The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 14, Issue 11 (February 1, 1940)
Leading Hotels
Leading Hotels
Buy New Zealand Goods
(Continued from page 16
Here the whole delicious world of wooden toys is created almost daily; wooden barrows, rocking-horses, tiny tables, little cradles, small ships, and a list of others that could fill this page. Among the maze here of buzzers, ripsaws, bending machines, endless knife cutters, and other wood turning and moulding implements, the star is the “High Speed Router.”
This is a revolutionary mechanism. The pattern is routed out and attached underneath the piece of timber to be fashioned. A spinning knob is on the lower plate, and the operative simply revolves the cut-out pattern round the knob and the answering cutting knives make the exact copy.
This enables such delicate precision jobs as pencil cases with their fine divisions to be made at great speed. Matai, by the way, is the staple timber at Trewheela's. Under the same roof is a practical and workmanlike unit called the Walnut Furnishing Company which handles the complete interior range of fittings for the Housing Construction Department.
There was a diversity that was exciting about this last journey, and it had one entirely new feature: I found that New Zealand women were playing their part in the pioneering of new production.
It was comforting, too, to discover that our own land provides us with raw materials so widely different as fine clays for porcelain work, to timbers that range from the requisites for inlay work, to ladder building.