AMERICAN FOREST TREES 183 



cedar 19.7, and bigtree 18.2. There are woods in Florida lighter than 

 any of these. Redwood is very soft, yet it dulls tools quickly. It is 

 moderately strong, a little below white pine; it is brittle, again ranking 

 below white pine; it splits and works easily and polishes well. Few, if 

 any woods surpass this one in splitting properties. Boards twelve feet 

 long and a foot wide may be rived from selected logs, and they present 

 surfaces nearly as smooth as if cut with a saw. However, curly and 

 wavy redwood is not uncommon, and that, too, splits well, but the 

 surface is not smooth. The width of annual rings varies, usually wide 

 in young timber and narrow in old. The bands of summerwood are 

 narrow and clearly defined. The surface of redwood lumber absorbs 

 water quickly, yet, for some reason, creosote and other preservatives 

 can be forced into the wood only with the greatest difficulty. Fortu- 

 nately, it is not necessary to treat this timber to prevent decay, for, in 

 almost any position, it wears out before it rots. Shingles, and window 

 and door frames of the old barracks buildings at Eureka, California, 

 remained in place until fifty years of wind and driven sand wore them 

 away. Railroads use the wood for ties until they wear out, not until 

 they rot out. Farmers near some of the California railroads gather up 

 the rejected worn ties by thousands and use them for fence posts. When 

 redwood is employed as city paving blocks it is wear and not decay that 

 puts them out of commission. 



The medullary rays of redwood are thin and very obscure, but 

 numerous. Few woods show them to less advantage in quarter-sawing. 

 The lack of luster in the surface of polished panels is well known. The 

 wood's beauty is in its sameness and richness of color. Except curly 

 specimens and burls, the wood may be said to have no figure, though 

 in planks cut tangentially, the contrast of spring and summerwood 

 displays some figure in a modest way. It is possible to wash much of the 

 coloring matter out of the wood, if it is first chipped fine. It washes from 

 the surface by ordinary exposure to weather. Red rainwater runs from 

 a roof of new redwood shingles, and weatherboarding, posts, and picket 

 fences fade perceptibly in a few months. This coloring matter when 

 washed out in large amounts in the process of paper making has been 

 manufactured into fuel gas. 



A complete list of the uses of redwood is not practicable, for this 

 material goes into most of the large wood-using factories of this country, 

 and much is exported nearly 60,000,000 feet annually going to foreign 

 countries. It has been much employed in California cities and towns 

 for picket fences, and as posts for wire and plank fences. It is, next 

 to western red cedar, the most important shingle wood of the Pacific 

 coast. One western railroad alone had in its tracks 12,000,000 redwood 



