An inspection of the original test fence, erected and painted by the North Dakota Agricultural College, on the grounds of the agricultural Experiment Station at Fargo, was made by the inspection committee[25] representing the Paint Manufacturers’ Association of the United States, on the 19th and 20th of November, 1909. The fence was erected in 1906 and painted with commercial paints, procured in the open market. The east side of the fence was built of soft pine and cedar weather-boarding, such as is almost universally used on houses in that locality, presenting a very good surface for test purposes, while the west side was built largely of flat trimmed boards of hard pitch pine which, unfortunately, contained knots, pitch pockets, and uneven surfaces, causing to a greater or lesser extent cracking, scaling, and bad general results on all paints applied thereto.
[25] Henry A. Gardner, Director Scientific Section, Educational Bureau, Paint Manufacturers’ Association of U. S.; George Butler, Master Painter; Charles Macnichol, Master Painter.
The fences built in 1907 and 1908 at the suggestion of the Paint Manufacturers’ Association, were inspected on the 20th, 21st, and 22nd of November, 1909, and the detailed results of the inspection of all these fences follow in this report. The same general conclusions as to the woods represented in the 1906 fence also apply to the 1907 and 1908 fences, and because of the general bad quality of wood used on the western exposure of all fences, the detailed reports were made only from an examination of the eastern side of the fences, both on cedar and soft pine.
The following general summary of the inspection and its results applies to all the test fences on the grounds of the college and is the unanimous conclusion drawn by the inspectors from this work:
“Non-absorbent woods, difficult to penetrate, such as those on the west side of the fences, would undoubtedly have given much better results had they been painted with paints properly reduced to suit the nature of the wood. This treatment seems to have been overlooked in the North Dakota tests, and the painting of the hard pine boards was done with the same consistency of mixtures and the same reductions as upon soft pine. Scaling of course resulted. One of the chief purposes of the fences, however, was to study the different types of wood, and compliance with this desire resulted in the bad conditions herein noted. It has been shown in many other field tests that adherence of paints to hard wood surfaces can be obtained only by causing the priming coat to become amalgamated with the woody fibre, by the use of a large percentage of volatile diluent turpentine, benzole, asphaltum spirits, etc., to secure penetration. If such treatment is omitted, failure soon results, as was evidenced by the uniformly bad conditions presented by the paints on the hard pine panels.
North Dakota Test Fences
