Accordingly, although continued expansion of the plywood market in Chile is probable, the ultimate production capacity of existing plants seems adequate and no expansion of facilities is recommended beyond complete equipping of existing plants. The situation may change and further study would be desirable when world markets and prices have stabilized after the war.

Plywood Panels with Thick Cores

Woodworking plants, particularly those making furniture and interior finish items, require quantities of material for use where solid wood is less suited than veneered surfaces with thick cores. In the furniture trade this applies to such parts as tops of tables, desks, dressers, and sideboards, to beds, drawer fronts, cabinets, and small doors. In plants making interior finish it applies to such items as wall panels and wainscot, door panels, plywood partitions, case goods, store fixtures, and counter tops. In the United States plywood manufacturers produce a variety of thicknesses to meet such needs both in hardwoods and softwoods. See specifications for hardwood plywood panels in Appendix, page 241.

Softwood plywood is generally made of a sufficient number of plies to produce the thickness desired, using 3-ply up to 3/8 inch, 5-ply up to 3/4 inch, and 7-ply from 7/8 inch to 1-3/16 inches.

In addition specialty manufacturers produce plywood panels for specific uses according to the specifications and dimensional requirements of the purchaser. Such panels generally have lumber cores and en bands of hardwood around the core of the same species as the plyface, for use in furniture and similar products where the exposure

Price of Coigue and Araucaria plywood in pesos
per square meter in Chile: f.o.b. milll

The thicker types of plywood described are not available in Chile at present and woodworking shops use large quantities of the thicknesses that are manufactured, suiting and adapting their designs to the material available. Such shops build up the panels to the thickness required by gluing plywood to solid wood cores. The equipment used is often inadequate, the core stock poorly selected for the purpose, and the panels are unduly expensive.

Such panels should be made in shops specializing in this work, with operators qualified by experience, knowledge, and skill, and with suitable presses for making the cores and adequate drying equipment. Mass production by plywood manufacturers or in shops specializing in this product would be far more efficient than attempting to make these panels in small quantities in a typical woodworking plant. The larger furniture manufacturers may, in some cases, require a large enough volume of standard size panels to justify equipping their plant to produce them for their own needs.

Prefabricated Houses

The possibility of material gains in efficiency and corresponding reductions in the cost of building construction through the use of prefabrication has received considerable attention in Chile owing to the acute housing shortage, particularly in lower-priced homes (plate 17-B). Attention has been focused on the possibility, as elsewhere, of applying mass production methods, as in the manufacture of automobiles and airplanes. In many such fields, although labor rates and the cost of raw materials have been increasing steadily over the years, the selling price of manufactured products has been substantially lowered, due primarily to the increase in productivity per labor-hour by greater use of machines and power and a resulting decrease of hand labor.

Some industries are more fortunate than others in that their product lends itself to the principles of duplication, mass production and efficient use of machinery. The building industry has been able to take advantage of a limited but important amount of prefabrication in the use of standardized factory-made doors, window frames and sash, flooring, interior finish, staircases, cabinets, etc. Some labor-saving machines, such as concrete and mortar mixers, portable table saws, electrically

operated crosscut saws and ripsaws, and elevators can also be used at the building site during erection. Nevertheless, a large part of the erection and assembly of a conventionally constructed building is still done with expensive hand labor.

Much thought and effort have been given to ways and means of increasing the amount of prefabrication of building parts and reducing the labor required at the building site. The best procedure from a manufacturing point of view, would be to construct the building at the factory and move it out to the site complete and ready for occupancy, but because of the size of the assembled unit this method of construction is hardly practical. One organization in the United States has built houses in sections of room size and moved them from the factory to the building site on trucks. It is, however, more practical to construct in a factory standardized panels or units, such as floors, walls, partitions, ceilings, and roofs, and move them to the site where they can be erected rapidly and efficiently, with a minimum of field labor.

Prefabrication, as might be expected, involves a departure from the use of conventional construction materials. For ease of fabrication, transport, and erection, the panels must be of light weight, a that immediately places certain restrictions on the materials used. Various individuals and organizations have worked out methods of prefabrication involving a wide variety of materials such as wood frames covered with plywood, thin steel plates, fibre boards, hardboard, asbestos board, etc. Though other materials are used, plywood over wood frames is the most common method of construction. In fact an important factor in the development of prefabricated houses has been the availability of high grade, relatively low-priced plywood of suitable thicknesses, made with types of glue suited to the use and exposure conditions to which it will be subjected.

It is, of course, possible to develop designs and construct houses in Chile using methods similar to those developed and perfected elsewhere, allowing for such changes as would be necessary to use local material and fit the structure to the local climate and occupancy. Plywood is about the only surfacing material that needs to be considered now for panels since thin steel sheets, fibre boards, hardboard, and asbestos boards are not yet available in quantity in Chile.

It must be remembered that to be attractive to a purchaser, a prefabricated house must, of course, contain the same features and conveniences found in conventionally constructed houses, namely, equal strength and durability, comfort, plumbing, heating and lighting. The cost should not exceed and preferably be less than the conventional house.

Most of these factors can be obtained with pre fabrication, but the cost element has been disappointing. In spite of the advantages gained from the use of machinery, standardization and low cost of erection, such information as is available in the United States indicates that the costs of completely prefabricated houses have been generally similar to those of conventional houses of the same comparative area and equipment. However, during the war the demand for prefabricated buildings in the United States has increased enormously to meet both temporary and permanent housing needs, and the experience gained during this period may permit prefabrication to undersell conventional construction during the postwar era where factors are favorable. This still remains to be seen. Therefore it is not unreasonable to find that information is not available to make an accurate estimate of the cost of prefabrication in Chile as compared with conventional construction. In a preliminary estimate made for Chile (see Appendix, pages 243 to 244), the differences in cost do not appear to be encouraging. Experience in the United States indicates that theoretical savings of this character often fail to materialize in the course of actual construction. Nevertheless, further study would be justified to get more accurate estimates and comparisons. With well developed and complete working drawings it would be possible to arrive at accurate estimates of the costs involved. Costs will naturally be affected by the number of houses to be erected. For efficient factory operation, the output would have to be planned, of course, for steady production.

HARDWOOD DISTILLATION1

The production of charcoal for fuel is one of the most important and widespread domestic activities based upon the forest resource. Chile, with no domestic supply of oil and a limited supply of coal, consumes an enormous quantity of charcoal annually for industrial and domestic fuel. Charcoal is also consumed industrially in the production of pig iron, copper, black powder, by gasogenes and by small artisans as tinners, plumbers and blacksmiths. National consumption is estimated at not less than 150,000 tons annually and may well be considerably more. Except for the limited output of two small wood distillation plants, not over 2 to 3 percent of the total, charcoal is produced in primitive pits and beehive ovens without recovery of the byproducts (plate 18). The principal byproducts, methanol and acetic acid, are two of the three common commercial solvents essential to the development of large scale chemical industries. The third is ethyl alcohol. None are now available in ample supply from domestic sources.

Accordingly, a hardwood distillation industry of adequate size would seem a desirable addition to Chilean industry and this prospect was thoroughly investigated. Little or no doubt exists as to the availability of timber supply, Chile has an abundance of hardwood timber. Species differ widely in their charcoal and byproduct yields, however,

A full report on hardwood chemical distillation and the industrial possibilities in Chile is being prepared by Dr. M. H. Haertel of the Forest Mission. This section is based upon the full report.