Larry,

Not only nails, but bolts, nuts, washers, screws,
almost all fasteners, and their accoutrements, were
shipped in kegs (miserably heavy little barrels). Last
time on a structural job for me (12 years ago) all
this could still be purchased in a "keg" lot. Whether
it actually came in a keg, or cardboard box depended
on who you got it from.

The approved method for opening said kegs of hardware
was a 4 pound sledgehammer through the top. If done
correctly, the keg stayed intact. If you screwed up,
well, you had a problem.

And lets not forget the ultimate consumer product
shipped in kegs, BEER! ;)

Steve M Stull
Winslow 7076




--- Ljack70117@... wrote:

Like to point out nails were not shipped in barrels.
They were ships
in kegs.
Thank you
Larry Jackman
Boca Raton FL
ljack70117@...
I was born with nothing and
I have most of it left

____________________________________________________________________________________
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.....cement, mortar, ground pigments for same.....

Mike Fortney

Bob
Recall that the California missions shipped hides and tallow in barrels before the railroads served agriculture.
Lindsay


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Larry You wrote:




Like to point out nails were not shipped in barrels. They were ships
in kegs.
Thank you
Larry Jackman
Boca Raton FL
_ljack70117@... (mailto:ljack70117@...)
I was born with nothing and
I have most of it left

Larry,
You are splitting hairs here... That reminds me of someone else. Keg are
barrels that are made in a similar fashion, but for heavier more dense product
like Railroad spikes and nails. It is an interesting item to add to our local
freight docks and LCL terminals.
Greg Martin

.









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Yes poultry was shipped in barrels. In my meatpacking clinic I use a photo
of a Turkey processor in Wellman, Iowa loading barrels into CNW reefers. The
photo was taken in the 40's.

Doug Harding
www.iowacentralrr.org

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8:59 AM

--- In STMFC@..., "Eric Hansmann" <eric@...> wrote:

Wood for boxes often was shipped from saw mills. It was not #1
material, but rough cut smaller dimensional material shipped in
boxcars. Smaller stock would not be shipped using gondolas or flats.
Box factories often had additional saws to cut the lumber to the
necessary sizes. I would suspect the wood came from the closest
source.

Just about every community had small mills that cut "boxboard", which
may or may not have been made into boxes on the premises. Boxboard
could be any wood and was most often the cheapest softest woods, as
other wood was in more demand for other things. The wood used would
depend on the buyers preferences. Usually the boards were sent as flat
kits to producers who had workers nail them together for immediate
packing. Often making boxboards was seasonal work. Some workers
worked all year, while others only worked in winter while they could
not be on farms.

Maybe it's because I grew up in the country where barrels and wooden
boxes were still common, but this discussion is making me feel very
old. Never underestimate how quickly what was once so common as to not
be noticed can be completely forgotten. --Jim Pasquill

red_gate_rover wrote, without revealing his true name:

Usually the boards were sent as flat
kits to producers who had workers nail them together for immediate
packing.

There were called box shooks. From photos, it appears that the individual
box pieces were tied together. The box factory on the YV did a huge business
in box shooks and shipped the snooks out in box cars.

Jack Burgess
www.yosemitevalleyrr.com

Jack Burgess wrote:

There were called box shooks. From photos, it appears that the individual box pieces were tied together. The box factory on the YV did a huge business in box shooks and shipped the snooks out in box cars.

I don't know the answer to this, but several lumbering histories I have read use "shook" as the plural. In other words, a whole carload of this wood would be called "shook." Might the YV have been different in this regard?

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@...
Publishers of books on railroad history

I can not split hairs. I am bald. 8>)
Thank you
Larry Jackman
Boca Raton FL
ljack70117@...
I was born with nothing and
I have most of it left

I don't know the answer to this, but several lumbering histories I
have read use "shook" as the plural. In other words, a whole carload of
this wood would be called "shook." Might the YV have been different in
this regard?

The YV 1920 Annual Report (which uses California Railroad Commission forms)
lists under "Revenue Freight Carried During The Year", the category Products
of Forests and the subcategory "Lumber, timber, box shooks, and headings".
So, at least the bureaucrats who made up the form thought that the plural
was "shook" although lumbermen might have thought otherwise. I have no idea
what "headings" are though...

Jack Burgess
www.yosemitevalleyrr.com

Shooks are probably bundles of thin strip wood.

Shakes are still heavily used in New England, thin strip wood
that is tapered. Very inexpensive, sold in bundles, it has many
uses on model railroads... :-)

Tim O'Connor

Nope, shooks are unassembled boxes and not tapered wood. I have photos of
box shooks from the box factory, including some with the manufacturer's name
and stacked on a skid-type pallet. Right next to the box factory was the
Shook Shed (shown on the Sanborn map) which was used to store "pallets" of
shooks. Roofing shakes are thick, hand-sawn, and sometimes resawn on one
side (while wood shingles are thinner and resawn on both sides). Shakes and
shingles were very popular in our area in the 1960-70s but no longer allowed
due to the fire danger.

Jack Burgess
www.yosemitevalleyrr.com

Were all kegs and barrels made to be watertight and leak proof or were some made more crudely to merely enclose some item that would not tend to leak anyway? I have a vague memory from being a child that my Father acquired as kindling a keg sized vessel with the hoops and "staves made of wood about a 1/16" thick.
Were empty barrels meant to be returned to the sender? A proportion of Brandy (10%?) disappears naturally from every barrel while it is maturing. I believe the disappeared Brandy forms a sooty black deposit on the ceiling of the storage cellar. The French call this the "angels share". Perhaps Denny Anspach can tell us more. If people are wanting to put a load of large Barrels on their HO loading docks then Walthers used to sell a Heljan kit for Barrels, packing cases, cable drums and crates of bottles that was superb value and made loads of nice bits to go on a loading dock. In the UK the kit is sold under the Knightswing label. Drums and barrels are all awkward to move and extremely heavy if full. A traditional barrel is a bit easier because the taper means you can steer the damn thing when rolling it. Steel drums don't steer too well. Barrels and drums can't travel on their sides unless their are wedges or some kind of stillage to stop them rolling.
Regards Philip Dove

Doug Wrote:

"Yes, poultry was shipped in barrels. In my meatpacking clinic I use a photo
of a Turkey processor in Wellman, Iowa loading barrels into CNW reefers. The
photo was taken in the 40's.

