Earl McCarthy’s career has covered 62 years of service to the science and production of composite panels. Ward Williams, SWJ contributing editor, asked him about the highlights of his eclectic career.

Producing better, stronger, and more utilitarian plywood, PB, hardboard and MDF, whether in the lab or in the mill, Earl McCarthy’s career has covered it.  He arguably knew (and still knows) more mill managers and technical directors personally than anyone one in the global panel industry.

He might have become the “Michael Phelps of the panelboard industry.” Upon graduation from high school in Spokane, Washington, McCarthy was offered a scholarship at Washington State University at Pullman to compete for the school’s varsity swimming team. But having started at age 10 tinkering with his “Gilbert Chemistry Set” as well as with a Lionel Electric Train, he turned down that offer and enrolled at the University of Washington (in Seattle) in chemical engineering. 

Just as he was ready to complete his ChemE degree, Uncle Sam tapped him on the shoulder. He had to settle for a BS in chemistry as he left the UW campus to begin his World War II career as a trainee and officer in the US Navy. His first two stops were in New York State, learning the basics of Navy officialdom at Columbia in NYC and diesel engineering at Cornell. 

He served as a deck and engineering officer on a 205-ft.-long LSM (Landing Ship Medium), starting with the vessel’s construction and launch in USA through its voyage across the Pacific. His ship engaged in numerous landings and was heavily damaged from enemy aircraft, leading once to an “abandon-ship” situation. When he returned from the Pacific he was ready for another launch – his career in the composite panel industry.

 

At that time, there were not many jobs for chemists, but I landed a job at Adhesive Products Co. on Harbor Island in Seattle, which, through several changes, became Pacific Resins. I started there as a chemist, cooking phenol-formaldehyde resins for plywood, spreading the mixed adhesives on veneer using a Black Bros. Roll spreader and pressing them into panels on a 3-opening 1 ft. x 2 in. hot press for standard shear testing. Incidentally, long before LVL became a commercial product, I made some of it and even still have that first sample. 

After two years, I was assigned to servicing the firm’s plywood adhesives in Western Oregon and then started a “Special Products Group” and became responsible for all products except plywood. It was the era when the adhesive majors were fighting for market share. 

Wet-process hardboard was my first customer, followed by smaller uses of resorcinols and, eventually, ureas for wet strength in paper and phenolics for mineral wool. Other applications are too numerous to mention, but they sure kept me busy and brought me into a wider knowledge of the marriage of wood and chemistry and the resulting eruption of new products. 

Working with such people as Ralph Chapmen of Chapman Manufacturing and his deckle-box forming system and Jack Frost of Stimson Lumber and a Fourdrinier-based forming system for wet process hardboards was very enlightening and enjoyable.

They were primarily flour of various extractions from rye, milo and wheat, leading me to set up a refining plant among Eastern Washington’s irrigated grain farms. I tried barley, but it was a disaster due to its beard sticking in the sifter. The other grains had different viscosity characteristics and found use in plywood adhesives, explosives, paper sizing and so on. The R. T. French Co. (“think mustard”) had a potato processing plant in Eastern Idaho and had some by-product to get rid of. I tested it and found it useful. They built a drying plant of mild steel (not stainless), which soon rusted out. But before it did, I got many carloads from them for re-processing. It was superb for viscosity control of plywood adhesives. Also—and more importantly—I developed a new corrugating adhesive which would hold its viscosity for a couple of days, whereas normally standard corrugating adhesives would last only for a very few hours; this meant that a plant could reduce its glue mixing personnel from four to one! I believe that current corrugating formulas are similar. 

This came about because the flour business was a not a great moneymaker, and an old friend had started a veneer moisture measuring business and needed marketing assistance. We joined forces and sold hundreds of measuring devices – not only in US and Canada but also in Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Europe.