Newspaper article:Page 12 of Wooster Daily Record,published in Wooster, Ohio on Wednesday, December 16th, 1936 - The Daily Record December 16 1936
- Article title
- The Wooster Brush Co.
- Newspaper title
- The Daily Record
- Date of publication
- 1936/12/16
- Author
- Arthur Gossard
- Page number
- 12
- Organization
- Industry
- Wholesale > Merchant Wholesalers - Nondurable Goods
- Manufacturing > Miscellaneous Manufacturing
NOTE-- This is one of a series of articles the Daily Record is publishing about Wooster industries. The series is intended to familiarize the general public with products which are made in Wooster by Wooster people. The articles were suggested by The Wooster Board of Trade to encourage the use of home-manufactured products.
By Arthur Gossard.
The Wooster Brush company was founded in 1851 by Adam Foss, grandfather of the present Foss management. The size of the plant and number of employees has increased from the original single owner to the large factory of today.
Millions of brushes a year, of every conceivable type necessary to the painter or decorator, are produced in the brush factory.
Little of the material used in the brushes can be obtained in America. More than eighty per cent of the hog bristles used in the manufacture of Wooster brushes comes from China. The remainder comes mostly from Russia.
Purchasers make the trip from Wooster to the bristle centers of China and contract for large quantities of material. In addition the company maintains its own full time representative in China to supervise bristle purchases.
The material is graded by Chinese hand labor into lengths, no bundle varying more than a quarter of an inch between the longest and shortest bristles. These are then wrapped separately and shipped to the factory.
Here the bristles are treated with steam and dried in a vacuum chamber to remove the curl, then combed and mixed to obtain the desired texture. Each particular blend of length and texture has a code designation and is specially prepared to fill a certain purpose in the line of brushes needed by decorators and painters.
The bristles are then weighed into bundles, each bundle just large enough to make one brush, eact to a 64th of an ounce, to insure standardization of the products. Various systems are used for fastening the bristles into the ferrule to make the completed brush.
In the FOSS-SET system, used exclusively in the local plant, the FOSS-SET mixture is poured over the butts of the bristles and the ferrule slipped tightly over the whole. The brushes are then carefully heated to thoroughly set the compound without injuring the bristles.
Brushes are then trimmed carefully to produce the proper edge designed for various types of work, and then combed and cleaned to remove any loose bristles or dust.
An average of 150 workers are employed at the plant and the annual payroll is $225,000 or more.
Present officers of the firm are: Walter D. Foss, president, Walt R. Foss, vice president and manager of sales promotion, Don J. Foss, vice president and general manager, Cliff P. Foss, treasurer and sales manager, Oscar P. Foss, vice president, L. M. Rhodes, vice president in charge of production, and Miss Elma Shibley, secretary.
Sales are made direct to hardware jobbers, and paint manufactures. The Wooster and Wayne County demand is very good, Walt R. Foss stated.