1058 



Canadian Forestry Journal, April, 1917 



made to serve. As has been pointed without sacrificing revenue is a little 



out, many trees growing out of place intelligent direction. 



can be cut with profit instead of loss. J. C. Blumer, 



All that is needed to minimize waste Commission of Conservation. 



Odd Uses Of Wood In War Time 



High Explosives, Gunstocks, Artificial Limbs, Paper Vests, 

 Turpentine and Resin, a Few Products of the Tree. 



By A. W. Schorger 

 Chemist in Forest Products, Forest Products Laboratory, Madison, Wisconsin. 



One of the mysteries of the present 

 war is the source from which Germany 

 obtains the nitrocellulose necessary 

 in the manufacture of smokeless pow- 

 der and ordinarily made from cotton. 

 A well-defined belief exists in Eng- 

 land that at least part of the nitrocel- 

 lulose needed by German powder fac- 

 tories is being made from wood; and 

 if this is true it furnishes another in- 

 stance of the surprising dependence 

 upon wood, in one form or another, 

 on the part of the fighting nations. 

 The actual extent to which forest 

 products are put to use in time of 

 war, both for military purposes and 

 for supplying the nation with some 

 of the things it needs to carry on its 

 daily life, is not generally recognized. 

 Conditions, of course, have changed 

 vastly since the day when Pepys 

 offered up thanks in his diary for 

 "the very good news of four New 

 England ships come home safe to 

 Falmouth with masts for the King; 

 which is a blessing mighty unexpect- 

 ed, and without which we must have 

 failed the next year. But God be 

 praised for this much good fortune, 

 and send us the continuance of His 

 favor in ether things. 



Wood has ceased to be a large 

 factor in ship building. Sea battles 

 of to-day are fought by all-steel dread- 

 noughts; even the wooden backing 

 of the armor plate is giving way to 

 other materials. Wooden decks alone 



remain to link the old fighting ship 

 with the new. But warfare on land 

 has developed in a way to give tim- 

 ber an importance in field operations 

 it never had before, while the vast 

 number of accessories needed for the 

 smooth running of the modern fight- 

 ing machine, from ammunition to 

 absorbent cotton, have led to an 

 extraordinary demand for certain for- 

 est products, and have even brought 

 about new uses for wood born of 

 necessity and unheard of a few years 

 ago. 



The Uses of Powder. 

 For one thing, there is the matter 

 of explosives. Ordinary black pow- 

 ders contain 75 parts saltpeter, 10 

 parts sulphur, and 15 parts charcoal. 

 The charcoal employed must possess 

 special properties, and is made largely 

 from dogwood, willow and alder. In 

 spite of the advent of smokeless 

 powders, enormous quantities of black 

 powder are still used. It is employ- 

 ed in shrapnel, for which only a mod- 

 erately powerful explosive is required 

 to drive the bullets. Besides, the 

 smoke produced when the shell ex- 

 plodes is an actual advantage in 

 enabling the gunners to determine the 

 correct range. Black powder is also 

 used to fill the rings of the time fuses 

 with which shrapnel shells are equip- 

 ped, for which purpose no satisfactory 

 substitute has yet been found. Fur- 

 thermore, it is used in most armor- 



