160 Appendix 
chestnut, are soft enough and have the quality of workableness, 
but are not suitable for excelsior because they become too brittle 
after drying. Many kinds of wood are used in the United 
States, including in addition to those listed in New York, 
yellow poplar, birch, maple, white ash, cherry, yellow pine, 
white pine, tamarack, cypress, hemlock, black gum, and red 
gum. New York has a great abundance of raw material suit- 
able for excelsior, especially of that ideal excelsior material, 
cottonwood. This industry is supplied almost entirely from 
timber grown in New York, and the average cost of the raw 
material quoted in 1919 was $12.85. Basswood is even better 
than cottonwood, but it is not so generally available at local 
points. All cottonwood does not make good excelsior but many 
species are excellent. The stock must be free from knots, but 
use may be made of small timber and of short lengths, and thus 
utilization can be had of much material that is not fit for the 
sawmill. There is not much timber left on an acre where the 
excelsior machines have taken all they can use. The utiliza- 
tion is close in the factory also and everything is salable, even 
the roughest product being sold to liverymen for stable bedding 
or to nurserymen for shipping young trees. Some thickened 
slabs in the mill can be worked, but other mill waste, sueh as 
strips and shavings, cannot be converted into excelsior because 
the process involves shaving the wood into strings from the face 
of the block. The logs for excelsior must be perfectly dry. 
They should be seasoned for six months or more and then cut 
into blocks and quartered. The blocks are fastened into the 
machines and automatically fed. A series of sharp spurs, 
generally set less than an inch apart are forced along the sur- 
face of the block, cutting grooves to a depth less than the thick- 
ness of a match. A knife follows these spurs, cutting loose 
the scorings made by them and causing a bunch of curly excel- 
sion fibres to fall from the block. The machines may be regu- 
lated to cut coarse strands or fine. The finest grades are called 
wood-wool. Excelsior is readily colored by aniline dyes for 
ornamental uses. 
Besides constant use in general packing, excelsior is in 
demand by upholsterers of furniture and by manufacturers of 
