Timber for Wood-Turning

Abstract

AN interesting, and, from the point of view of encouraging small local industries in the countryside, practical report has been issued by the Forestry Commission (H.M. Stationery Office, 1936), entitled V “On the Demand for Timber in Wood-Turning in V Great Britain”. The investigation was carried out in 1935, when 438 firms were visited, all but 14-8 per cent being wood-turners. The information upon which the report is based comes therefore from 373 firms ranging from single-handed turners who have one room or a small shed fitted up as a workshop, to mass-production factories with a hundred or more automatic or semi-automatic machines. Some of these latter specialize in the production of a single commodity, such as heels for shoes, legs for chairs, bobbins for textile mills, rollers for mangles, the manufacture of tool handles, or bungs for beer-casks; others are general turners, fabricating a wide variety of products. The majority of the firms are turners only. The last census returned 56,930 persons, including pattern makers (the latter being chiefly of wood), as employed in the United Kingdom in wood-turning. It is difficult to obtain figures of the actual consumption of wood in this industry; but, from information supplied, approximately two hundred firms are using 6,000,000 cubic feet of timber in wood-turning annually, of which about 53 per cent is home-grown and 47 per cent imported.