"brandom11" wrote in message
ups.com...
I came across a box full of wood samples at an estate auction, each
piece is 2 1/4 x 5" x 5/8 and they have a label something like this:
WILLOW
( Salix nigra)
SOURCE: Lower Mississippi Valley
PROPERTIES: Light in weight, soft, easily worked, shrinks and swells
but little, light brown in color. Weight, air dry: 26 lbs per cu. ft.
USES: Boxes and crates, furniture, fixtures, artificial limbs, backets
Sample Furnished by
NATIONAL LUMBER MANUFACTURERS ASSOCIATION
Washington, D.C.
All told I have 51 different samples. they are all numbered with a
stamp into the endgrain.
I'm figuring they might be from the 20s as one of the uses mentioned is
car bodies.
Anybody know about these or have a guess to their age? I'm thinking of
buliding a small "bookcase to hold and display the samples. They are
all very dusty and shop worn, any concerns if I take my plane and clean
them up a bit? I don't plan on putting a finish on them and they'll
receive light handling.
NLMA doesn't seem to be around anymore, at least not under that
name--there's one online reference to a paper dated 1929, so your guess is
probably pretty close. I think that the main historical interest would be
to someone researching that organization but I'd be surprised if they didn't
already have all the sample kits they needed. If there's anybody conducting
such research I have no idea how to find them.
What you've got is the start of a wood collection. Currently the "standard"
sample size seems to be 6x3x1/2, so planing 1/8 off the thickness shouldn't
make a lot of difference in terms of utility as wood samples.
There's another NLMA set being advertised in the classifieds on the
International Wood Collectors Society site
http://www.woodcollectors.org/listings.html--that one also includes a
brochure, but no price. Might be worth contacting him to see what it went
for. He says he's had it since the late '40s.
The going price for individual samples is 75 cents up to 6 bucks or so
depending on species.
Before you build a case for it you might want to google "wood collecting"
and decide whether it is something you want to get into. If so you might
want to design your case accordingly.