6 GREENHEART. 
USES AND DURABILITY. 
Greenheart is unsurpassed as a construction timber. It finds its 
chief use in ship and dock building, especially for keelsons, beams, 
engine bearers, planking, dock gates, lock gates, piers, and piling. 
When placed in water it is proof against the ravages of the teredo,! 
and on land it is exempt from the attack of white ants. It has been 
known to stand in wharves for a period of 30 years, and logs of green- 
heart which have remained under water for 100 years have kept in 
perfectly sound condition. All the gates, piers, and jetties of the 
Liverpool docks and practically all the lock gates of the Bridgewater 
Canal (England) are of greenheart. It furnished the material, also, 
for the 50 pairs of lock gates in the Manchester (England) Ship 
Canal. Indeed, the chief engineer of this canal has asserted that, 
apart from its practically unlimited durability, greenheart has many 
advantages over steel for such purposes. It is, in fact, impossible to 
fix a limit to the durability of lock gates built of greenheart, the only 
element in their construction which might curtail their length of 
service being the iron bolts and other fastenings. These, however, 
can usually be renewed without serious difficulty. When the green- 
heart dock gates in the Mersey Harbor were removed, in order that 
the channel might be deepened and widened, the wood originally 
used in their construction was again employed in building the en- 
larged gates. Similarly, the wood in the gates of the Canada Dock, 
built in 1856. was used again in its reconstruction in 1894. The use 
of greenheart has been specified for sills and fenders in the lock 
gates of the Panama Canal. 
Nansen’s ship, Zhe Fram, and the Antarctic hie Discovery, were 
constructed of greenheart. The wood is used also for trestles, 
bridges, buildings, shipping platforms, staging, millwork, cellar 
flaps, flooring, wagons, and for all purposes involving great wear 
and tear. It is highly esteemed as a furniture wood, and is used 
extensively for carriage shafts. The ends of logs removed in the 
woods to facilitate snaking are used for such articles as automobile 
spokes, belaying pins, and tobacco pegs, and for all kinds of turnery. 
Greenheart and the wood of an associate species known as cumaroo, 
cumaru, tonquin, tonkabean, or niob (Dipteryx odorata Willd.=Coi- 
marouno odorata Paubert) have a reputation for fishing rods both 
in this country and in Europe. The darker grades of ereenheart 
resemble the wood of hgnum vite (Guaiacum officinale Linn.), and 
are considered an excellent substitute for the latter. 
Though exceedingly durable, greenheart tends to split and splinter, 
and requires great care in seasoning and in working. The logs often 
cleave at the ends into four segments, but cracks do not usually ex- 
1It is said that even in tropical waters sea-worms do not penetrate beyond the 
sapwood. 
