Interview with Vance Setterholm

BW: Okay, just for the record, today we'll be interviewing Vance Setterholm -

VS: Right.

BW: Of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.

VS: Correct

BW: Okay. And sir if you could please just talk a little bit about your early years, before Forest Products Labs, sort of what prepared you to work [at the] Forest Products Labs, and just what your general background was going in.

VS: Sure. Well, I was born in Minneapolis in 1925, graduated from high school about the time of the beginning of World War II and I volunteered to be a naval aviator -- naval aviation training -- because I thought it might be helpful in a career in the Forest Service. Because of that I took up flying -- Can we start 00:01:00this over again, I want get some notes that I made.

BW: Sure

[Brief Pause]

BW: Okay, whenever you're ready Mr. Setterholm.

VS: And we can break if need be, right?

BW: Sure, you bet.

VS: Okay. My name is Vance Setterholm. I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and graduated from high school about the time of the beginning of World War II. I was seventeen years old and volunteered as a cadet in the U.S. Navy. That was a period from about 1943 to 1945. Just before the end of World War II, I received my commission. I had opted for scout observation flying single engine flow 00:02:00planes because I thought it might be useful to fly for the Forest Service. I went so far as to obtain a commercial license in single engine landed flow planes. After my naval training, I entered the University of Minnesota Forestry School, pursuing a degree in Forestry. I switched my major from Forestry to Wood Technology because I thought that it was more fitting for my interests. On 00:03:00graduating from the University of Minnesota with a degree in Wood Technology I applied to the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory for a position and I was hired with the expectation that I was going to work for a man by the name of Max Pillow on the mechanism and observations of [gel?] fibers. When I arrived in Madison in 1945 -- no I beg your pardon, it was 1950 that I started -- I was 00:04:00offered a job down in the packaging lab and so I spent my first couple years at the laboratory working in packaging and that amounted to training -- let's break here for a minute.

BW: Sure.

[Brief Pause]

VS: As I said, I started working in the packaging lab and we did, we were working on an analysis of the yield, which we would get in crates and boxes from various grades of lumber. And when that study was completed I was looking for 00:05:00more technical work or, let's see, more scientifically interesting work, and I had an opportunity to work over in the Wood Engineering department under a man by the name of Edward [Kuenzi], who is a national expert in plywood and structural sandwich construction. And this proved to be a very significant and have a very significant influence on my career in pulp and paper. After a stint 00:06:00with Ed [Kuenzi], where we worked on sandwich -- also worked on stainless steel titanium sandwich tech, making tests at 1200 degrees. I worked also on basic strength and elastic properties of paper because at that time U.S. Forest Products Laboratory had contracts with [Wright] Patterson and Sandia, NASA, to determine the properties of paper to be used as core material for flight vehicles. These are extra -- all the space technology, we were concerned with things like out-gassing of paper, and the effects of out-gassing on paper for vehicles that were circling the earth. Making observations at that time. And it 00:07:00was quite interesting to find that paper behaves very well in space and degrades less slowly, well not less slowly, degrades less in low atmosphere than it does on earth conditions being subject to various changes in humidity and temperature and so forth. You sort of get the idea that, I've gotten here the [starting] in paper properties and of course I soon discovered that paper properties were not very well defined at that time. We used things like birth [pair?], [tear], [tensil], fold -- non-engineering kinds of attributes that were then the 00:08:00standard for measurement of paper in the industry. And of course the industry, the evaluation of paper products and paper in 1945 was concerned and developed mostly by chemists and physical technologists. It was apparent then that I needed to have a basic, an understanding of the basic strength and elastic properties of paper in order to relate it to their engineering properties. You can imagine the difficulty of trying to talk about the strength of paper in breaking length, for example, which is the length that a roll of paper would 00:09:00unwind until, of its own weight, it would fracture. What we really needed was things like tension compression and sheer modulus, [poisson'] ratio and quantities that could be useful for structural design. And I set about it, in my career at that time, to learn just how to do that, because this involved the development of apparatuses to measure stress strain properties of paper and tension compression and shear, ultimately all the variables you might consider -- high moisture, low moisture, high temperature, low temperature, cyclic moisture, and so forth, it's quite a list. And we developed these methods that 00:10:00enable us to make these analysis of paper and ultimately to do this and understand, we have to understand the paper making the effects. And so we looked into things like how does paper dry and we developed a press drying process which resulted in new material - new material in the way that paper is conventionally hydrogen bonded. But in press drying these hydrogen bonds are converted to covalent bonding so it becomes moisture resistant, and has a higher strength and elastic property. We looked at single fiber research, layered 00:11:00sheets, and a whole host of variables in time, accumulating with a new look at paper properties. Let's take a break here for a minute.

