Novel Trees And Forest Products 



By S. J. Record 

 Professor of Forest ^Products ,[) Yale University 



MAKING CLOTHING OUT OF WOOD 



Clothing is ordinarily made out of wool, cotton, silk 

 or linen. These are fibrnus materials which are easily 

 spun or twisted together into thread or yarn for weaving 



into cloth. Sometimes, as dur- 

 ing a great war, not enough 

 of these fibers can be had to 

 supply the demand and other 

 materials must be found to 

 take their place. 



This was the case with Ger- 

 many and Austria during the 

 war and they were forced to 

 use the fibrous portions of 

 nettles, rushes, broom and 

 turf. They also made a great 

 deal of cloth, clothing, bag- 

 ging, canvass, cordage, etc., 

 out of wood. 



Wood is made up of tiny 

 little hard fibers all tightly ce- 

 mented together. By cutting 

 the wood into little chips and 

 then cooking these chips in 

 certain acids or alkalis it is 

 possible to dissolve out the 

 hard material and to separate 

 all the fibers. Through this 

 process a stick of wood be- 

 comes a mass of soft pulp. 

 Wood fibers are like cotton 

 fibers only very, very much 

 shorter. In fact it would take 

 about eight spruce wood fibers 

 Kiotograph ;,y s. J. Record placed end to end to measure 

 an inch and each is so tiny 

 as scarcely to be visible with- 

 out a magnifier. 



It would be very difficult to 

 spin such short fibers into a thread so they are first made 

 into paper. Look closely at a torn edge of a piece of 

 paper and you will see that it is composed of tiny fibers 

 in a closely tangled web. Now if you will take some 

 thin brown wrapping paper, cut off a strip about half 

 an inch wide and twist this tightly you will have a length 

 of paper twine. If you use tissue paper you can make 

 very fine thread and two or three of these may be twisted 

 together into a stronger one. 



Here, then, is the whole story of making wood into 

 clothing. Chips are cooked to a fibrous pulp, this pulp 



PAPER YARN SHUTTLE 

 A shuttle with its charge of 

 paper yarn ready for the 

 loom. One end of the yarn 

 is untwisted to show the 

 structure of it. 



is spread out and the tangled fibers ironed down into 

 sheets of paper, the paper is cut into narrow strips, the 

 strips are spun or twisted by machines into thread or 

 yarn, the thread or yarn is wound on spools and bob- 

 bins, these are put into looms and cloth is woven in the 

 same way as ordinary cloth from cotton or wool. 



The objections to cloth made in this way are that it is 

 coarse and harsh and becomes tender and easily torn 

 when wet. The goods can be made softer and stronger 

 by using part cotton, and by waterproofing the paper and 

 twisting it very tightly it will withstand considerable 

 wetting. The Germans and Austrians found paper tex- 

 tiles very serviceable not only for garments but also for 

 table cloths and napkins, wall covering, curtains, bed 

 covers and sheets, mattress ticking, bagging, harness 

 straps and a whole host of military uses. No one, how 

 ever, wants to wear paper clothing if he can get anything 

 better. 



Photograph by S. J. Record 



PAPER TEXTILES 



These print cloths are made of paper yarn and are used for 

 clothing, tablecloths, etc. The background is a paper towel. 



