Celebrating 100 years - 95

The Pioneers of
Steel Studs
The story of cold-formed steel framing spans
169 years at the time of this writing and is rich
in entrepreneurship .
In 1849, Peter Naylor, a roofer from New
York, advertised 20-by-15-foot houses made
of "portable iron" (likely cold-formed steel),
which he built in a day . Naylor shipped about
500 houses, helping "forty-niners" establish
domiciles during the California gold rush .
Around 1925, the Virginia Baptist Hospital in
Lynchburg, Va ., featured load-bearing masonry
walls and back-to-back lipped cold-formed steel
joists . It was likely the first use of cold-formed
steel in a commercial setting .
Chicago architect Howard T . Fisher designed
the "home of the future" for the 1933 Chicago
World's Fair . Fisher modeled the structural
designs of Pullman railroad cars . His steel homes
could be set up in four days . But his company,
General Houses, eventually went bankrupt .
Inventor Carl Strandlund of Moline, Ill .,
founded Lustron Homes in 1942 . Lustron
made houses, cabinets and furniture out of
lightweight steel . The company landed some
20,000 orders for houses but built only 2,498
units and went out of business .
When gypsum panel producers in the 1950s
sought a lightweight substructure for their
wallboard, they chose cold-formed steel . The
first metal stud walls used un-lipped channels .
Their assembly featured plaster, metal lath
and steel studs tied with wire, says Structure
magazine .
In 1953, Jacob M . Gwynne invented (U .S .

Patent 2,664,179) "nailable metal structural
members" to replace "wooden studs, joints,
rafters and the like ." About this time, United
States Gypsum Company trademarked a
nailable metal stud system called TrusSteel .
Double wires formed the "flange" of the
TrusSteel members, and framers had to sink
their nails into this "flange ." But that was difficult
to do, so snap-in clips, patented in 1959, got
some use . The real breakthrough in fastening
wallboard and metal studs came with the selfdrilling screw .
Metal stud manufacturers popped up
everywhere . The Milcor Division of Inland
Steel Products Co . (later named Inryco),
introduced steel studs with half-inch flanges
in the 1950s . Metal lath producer Penn Metal
Co . introduced its steel framing in 1959 . At first,
Dietrich Industries sold skid lumber to steel
mills . In time, workers collected scrap coils of
steel from the mills, and Dietrich rolled them
into studs that were private-labeled for various

gypsum panel producers .
Lightweight "structural" metal framing made
its appearance the 1960s . Penn Metal produced
cold-formed steel studs in 18 and 16 gauges by
1965 . Milcor launched similar-gauge studs in
1966 . Metal studs were used in curtain walls,
exterior walls with brick veneer and interior
shaft walls .
In 1968, Milcor added a technical services
group of engineers and detailers who developed
mid-rise, load-bearing systems . Some notable
engineers of that group were Pat Ford, Randy
Frame, John Matsen, Tom Schermerhorn, Don
Schroeder and Jim Williams .
In the 2010s, AWCI encouraged coldformed steel stud manufacturers, suppliers
and contractors to organize as an industry .
Under the leadership of AWCI Executive Vice
President & CEO Steve A . Etkin and AWCI
President Brent Allen, the industry's key coldformed steel players formed the Steel Framing
Industry Association in 2011 .
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Celebrating 100 years