War-Time Uses of Forest Products 



By a. W. Schorger 

 Chemist in Forest Products, Forest Products Laboratory, Madison, Wisconsin 



ONE of the mysteries of the present war is the source 

 from which Germany obtains the nitrocellulose 

 necessary in the manufacture of smokeless powder, 

 and ordinarily made from cotton. A well-defined belief 

 exists in England that at least part of the nitrocellulose 

 needed by German powder factories is being made from 

 wood ; and if this is true it furnishes another instance 

 of the surprising dependence upon wood, in one form 

 or another, on the part of the fighting nations. The 

 actual extent to which forest products are put to use 

 in time of war, both for militar}' purposes and for sup- 

 plying the nation with some of the things it needs to 

 carry on its daily life, is not generally recognized. Con- 

 ditions, of course, have changed vastly since the day 

 when Pepys offered up thanks in his diary for " the very 

 good news of four New England ships come home safe 

 to Falmouth with masts for the King; which is a blessing 

 mighty unexpected, and without which we must have 

 failed the next year. But God be praised for this much 

 good fortune, and send us the continuance of His favor 

 in other things." 



Wood has ceased to be a large factor in ship building. 

 Sea battles of to-day are fought by all-steel dreadnoughts ; 

 even the wooden backing of the armor plate is giving 

 way to other material. \\'ooden decks alone remain to 

 link the old fighting ship with the new. But warfare 

 on land has developed in a way to give timber an impor- 

 tance in field operations it never had before, while the 

 vast number of accessories needed for the smooth run- 

 ning of the modern fighting machine, from ammunition 

 to absorbent cotton, have led to an extraordinary demand 

 for certain forest products, and have even brought about 

 new uses for wood born of necessity and unheard of a 

 few years ago. 



For one thing, there is the matter of exjilosives. Ordi- 

 nary black powders contain about 75 parts saltpeter, 10 

 parts sulphur, and 15 parts charcoal. The charcoal 

 employed must possess special properties, and is made 

 largely from dogwood, willow, and alder. In spite of 

 the advent of smokeless powders, enormous quantities 

 of black powder are still used. It is employed in shrap- 

 nel, for which only a moderately powerful explosive is 

 required to drive the bullets. Besides, the smoke pro- 

 duced when the shell explodes is an actual advantage in 

 enabling the gunners to determine the correct range. 

 Black powder is also used to fill the rings of the time 

 fuses with which shrapnel shells are equipped, for which 

 purpose no satisfactory substitute has yet been found. 

 Furthermore, it is used in most armor-piercing shells, 

 which should attain great penetration before they go off, 

 and for which the majority of high explosives would be 

 unsuitable because of their explosiveness on contact. 



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Another product of the forest, resin, is employed for 

 filling the spaces between bullets in shrapnel, so that on 

 ex|)losion the missiles will be evenly distributed in all 

 directions. Its brittleness and, at the same time, it.s 

 hardness, together with its low melting point, fit it 

 admirably for the purpose. 



The period since the beginning of the war has wit- 

 nessed a great amount of discussion in England as to 

 whether Germany is actually em])loying wood from which 

 to make the nitrocellulose for her smokeless explosives. 

 When, after a long delay, England declared cotton contra- 

 band of war, it was maintained by many that this would 

 not inconvenience Germany greatly, since she was already 

 making explosives from wood cellulose. During the dis- 

 cussions that followed, it was proposed to destroy the 

 forests of Germany by a giant fleet of aeroplanes armed 

 with bombs ; however, as one English editor naively re- 

 marks : " This would scarcely be feasible, since about 

 one-third of Germany is forested." 



As a matter of fact, little or no reliable information 

 exists in regard to Germany's use of wood for nitrocellu- 

 lose, and expert opinion in England differs widely about 

 the matter. Sir William Ramsey believes that such ex- 

 plosives are being made, and Mr. Walter E. Reid, who 

 introduced the important gelatinization process in the 

 manufacture of smokeless powder, is emphatic that a 

 nitrocellulose can be made from wood pulp that is equal 

 in every respect to that made from cotton. On the other 

 hand, Mr. Clayton Beadle, whose opinion is entitled to 

 great respect, holds that the difficulties attending proper 

 purification of the wood cellulose previous to nitrification 

 are all but insurmountable. 



However this may be, records published by German 

 scientists before the war show that a high explosive can 

 be manufactured from wood cellulose, though at that 

 time its stability was questionable. \\'hile it required 

 forty years of experiment to render gun cotton stable, 

 anything like the same time might not be necessary in the 

 case of wood cellulose, for the experience with gun cotton 

 should facilitate solution of the present problem. It is 

 highly probable that the chemical difficulties have already 

 been overcome. 



In this connection, it is an interesting fact that the 

 first successful smokeless powder was made from wood 

 aliiiut 1865. This powder, in\ented by Schultze, con- 

 sists of a mixture of saltpeter and nitrated purified wood. 

 While inferior to gun cotton in ballistic powder, it still 

 retains high favor among sportsmen. \^arious other ex- 

 ])losives, known as " white powder," ''yellow shooting 

 powder," and "Bautzen blasting powder," contain nitrated 

 lignocellulose. 



Aside from munitions, wood is serving manv useful 



