Even though there’s no evidence he ever made anything out of plywood, he renewed the patent in 1868.

Ready-made artist boards for oil painting in three-layered plywood (3-ply) were produced and sold in New York as early as 1880.

In about 1890, laminated woods were first used to build doors.

A 1901 patent from Switzerland signaled the true beginning of glued laminated timber construction.

And so things sat until 1905, when Portland, Oregon, hosted the World’s Fair as part of the 100th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

But their practicality was their main selling point and by 1907 the company had installed an automatic glue spreader and was making 420 panels a day.

Canoes like this were manufactured by the US firm Haskell (later Haskelite) from 1917 and sold in large numbers.

But in 1920, “super salesman” Gus Bartells of Elliott Bay Plywood in Seattle began generating customers in the automobile industry.

In 1928, the first standard-sized 4 ft by 8 ft (1.2 m by 2.4 m) plywood sheets were introduced in the United States for use as a general building material.Artists use plywood as a support for easel paintings to replace traditional canvas or cardboard.

By 1929, however, there were 17 plywood mills in the Pacific Northwest and production was 358 million square feet.

FA Mitchell & Co Pty Ltd is a family owned company started by Mr Frank Alan Mitchell during the great depression in 1933.

A breakthrough came in 1934 when Doctor James Nevin, a chemist at Harbor Plywood Corporation in Aberdeen, Washington, finally developed a fully waterproof adhesive.

In 1936 they built a demonstration house at the Madison Home Show.

In 1938, laws were amended to permit registration of industry wide trademarks and the FHA accepted the standards for both interior and exterior plywood, converting a specialty product into a commodity.

In 1940, the association sponsored “The House in the Sun,” the first of many plywood demonstration houses.

A significant development in the glulam industry was the introduction of fully water-resistant phenol-resorcinol adhesives in 1942.

In 1944, the industry’s 30 mills produced 1.4 billion square feet of plywood.

And there you have it, just like a 1950’s elementary school filmstrip, “Plywood Through the Ages”, and every bit as interesting, I’ll bet.

By 1954, 101 mills were producing 4 billion square feet of the stuff and production skyrocketed to 7.8 square feet in 5 years.

The first US manufacturing standard for glulam was Commercial Standard CS253-63, which was published by the Department of Commerce in 1963.

Adhesive and technology improvements eventually led to the manufacture of structural plywood from Southern pine and other species, and in 1964 the Association changed its name to American Plywood Association (APA) to reflect the national scope of its growing membership.

It is also remarkable because it allows the use of softer and more plentiful woods like fir and pine to be used in products that formerly called for hardwoods. Its efficiency was enhanced in the late 1970’s with the introduction of oriented strand board or OSB. Instead of solid sheets of veneer, OSB uses small wood strands glued together in cross-laminated layers.

By 1975, production was 16 billion square feet, more than double what had been forecast 20 years before.

Russell, L.S. "Picking Structural Panels." Architectural Record (October 1992).

Okrend, L. "Plywood for Construction." Workbench (June/July 1994): 44-45.