COMMERCIAL USES OF WHITE OAK 



11 



United States is white oak. The substantial chairs, bed- 

 steads, bureaus, and tables, which were once made by 

 hand by rural workman before the modern factory with 

 its machines was known, are now classed as antiques, 

 but age has added to their value. Few fillers and finish- 

 ers were then employed, and the natural grain of the 

 wood remained unchanged. Solid oak furniture is not 

 often made now, except the cheapest or the most expen- 

 sive kinds. Common chairs, bedsteads, and tables are 

 low priced, and of plain-sawed material ; and expensive, 

 deeply carved pieces are solid, because only thick, solid 

 wood will display the carvings. The medium-priced oak 

 furniture is practically all veneered. 



Chair making is an industry almost separate and dis- 

 tinct from the manufacture of furniture, and while many 

 woods are employed, oak is the most important. Chair 

 factories often make nothing else, and they turn out 

 large numbers of standard patterns, some very cheap, 

 others of better grade. 



Strength fits oak for certain kinds of musical instru- 

 ments, and beauty for others. While oak figures in the 

 manufacture of guitars, melodeans, orchestrions, and in 

 racks and cabinets which form the furniture and equip- 

 ment of the music room ; but the most massive oak is 

 seen in pipe organs for halls and churches. 



White oak is not a handle wood to the same degree 

 that hickory is, but it is much employed for certain kinds 

 of handles. In some parts of the Atlantic coast it is 

 used as ax handles. It is toughened for that service by 

 boiling it in oil. The sapwood of saplings only is used, as 

 the heartwood is too brash, and even the sapwood of 

 large trees will not do. 



Oil tanks of white oak are specially preferred, because 

 the oil is liable to seep through most other woods. Enor- 

 mous oak tanks were built in the oil fields of Pennsyl- 

 vania and West Virginia in the early days of the de- 

 velopment of oil fields in that region. 



White oak out on the hills of Maryland was serving 

 as cross-ties before the locomotive came on the scene. 

 The first railroad out of Baltimore, aiming for the Ohio 

 River, was operated by horsepower, and the short, cast- 

 iron rails were nailed down on white oak timbers. Eighty 

 years ago it came to the front as tie matefal, and it has 

 held its place against all rivals. It serves other rail- 

 road purposes equally well. It makes the enormous 

 bumping posts at track ends ; beams in car frames which 

 receive jerks and impacts; frame posts, spring blocks, 

 pilot beams, log-car bunks, cattle stops, car seats, and 

 the interior wood work of passenger coaches. 



It is possible to extend much further the classes or 

 groups of commodities in the manufacture of which 

 white oak is used, but that would only accentuate the 

 fact that the wood approaches universal use more nearly 

 than any other of this country, or of any country. It 

 is employed in dimensions large and small; ribbons for 

 basket weavers, and columns for halls and balconies ; 

 runners and cross pieces for toy sleds, and beams for 

 cold storage doors; wood for cheese boxes, pulleys in 

 machine shops, water wheels, road scrapers, merry-go- 



TIGHT COOPKRAGE 



White oak is the premier wood in this industry, and is used almost 

 to the exclusion of all other woods as raw material in the manufac- 

 ture of staves and heading for high grade barrels, kegs and casks 

 and other containers of wines and liquors, for both foreign and 

 domestic use. 



rounds, saddle trees, whip handles, sucker rods for oil 

 wells as a substitute for hickory, ten pines, caskets and 

 coffins, bench screws, elevator cages, spring bars, water 

 gates for mills; neck yokes for roguish horses and roll- 

 ing hoops for playful children. 



(Much of the information in this article was secured 

 by courtesy of the United States Forest Service.) 



FOREST KING FALLS 



THE Xehalem, Oreg., forests have lost a king. A 

 giant spruce tree that is estimated to be nearly 

 4,000 years old has fallen a victim to the havoc 

 of a storm. This representative of the earliest of Oregon 

 trees measured some 19 feet at the point where it was 

 broken. Throngs continue to visit this fallen wonder of 

 wonders, and not a few have attempted to count the 

 numberless rings by which its age is computed by scien- 

 tists. 



At Watseco, Oreg., a huge cedar tree holds a place of 

 honor among the attractions. It is 17 feet in diameter, 

 and is said to be about 2,000 years old. 



The Nehalem country claims some unequalled records 

 for the age of Oregon native trees. The violence of the 

 gales sweeping up into the God's Valley district have laid 

 low many woodland lords. 