[Brief Pause]

00:11:20

BW: So, when you started working the Forest Products Labs, do you have any specific memories of those first days or any stories that you'd like to share?

VS: Indeed. The first thing I remembered was that everything I learned, the most important feeling I had was, I was trying to learn as much as I could in order to be an effective employee. And I recall how I looked back at my training at the University of Minnesota and it seems that everything I had learned was useful and I wished I had more tools at my disposal. So I was constantly 00:12:00studying and reviewing what was going on. I get the feeling, when I was at the University of Minnesota, that the Forest Products Laboratory was sort of a Mecca for scientists interested in wood and paper. And I still think that's true. Later I came to see that there were other institutions, like the Swedish Forest Products Laboratory and the British, but it was really marvelous to meet and work with the people at Forest Products Laboratory.

BW: Could you talk a little bit about your typical day while you worked here and the jobs that you had while you were here? What did you do on a day-to-day basis?

VS: At what point in my career?

BW: Well, I guess just in general, kind of as your career progress, if you could talk a little bit about that.

VS: In general? Oh, well the typical day at the Forest Products Laboratory was -- everyone is sort of their own, we had rules, you know, assignments and so forth. For example, I was asked to look in-to the effect of overnight moisture 00:14:00on the strength of and swelling of paper and its affected strength. Now, that involved developing techniques to do so. For example, at night the dew point rises and things become more moist, and finding out how to measure this, we rigged up some containers and put them on a balance and simply weighed them periodically with a recording instrument. Hold on a minute, let's break -- I 00:15:00think I'm not getting what you want. You're asking for what goes on in a typical day --

BW: Yeah, well I think just kind of your interactions with your co-workers and the projects that you worked on.

VS: Yeah, you know I worked for forty years and it's hard to key in to. I'm trying to do early days.

BW: Well, yeah, how about this -- did your job or the projects that you worked on -- did it take you away from the office? Did you get to do any traveling, and if so, where did you go? Do you have any stories or memories about that?

VS: Yeah, actually the whole world was ours in terms of where. We had 00:16:00limitations on expenses. Money was always a problem. For example, we, in the early days, took the trains, later days flew, but there was no limit to who we might work with.

BW: Okay. What-

VS: This is not getting at, this is not the direction I want to go --

BW: No, this is fine, I was going to ask you, what divisions or which compartments did you work for at Forest Products Labs?

VS: Which departments did I work for?

BW: Yes sir.

VS: Okay. Well let's try, I'll try and review that quickly with you. In 1951 to 00:17:00'54, I worked for Material Containers for a man by the name of Tad Carlson, he was the division chief. From '54 to '56, I worked in Plywood and [Structural] design of sandwich. From '56 to '58, I was working in pulping research. And from '59 to '63, I started working on paper making and this is at the point in my career where I saw the future sort of open up for me in awareness that the paper industry didn't know how to measure paper properties. They didn't know what to measure or why they were measuring, as far as I was concerned. And instruments 00:18:00they were using were all wrong. Not all wrong, but substantially not the ones that were needed to really evaluate. The explanation of that last statement is this: if you want to improve a property you have to be able to measure it, and they were not measuring the properties that were important to the performance or enabled you to design the product. This, of course, is an enormous, enormous area that just opens up here. And by then, skipping way ahead here, '58 to '63, to papermaking, and I initiated a research work unit on fundamental properties of paper. And in '63 to '68, we worked in that area developing techniques and 00:19:00tools and a greater understanding of paper as an engineering material. In 1968 to 1972, I was supervisor of a number of employees working in this same field and by that time we were getting an international reputation and we had the Swedes send people over to study, the Chinese sent people over to study. We had visits from the Institute of Paper Chemistry. The British, we had close contacts with. In other words, our horizons were expanding. From '72 to '86, more of the same. I was a project leader. And then about by 1986 we had a lot behind us in 00:20:00the way of accomplishment and I was invited to go to Washington D.C. and I was at that time also serving in the director's office as the director of pulp and paper research in general. Then that kind of gets you through up to forty years of service. But what other questions might you have?

