48 



Hardwood Record — Veneer & Panel Section 



October 25, 1921 



Beautiful Birch 



ROTARY GUT VENEERS 



There is no better Birch grown than that found on our 

 Timber Holdings. Send us a trial order for a crate or a 

 carload, and we are confident you will forward repeaters 

 without solicitation. Quality considered, you will find 

 our prices reasonable. 



Bissell Lumber Company 



Mills: 

 TRIPOLI, WIS. 



Address Dept. 3 

 MARSHFIELD, WIS. 



Rotary Cut 



Northern 

 Veneers 



Members of 

 Maple Flooring 

 Manufacturers' 

 Association 



T7URNITURE manufacturers and factory buyers who insist on 

 having high quality veneers should send us their orders. We 



ftre specialists in Northern Veneers. 



We also manufacture Northern Pine, Spruce, Hemlock, Cedar 



Posts and Poles, Lath and Shingles, which we ship in straight 



cars and cargoes or mixed with our "Peerless Brand" Rock 



Maple, Beech or Birch Flooring. Get Our Prucs 



The Northwestern Cooperage & Lumber Company 



Chicago Offices: 812 Monadnock Block GLADSTONE. MICH. 



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I RANGOON TEAK | 



I B B T C L I 



I British Honduras Mahogany I 



I B. E. & P. CO. I 



I SPOT and SHIPMENT | 



I QUALITY AND SERVICE | 



j BUSK & DANIELS, 8 Broadway, NEW YORK | 



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' Elephints A-Pilin' Teak" 



{Continued from jxiH'' '•*'*) 

 rapids and over the falls that infest these rivers until they arrive 

 at a kyodan or rope station, where they are caught and lashed 

 together into rafts. The native loggers build palm leaf huts on 

 these rafts and live on them for months v^hile the timbers wend 

 their sluggish way down the rivers to Mandalay, Rangoon or 

 Moulmein. 



The Romance of Teak Piling 



There is romance in all this; it is the very essence of the slow- 

 moving, mystical Orient. The romantic eye of Kipling, who has 

 done more than any other man to visualize India for the Occidental, 

 caught the romance and the picturesqueness of the handling of 

 teak by the elephants. So moved was he by a scene of this kind 

 that he enshrined it in his immortal lyric, "Mandalay." The 



nostalgic British soldier, who, restored to the gloom and drizzle of 

 London, sighed for his Burma girl "by the old Moulmein Pagoda," 

 was made to sing: 



"With *er arm upon my shoulder an* 'er cheek agin my cheek 



"We uster watch the steamers an' the hathis pilin' teak. 



"Elephints a-pilin' teak 



"In the sludgy, squdgy creek, 



"Where the silence 'ung that 'eavy you was 'arf afraid to speak!" 



Burma is a romantic land and teak is writ large in its history. 

 In Ptolemy's map of the world, dating from the Second Century 

 of our era, Burma is marked Chryse Cherson, "The Golden Penin- 

 sular," and its Indian title is Souverna Bhumi, "The Golden Land." 

 This is because of its pagodas, that lift their golden spires all over 

 the country. But strangely the heartwood of the teak tree is a 

 beautiful golden-yellow. The American generally thinks of teak 

 as a heavy black wood, because he has seen the small black fret- 

 work tables from China and been told that they were made of teak. 

 But, as a matter of fact, they are made of rosewood stained. 



Teak is light and easy to work and is rivalled in value only by 

 mahogany. The tree is deciduous, is tall, straight and often 

 buttressed at the stem and having a spreading crown. The bark 

 of the stem is grey or a brownish grey and is about half an inch 

 thick. The sapwood is w^hite and the heartwood maintains its 

 golden-yellow hue until it has been long seasoned, when it deepens 

 to brown, mottled with darker streaks. 



A remarkable characteristic of this heartwood is the strong 

 aromatic fragrance that it derives from an oily substance. This 

 fragrance does not forsake the wood until it has been cut for an age. 



Fragrant Oil Preserves Teak 



It is this aromatic oil. rather than its hardness, that is largely 

 responsible for the great durability of teak wood. This oil pre- 

 serves teak from decay almost indefinitely, even though it may be 

 exposed to the elements for decades. This quality is what has 

 made it so sought after for marine construction. In the days of 

 wooden hulled ships, teak was supreme for this purpose. It was 

 for this reason more than for any other one thing that the acqui- 

 sitive hand of the British Empire first closed about The Golden 

 Peninsular. Brittania had to have teak for her ships, so she took 

 Burma in the three Burmese wars. At the close of the first Burmese 

 war in 1826 Tenasserim was annexed because it w^as supposed to 

 contain large supplies of teak; and the third war — 1885 — was 

 the direct result of trouble with a British forest company. 



Teak is used, however, for many other purposes than ship 

 building; in fact, for almost every purpose that other hardwoods 

 are used. It is employed in the construction of railroad cars, fur- 

 niture and buildings, especially is it used throughout India for 

 furniture and buildings, temples in particular. Its reputation for 

 indestructible permanence led to its use in Indian temples thousands 

 of years ago, long before the white invader cast his lustful eyes 

 upon the land and enslaved it. Teak has been found well pre- 

 served in temples in Salsette and elsewhere in western India that 

 have been standing for 2,000 years. In 1811 some Americans 

 puttering about a palace of the Persian kings near Bagdad, which 

 had been pillaged in the Seventh Century, found pieces of Indian 

 teak perfectly sound. Also, in an old building in the ruined city 

 of Vijayanagar on the banks of the sluggish Tungabhadra in 

 Southern India, it was found that the superstructure was supported 

 by planks of teak wood I I/2 inches thick, which were still good 

 after 500 years. 



Teak is said to resist not only the decay of time and the insidious 

 attack of insects, but even fire. On many occasions teak beams 

 have gone through big fires and come out only charred while 

 steel crumpled from the heat. 



Victor Worland has resigned his position with the Evansville 

 Veneer Company at Evansville, Ind., and it is not known what 

 plans he has for the future. He has been in Evansville for a num- 

 ber of years and is a first-class veneer man. 



