OF VIRGINIA 



59 



TABLE 18. FIXTURES. 



HANDLES 



More than 96 per cent of the nearly three million feet of wood 

 used in 1911 for making handles in Virginia comes from trees grown 

 in the State. Ash, based on the amount used, was the principal wood. 

 Most of it was reported as white ash and served for turning long tool 

 -handles such as are used for hoes, garden rakes, hay forks, and long 

 handled shovels. Quantities of it also went into short handled railroad 

 shovels, spades, etc. 



The toughness, strength, and resiliency of hickory makes it dis- 

 tinctively the best suited wood for axe, pick, hammer and sledge handles, 

 "fto satisfactory substitute has as yet been found to compete with it 

 White oak is used to a limited extent, but more on account of hickory's 

 scarcity and high price than owing to white oak's special qualification. 

 The choicest butt cuts of hickory are desired by the handle makers 

 and rarely does any but the white or sap wood of the tree find its 

 way into these finished commodities. Specifications of purchasers of 

 large quantities of hickory handles like railroad and mining corpo- 

 rations seldom admit handles made wholly or in part from the heart- 

 wood which is most often spoken of as red hickory. Experiments 

 made by the Forest Service, however, show red hickory equally as 

 strong, weight for weight, as white hickory and highly suitable for 

 handles. Mallet, maul, and other small tool handles were turned both 

 from ash and hickory, the quantity of hickory exceeding the quantity 