BW: Oh sure. What was on job or project that gave you the most satisfaction, and why did it give you that satisfaction? Is there anything you can think of?

VS: I think easily the most satisfying thing was the press drying process. I was 00:21:00trying to find out how strong paper could be made. In other words, you take wood fiber and from it you can make [Kleenex], or you can make a very strong paper board. But what effect do the constituents of paper - the [hemicellulose], the lignin, the crystalline material -- what influence do they have on performance? And so we changed the yield and press and dried, and I found that we could if we took out most of the lignin and kept the cellulose to a maximum, we had a more 00:22:00crystalline material that was different and stronger and, of course, we found then that when it dried under tension the strength increased. It's interesting. How far can you go with that? Well, the strength increased so that the papers were made were stronger than the wood from which we had made them and they were stiffer. And this is kind of exciting. And so that resulted in the first paper on the press drying. Okay, so now we proved in the laboratory that you could make a super material, stronger paper than exists commercially, by far I should say. Now can we do this on a continuous process? And so I contacted [Bob 00:23:00Daney?], who had worked at the Beloit Paper Company and was now a consultant up in the Green Bay area. Could he help me design a machine that we could run in the laboratory to make paper that was pressed well and dried under restraint so it couldn't shrink or swell during drying. And we made such a machine and installed it in the laboratory and actually made runs to produce liner board corrugated material, which we then brought down to our power plants and packaging and made it into corrugated boxes, ultimately. And these were tested, 00:24:00and found to be superior to conventional paper board containers. Superior in that they were stronger, stiffer, more directionally stable, more moisture resistant. How far do you want to go with this?

BW: Well, that all sound really good. It seems like you really were very passionate about this. Were there any projects or particular jobs that you did, that you found extra challenging?

VS: Were there any what?

BW: Were there any projects that you work on that you found extra challenging?

VS: Projects that were extra challenging. Well, I guess they were all -- the whole business is challenging. The -- let me think a minute. Yeah, towards the 00:25:00end of our research I started looking into the possibility of making sheets of paper with a highly directional character. In other words, trying to line up fibers such that I could maximize the [tensil] strength, by changing the fiber orientation and controlling it under fluid manufacturing conditions. That's a tough, tough assignment because, first of all because paper is made of a variety of lengths, widths, and diameters, and flexibility of fibers. So how do you make 00:26:00these rascals line up? We tried inducing electrical forces that would cause [?]. We tried physical forces. We tried something that hadn't been done yet, which I think is going to be the ultimate key to paper making, and that is to make paper without water, without drying the fibers, so that once they're dry the hydroxyl is prolapsed to the parent fiber. It's very difficult to make [?]. But if you could suspend fibers in high humidity, saturated moisture, and mechanically combine them, then they could be press dried without squeezing any water out -- wouldn't that be marvelous? And yet be of the same strength as conventionally 00:27:00made paper. It has great environmental possibilities and energy savings. But that was really a challenge and so we built a number of chambers and worked at vacuum suction means for grabbing fibers out of the air and trying to align them and control them, yet without losing any moisture before we got it into sheet form to press dry. But challenges -- people challenges are almost as great as 00:28:00the material.

BW: Were there any of your colleagues or people that you worked with over the years that you remember particularly fondly, or that you have any stories about?

