2 NOTE ON DHADRA Oil BAKLI. 



3. Description, Properties and Uses of Timber. 



The wood is grey or yellowish in colour with numerous very small 

 pores, and close-grained. It shows handsome shining horizontal bands on 

 a vertical section and is sometimes cross-grained. The heart-wood is 

 small, irregular, hard, and purplish in colour. It often contains small 

 knots and flaws and is accordingly unsuitable for such purposes as the 

 manufacture of fishing rods. 



Durability. It is not durable unless kept dry and is very apt to split 

 when seasoning. It has been tried for sleepers but large trees are not 

 plentiful enough to make it very useful for this purpose. Eighteen sleepers 

 were tried on the Mysore State Railway and 14 of them were found to be 

 serviceable after 7 or 8 years. It is often attacked by white-ants so that 

 it must be treated with antiseptics when it is wanted for house posts, etc. 

 Some rafters used in a bungalow at Surada in northern Madras are quite 

 good after 20 years' use. The wood was found when tested in Madras to 

 have little power of resistance to the attacks of the teredo, and it proved 

 unsuitable for sleepers on the South Indian Railway in 1899. 



Weight. The weight given in Gamble's " Manual of Indian Timbers " 

 is 62 Ibs. per cubic foot dry, and 75 to 80 Ibs. when green. This is calcu- 

 lated from specimens collected all over India. 



Strength. The value of P, which represents the strength of a bar of 

 timber calculated from the length between supports, breadth and thick- 

 ness of the bar, and the weight in Ibs. which when placed on the middle 

 of the bar causes it to break, is for this timber about 900, the figures for 

 Sal being 790, Teak 600 and Shisham 796 (Gamble). Very varying 

 results have been recorded, one being as high as 1/220, but 850 to 900 is 

 probably correct, this high figure accounting for the toughness and con- 

 sequent great usefulness of the wood. 



Fissibility. The wood is not very easy to split, experiments made by 

 Mr. R. S. Troup giving the figure 6'33, the corresponding figure for Teak 

 being 1*75, for Acacia Catechu 2>'9S, and for Terminalia tomentosa 4'63. 



Calorific power. The wood has been tested by Mr. Puran Singh, 

 Forest Chemist, and his results placed it rather low on the list, beside 

 Bael, and a long way below Sal, Teak, and Blue and Chir pines. The 

 number of British Thermal Units is given for the last-named as 9144, 

 and for dhaura as 7481. It is commonly however used as fuel and gives 

 good charcoal. 



Seasoning. In the Central Provinces the people usually prefer to cut 



