Rouge: Pictured in Its Prime

9. Carpenter Shop

9 CARPENTER SHOP When Henry Ford first operated the Rouge Plant, both sedan and touring -car automobile bodies were manufactured with stout wooden frames. Ford purchased approximately 400,000 acres of hardwood forest in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where he established several sawmills to furnish lumber for his automobile bodies. After being sawed into long boards in the Upper Peninsula, the wood was shipped by boat to the Rouge, where a sawmill built in 1919 could further shape the boards for specific uses. During 1921, for example, 140,000 board-feet of lumber was used daily. Some of the most select lumber was needed by pattern makers in designing molds for the hundreds of different castings being poured in the production foundry. In addition to automotive body framework, boxes of many sizes were needed to serve as shipping cases for automotive parts manufactured at the Rouge and shipped to domestic and foreign assembly plants. The Rouge Plant was at first exclusively a parts supplier to Highland Park and other Ford vehicle assembly plants and did not assemble complete cars in quantity until the Model A in 1927. All of these subassemblies, such as body panels, engines, axles, and window glass, required wooden crates or wooden bracing when shipped by either water or rail. Over the years, the use of wooden boxes did not diminish. By 1938, a Rouge box factory was in operation, where approximately 3 million board-feet of lumber a month was utilized in making 125 kinds of boxes used mostly for shipping purposes. About 7000 boxes a day were then being made by the 300 workmen employed. 67 The Rouge sawmill on the very west edge of Rouge property in July 1922. Long wooden boards in the foreground are shipped from Ford’s lumber mills in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and are cut as needed at this mill to form wooden parts for Model T bodies and for building a variety of wooden crates for the shipment of automotive parts to Ford assembly plants and Ford dealers. (833.33114) 68 Above: The wood pattern shop at the Rouge in March 1923. In the foreground, on horses, is the pattern for a Model T transmission case. (833.34141-81) Right: A veteran pattern maker prepares a wooden pattern for an engine manifold casting. (833.94502-4) Opposite, top: Several types of saws and planers are used in this area of the carpenter shop in October 1926. (833.47808) Opposite, bottom: In 1935, boards are cut to size and nailed together using machines capable of driving several nails at once. Most of these boxes are sized to be used as shipping cases for specific automotive parts. (833.62289-A) 70 This device pulls nails from used boards so that the lumber can be reused. (833.69632-A) The hardwood lumber in the foreground is from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, stacked temporarily on the west docks at the Rouge. This photograph was taken in December 1937, but the shipping of rough lumber from the Upper Peninsula to the Rouge began in 1921. (833.69626) ...