VS: Yeah, at one point I think there were 500 people in the laboratory and I knew them all. In preparation for talking to you I started listing these and it's amazing how this all comes back. For example, I mentioned Gardner [Chidester] was the division chief of Pulp/Paper when I started. A man by the name of John McGovern, who helped develop the semi-chemical paper making process, was there. Bob [Seidl], who later became president of Simpson Paper 00:29:00Company, I always greatly admired his ability to work with people. He also was [president] of TAPPI at that time. [P.K. Baird] had the office next to me and other side was Earl [Schafer]. Earl [Schafer] was in charge of pulping research and Earl, I remember he used to, when he went to buy a new car, he would go down to the dealer and see how much it is and they'd give him a price and he'd say I'll take it. [Ron Lobby?] was a scientist who went to work for an [Nekoosa] 00:30:00papers. [Axel Hyttinen] was an expert in [?] and his position was to study the effects of ground wood. He was telling me a story one day, he said in the early days when they made the ground wood, they used to grind the logs on end, and of course it obtained a very coarse, short fiber. They discovered that if you ground logs on the face or tangential to the log, they get much higher fiber life and better material for making paper. And he said that was kept secret for a long time. Hard to believe. Sid Schwartz worked there on the manufacture of hard board. Essentially, it seemed to me a lot of the work he was involved with 00:31:00was how to get the temper and oils to react with and obtain the most moisture resistance. One person who I met later on, was Bob Stone from the economics group. And Bob Stone was a great supporter of ours. He was always -- when I was talking about making high strength paper -- he says "could you make a fishing rod out of fiber," and you know I entertained the idea for a while, but there were no results. Ken Brown was a close associate. Actually I worked for Ken 00:32:00Brown while I was studying the manufacture of our pulping. We used a [kraft]-pulping process and a particular study that Ken assigned to me was to find out what the penetration of chips was in a digester. And it turns out that the size of the chips affects the penetration. That is, the depth of the penetration under pressure of the pulping, is proportional to the diameters, so that a small chip actually has less penetration in millimeters than a large chip. Interesting, I remember Don Fahey [ran] the paper making studies and an 00:33:00interesting aside to that, was that by and large the pulp and paper industry and the pulp and paper section at Forest Products Laboratory, had about 50% of its projects were associated with industrial investigations or co-ops. There's one person out of several people that I think were outstanding scientists and contributors. Some of them were technicians. It's surprising how much contribution to research is made by technicians. Sometimes they are able to be 00:34:00listed on the report, but often they're big contributors and there's no particular glory except the satisfaction of a job well done. For example, in my list of all star technicians, I would have to put at the top of the list Roy Benson, who worked with me on press drying. And I was able to give recognition to him, and I had to work like the devil to make personnel see that here's [at] technician but he's contributing to science in a big way and deserves to be paid for it. I was somewhat successful. [John Wichmann]. also worked with me, I feel the same way about. There was a man by the name of Curtis Johnson. Curtis worked 00:35:00over in engineering when I was there and I watched him develop instruments to measure paper properties. He was a hands-on kind of guy that could do outstanding work.

BW: I have a couple questions, Mr. Setterholm, about the USDA Forest Service --

VS: Yeah.

BW: How did you feel about working for an agency that's part of the USDA Forest Service?

VS: How do I feel about working for an agency that's part of the US Forest Service?

BW: Yes sir.

VS: Such as?

BW: Well, as the Forest Products Lab.

VS: Oh, I see. Yeah. Well, I had the best career anybody could ever have and so 00:36:00I feel very keenly about -- I almost feel like since I spent forty years and offered so much of myself -- I gave up so much of myself to it -- that it's almost became like a religion to me. I felt that they were doing work for the public that was not fully appreciated. And I saw, for example, when we were working on the structural products from fiber, I was trying to develop a low cost housing material. In fact, I think that's still going on and a man by the name of [John Hodges?] is carrying on the work, if you look into it. But it was 00:37:00a chance to repay the public for the marvelous career I had at the Forest Products Laboratory.

BW: What were your impressions of the Forest Service before working with them at the Forest Products Labs and did those impressions change as you worked there?

VS: What was my impression of the Forest Products Laboratory, before I worked there?

BW: Actually, of the Forest Service in general.