Doug Harding"
_www.iowacentralrr.org_ (http://www.iowacentralrr.org)



Doug,

Were they shipped frozen or precooked in and in a brine? Which packer
typically?


Greg Martin






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Traditional Shook Stock is sold in lengths of 8-foot and shorter, even and
odd. It is a grade of lumber that didn't allow for many holes, but you could
have well encased knots. I am familiar with three thickness, 3/4", 3/16" and
3/8" and when shipped it was generally packaged in widths of (nominal) 6-inch,
8-inch and 12-inch.7 and 8-foot stocks was always light and commonly 6-foot
and shorter. Shakes (as in Cedar Shakes as well as Sequoia Redwood shakes in
the turn of the century) are something entirely different in that shakes are
hand spilt (for roofs in different lengths and ultimately, exposure) and
(Cedar/Pine) shingle are bandsawn to specific thickness' and lengths (which like
shakes effects the quality~grade) and narrow short shingles (made from any
spieces/stock) and are called SHIMS... Shims can be butted to shook for a
transition in roadbed if you want to use a wood rod bed.

I am sure that if you lived in the east you found eastern species, like
Eastern White Pine or Eastern Hemlock. In the south the wood of choice would have
been Southern Yellow Pine and not Cypress do to its natural odor. In the
west it was commonly made from Ponderosa, and Sugar Pine, Ponderosa was less
valuable because the of the heavy pitch pockets, but Western Hemlock was a good
species. I know in British Columbia up until the late 90's shooks were made
for the Salmon Roe industry until the overseas markets demanded they be made
of plastic (YUCK). The Roe shooks were made from Canadian SPF (Spruce, Pine
and Fir - true firs-). IIRC there were two size Roe Shooks. I have two boxes
here at home from Fraser Box given to me after the market had changed to
plastic and these folks had lots of shooks string tied ready for assembly when the
market shifted suddenly.

I am not sure how much actual shooks were shipped in freight cars as I
believe most local end users had Box plants nearby the growers feeding them all,
however the shook stock did travel by rail.

Greg Martin


Tim writes:

Shooks are probably bundles of thin strip wood.

Shakes are still heavily used in New England, thin strip wood that is
tapered. Very inexpensive, sold in bundles, it has many uses on model railroads...
:-)

Tim O'Connor <

Tony T. wrote:

I don't know the answer to this, but several lumbering histories I have

read use "shook" as the plural. In other words, a whole carload of this wood
would be called "shook." Might the YV have been different in this regard?<<

The YV 1920 Annual Report (which uses California Railroad Commission forms)
lists under "Revenue Freight Carried During The Year", the category

Products >of Forests and the subcategory "Lumber, timber, box shooks, and headings".

So, at least the bureaucrats who made up the form thought that the plural
was "shook" although lumbermen might have thought otherwise. I have no idea
what "headings" are though...

Jack Burgess
www.yosemitevalleywww.yo

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Greg I do not have answers for your questions about shipping beyond the fact
that they used wood barrels. The photo was taken at Maplecrest Turkey, a
processor in Wellman, Iowa. This was a Mennonite community and many
Mennonites were employed at Maplecrest. I have not be able to locate any
further information about Maplecrest at this time.

In 1943 Louis Rich purchased a plant in near by West Liberty, Iowa and began
processing turkeys. It is possible that Maplecrest became part of the Louis
Rich operations, but I have no evidence to support this.

Doug Harding
www.iowacentralrr.org

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7:54 PM

Grey wrote:

I am not sure how much actual shooks were shipped in freight cars as I
believe most local end users had Box plants nearby the growers
feeding them all,
however the shook stock did travel by rail.

Interesting summary on the woods used in box shooks Greg. As far as
shipping, I would think that it all depends on locations and need. The
Yosemite Lumber Company/Yosemite Sugar Pine Lumber Company clear-cut forests
near the western boundary of Yosemite National Park on and off from 1912
until 1942. The cut Ponderosa pine, sugar pine, and cedar and shipped to
logs via the YV to a large mill at Merced Falls. The sugar pine was milled
into trim, window sash, and clear planks while the cheaper pine was used for
box shooks. There were no end-users close by so all of the products of the
mill were shipped out via the YV to interchanges with the SP and ATSF. About
60% of the output was shipped out of state.

It would seem that whether a business had its own box factory would depend
on whether it had enough demand to support it and the availability of nearby
lumber. In California at least, the timber is in the mountains and most
manufacturing businesses are in the cities; farms are also not typically
near timber sources. In such cases, it would seem logical to "out source"
the entire box making operation and have box shooks brought in by rail
rather than even ship in box shook material for further cutting.

Jack Burgess
www.yosemitevalleyrr.com

Jack Burgess wrote:

. . . it would seem logical to "out source" the entire box making operation and have box shooks brought in by rail rather than even ship in box shook material for further cutting.

In the citrus packing districts which had box factories among them, I understood that they DID receive box shook, not lumber, which they assembled into various boxes, both the citrus crates and other boxes for local sale. Bob Chaparro may be able to tell us more about that.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@...
Publishers of books on railroad history