AMERICAN FOREST TREES 303 



knotty, and the percentage of good grades small. The annual rings are 

 wide, and are about evenly divided between spring and summerwood, 

 though the latter often exceeds the former. Its general appearance 

 suggests red oak, but it is more porous in trunks of thrifty growth. 

 The springwood is largely made up of pores. The medullary rays are 

 hardly as prominent as those of red oak, but hi other ways resemble 

 them. The wood weighs 43.24 pounds per cubic foot, which is a little 

 above red oak. It is hard and strong, dark brown with thin sapwood of 

 darker color. The lumber checks and warps badly in seasoning. 



The uses to which pin oak is put must be considered in a general 

 way because of the absence of exact statistics. The wood is not listed 

 by the lumber trade under its own name, but goes along with others of 

 the black oak group. Its uses, however, are known along a number of 

 lines. Lumbermen cut it wherever it is found mixed with other hard- 

 woods. Sometimes vehicle manufacturers make a point of securing a 

 supply of this wood. That occurs oftener with small concerns than 

 large. It is made into felloes, reaches, and bolsters. Furniture 

 makers use it, and well selected, quarter-sawed stock is occasionally 

 reduced to veneer. The articles produced pass for red oak, and it would 

 be very difficult to detect the difference between pin oak and true red 

 oak when finished as veneer. Some highly attractive mission furniture 

 is said to be of pin oak. 



More goes to chair stock mills than to factories which produce 

 higher classes of furniture. Chairs utilize very small pieces, and that 

 gives the stock cutter a chance to trim out the knots and produce the 

 maximum amount of clear stuff. Chair makers in Michigan reported the 

 use of 60,000 feet of pin oak in 1910. Slack coopers work in much the 

 same way as chair mills, and pin oak is acceptable material for many 

 classes of barrels and other containers. Small tight knots are frequently 

 not defects sufficient to cause the rejection of staves. Tight coopers 

 do not find pin oak suitable, because the wood is too porous to hold 

 liquids, particularly liquors containing alcohol. The wood is mixed 

 at mills with red oak and other similar species and is manufactured into 

 picture frames, boxes, crates, interior finish for houses, and many other 

 commodities requiring strength or handsome finish. In early years 

 when the people manufactured by hand what they needed, and obtained 

 their timber from the nearest forest or woodlot, they split fence rails, 

 pickets, clapboards, and shingles of pin oak. 



Oak-apples or galls are the round excrescences formed on the limbs 

 by gallflies and their eggs. They seem particularly fond of this species 

 and specimens are often seen which are literally covered with them. 

 The worms which live inside seem to flourish particularly well on the 