VS: Oh. Before I worked at - well, I had, through the Forestry School at University of Minnesota, you know I had read a great deal about the Forest Products Laboratory and I was really quite in awe of it. And I had the idea that 00:38:00these people were all geniuses, you know fighting and doing all this work, and it turned out to be [some were]; very talented but by and large they represented a cross-section of people with all the warts and problems that others have. But, you know there were some fantastic accomplishments across the board. Here I got to meet with Dr. [Kukachka] and Kuky [was] a world class -- probably the best wood identifier across the whole world -- and he knew it. I was going to tell 00:39:00you about a packaging class that was being held at one of the military bases. He was introduced as one of the three most, or four most, capable wood identifiers in the whole world. And he was introduced that way. He asked when he got up to the desk, he says, "And who are these other three people?" He didn't know anybody that knew more about wood identifying. He wasn't a vain person at that, he was just a very talented guy.

BW: Were you able to see how, while you worked at Forest Products Labs, what the 00:40:00public perception of the Forest Service was, and if that changed at all?

VS: [Public perception of] the Forest Service? Well, we had, I think they still do an open house every year. And each scientist would -- it was [held on a] weekend -- and you volunteered your time for that open house. We'd get the Madison people in then. But except for that time - which was a very good experience - the laboratory was filled with people watching the paper machines running, and the wood people were breaking beams. The paper machine always was a 00:41:00big draw, and everybody was there doing his thing. But oddly enough I always thought that these people in Madison really never realized what was going on in their back yard. How much international and national contacts were being made by the scientists.

BW: So, I'm going to ask a couple questions about after your career at Forest Products Labs. Why did you and when did you decide to retire from Forest Products Labs?

VS: Oh, that's a good question. You mean the beginning days?

BW: I'm sorry --

VS: You're asking about the origins of the Forest Products Laboratory?

BW: Oh no, actually I was asking about your decision to retire from Forest Products Labs.

VS: Oh --

BW: When and why you ended up leaving Forest Products Labs.

VS: I see. I left the Laboratory. I had worked longer than--we had a retirement system, and I had maxed out, you might say. I could continue working, but I wasn't getting paid anymore, my income was going to be the same whether I was retired or working. And of course, I continued on for a year or so that way, and 00:43:00I just decided to retire. I considered then going into development of manufacturing, but never did do. In some ways I regret retiring even then because the work and the opportunities were so fascinating. I think, as I say, by that point I was hopelessly hooked to research in forest products. The, you know, I went to Washington to develop a program for recycling of paper and paper products. There's no phase of this research that isn't interesting.

BW: So, do you feel like, or in what ways do you feel like your work at Forest Products Labs has made an impact on the other people you worked with or with the Forest Service or even beyond that?

VS: Well, the only thing, the impact I guess, the impact is up to somebody else to measure. But I feel that those letters I received from my colleagues at my retirement, more than a few indicated that they appreciated the career opportunities I had provided for them by making them part of the project. I 00:45:00think I mentioned to somebody when we first started talking about this that the best way to introduce and to get people to work well with you is to do all you can to make them look good. And, in terms of--that means providing them ideas for research and enthusiastic support, and this pays off.

BW: So, do you have any stories or memories or other comments you'd like to record for posterity, for future use?

VS: There are hundreds of them, but what in particular would be interesting?

BW: You talked a little bit about your interest in the origins of Forest Products Labs. Do you want to talk a bit about that?

VS: Yeah, I find that interesting. Way back when, when Pinchot decided that maybe we should be looking at forest products they started looking for a home base and, for forest products research. And they settled on either the University of Wisconsin or the University of Minnesota and went through a sort of dignified flirtation as to who could provide the best facilities, and the 00:47:00University of Wisconsin, it turns out, was selected. And in return, the University of Minnesota, was then deemed the place for undergraduate forestry training, otherwise we might have had an undergraduate forestry at the University of Wisconsin.

BW: So, Mr. Setterholm, is there anything else you'd like to talk about or anything?

VS: I'd probably better break for lunch and also my mouth is getting very dry.

BW: Ok.

VS: I think we may have to redo some of this.

[End of interview]