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•5^ Useless Hardwoods Will Have Value -^ 



CoDsiJerable interest has recently been aroused in tlie search for 

 new woods suitable for shuttles. The supply of the two woods- 

 dogwood and persimmon — which are used almost exclusively for this 

 purpose both at home and abroad is becoming decidedly restricted. 

 This is particularly the case with dogwood, which is considered the 

 more desirable of the two. There is still considerable of the timber 

 in the country, but it is so scattered that it is expensive to collect. 

 Making shuttle blocks is an industry in itself and the ordinary lum- 

 berman cannot produce blocks to meet the rigid requirements of the 

 manufacturers, due for the most part to lack of care in the process 

 of seasoning. Consequently, unless there is enough timber in a place 

 to make it worth the while of a block cutter, it will very likely go 

 into other products. In parts' of Maryland, for instance, there is 

 considerable persimmon timber of fair quality, but the farmers have 

 never heard of the shuttle market. 



The requirements of a shuttle wood are very exacting. It must be 

 highly resistant to wear and capable of becoming smoother with use. 

 The shuttle is shot back and forth across the loom at very high speed 

 and usually rests on nothing but the taut threads of the warp, so 

 that it is very evident that the slightest tendency of the wood to 

 rougiien or check would render it worse than useless. The wear is 

 considerable and a soft wood is 

 soon worn out. The smoother u 

 shuttle becomes the less friction 

 it encounters and the longer it 

 will last. 



Woods with decided contrast 

 between the two portions of the 

 annual rings of growth cannot 

 be employed. The springwood 

 is considerably lighter and softer 

 than that found later, and when 

 subjected to wear the softer por- 

 tions are worn down more rap- 

 idly, leaving the surface irregu- 

 lar. If used in a loom such 

 projections would sooner or later 

 catch in the warp and break it. 

 If a wood is too soft it will 

 wear out too soon or become 

 rough. If too brittle or too fis- 

 sile it will not withstand the re- 

 peated blows of the piekerstaffs. 

 If knotty it will wear down ir- 

 regularly and cause trouble. If season-checked it will catch the 

 threads of the warp in the cracks. 



From these requirements it is evident that very few native woods 

 could qualify. Almost every conifer would be ruled out at once 

 because too soft or too uneven-textured or lacking in some important 

 requirement. Yew has been tried but without success. Of the hard- 

 wood species the number of possibilities is greater and yet a close 

 study of the properties of the various kind will eliminate over ninety- 

 five per cent without actual trial. Moreover, it is not sufficient that 

 a wood be found to meet the requirements, it must also exist in suSi- 

 cient quantity to justify its employment. 



The ideal shuttle wood is boxwood, but its scarcity and high price 

 long ago prohibited its general employment for such purpose. Apple 

 and pear wood gave good results, but the supply of the materials was 

 80 scattered and uncertain that they supplied the trade for only a 

 short time. When dogwood and persimmon were- found to fill the 

 bill, there seems to have been no systematic effort made to determine 

 if any other woods could be so employed. 



One source of a great deal of trouble with both dogwood and per- 

 simmon is the large number of defects. Dogwood is mostly a small 

 tree and quite full of knots. Persimmon grows larger but, is equally 

 defective from heart shake and black streaks. On an average, about 

 two-thirds of every log has to be thrown away. The shuttle manu- 



—346— 



FIVE OUT OF TWE.NTY-TWO STAGES IN THE EVOLUTION OF -V 



SHUTTLE. 



facturers discriminate against heartwood "because," in the language- 

 of an official, "a shuttle that is part heart is very liable to split 

 along the line which separates the heart from the exterior wood, 

 there being in man}' cases no permanent cohesioh between the two 

 sections. ' ' The tendency of the sapwood to split away from the 

 heart is probably due to the difference in shrinkage in seasoning, the 

 sapwood shrinking more. Persimmon heartwood becomes infiltrated 

 with a black substance which leaves streaks of jet which behave quite 

 differently from the rest of the wood. This tendency to blacken is 

 carried to an extreme in the case of ebony (Diospyros eiaimm) 

 which is a brother to our own persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) . 



A wood well worth careful consideration is black gum (Nyssa 

 sylvatica). The dry wood weighs about forty pounds per cubic foot 

 as compared to forty-nine pounds for persimmon and fifty-one 

 pounds for dogwood. Weight is not in itself essential except as it 

 indicates strength, hardness and other properties. Black gum is fine- 

 textured, the pores are small and diffused throughout the rings of 

 growth instead of collected in bands. It is also tough and strong 

 and appears to have the highly desirable property of wearing smooth. 

 Its satisfactory use for rollers, floors, etc., indicates its wearing 

 qualities. It is rather cross-grained and would have to be seasoned 



carefully, but, for that matter, 

 any shuttle wood must be sea- 

 soned with extreme care, so there 

 need be no unavoidable difficulty 

 from that source. Best of all, 

 black gum. is so plentiful and 

 can be obtained in such sizes 

 that if found suitable for shut- 

 tles a permanent supply at a 

 reasonable price can be assured. 

 Another wood that gives even 

 greater promise of being satis- 

 factory in quality if not in quan- 

 tity is the hornbeam or iron wood 

 (Ostrya I'irginiana). It is a 

 tree, occasionally from fifty lo 

 sixty feet high, with a short 

 trunk two feet in diameter, 

 though usually not more than 

 twenty or thirty feet tall and 

 with a trunk eighteen to twenty 

 inches through. It is quite gen- 

 erally distributed throughout the 

 eastern half of the United States, though most abundant and of its 

 largest size in southern Arkansas and Texas. 



The wood of Ostrya is very heavy, hard, strong, tough, and difficult 

 to split. The pores are too fine to be singly visible to the unaided 

 eye, though near the outer edge of growth ring they are collected 

 in small groups which appear as white dots. The pores are all small 

 or minute, comparatively few in number, and arranged in irregularly 

 branching radial lines. The rays are fine and indistinct. The color 

 of the heartwood is light brown; the sapwood is very light with a 

 pinkish hue. 



The uses of this timber have been limited mostly to fence posts, 

 mallets aud homemade tool handles, levers, wedges and machinery 

 parts. It would be particularly fortunate if it should be found 

 valuable for shuttles, for it is common in nearly every woodlot 

 throughout the hardwood region of the United States, and is generally 

 considered a weed tree. 



A prominent shuttle block cutter in Mississippi has recenttly cut a 

 number of trees of blue beech (Carpinus caroliniana) and intends 

 to make some sample shuttle blocks from them. He says the trees 

 are plentiful and that they grow to a height of about sixteen feet to 

 the first limb and have a very fluted or ribbed trunk. 



Blue beech (also known as water beech, hornbeam, and ironwood) 

 has much the same distribution and occurrence as hornbeam (Ostrya 



