USES OF COMMERCIAL WOODS. 41 



quantity of hickory. The largest part doubtless goes into broom and 

 mop handles. The State of Michigan alone puts more than 20.000.000 

 feet of the wood to that use annually, and in Wisconsin sugar maple 

 is the principal material in the broom-handle industry. Next to 

 white birch it is the leading handle wood in Massachusetts. Farther 

 south it is not so plentiful and does not attain to the important place 

 it holds in the north. 



Sugar maple contributes liberally to a very large class of small 

 handles for tools, such as chisels, augers, gimlets, gauges, hammers, 

 mallets, monkey wrenches, and especially the tools used by wood 

 engravers, shoemakers, and tanners, and by tinners and other sheet- 

 metal workers. Maple is one of the many woods used for pail and 

 package handles, which are made in large numbers. In the manu- 

 facture of whip handles in Massachusetts sugar maple holds first 

 place. Brush handles of all kinds also draw heavily upon this wood. 



The makers of cant-hook handles select clear maple that will split 

 nicely, for there must be no cross grain. The cant hook and the 

 similar tool called the peavey are used for rolling logs and are subject 

 to great strain, but not often to sudden jolts, and strength is the main 

 thing. If these handles are made from sawed squares, cross grain 

 may result, rendering the tool unreliable. The snapping of a cant- 

 hook handle at a crucial moment may not only defeat the logger's 

 efforts, but endanger the lives of the men by precipitating a skidway 

 of logs upon them. Sugar maple is employed for several tools, such 

 as handspikes, levers used in mills and in turning capstans on ship- 

 board, and for ]:)ickeroons or poles with pikes used by log drivers on 

 rivers. 



Snaths, or the Ijent-wood handles of scythes, are split from logs to 

 make sure there is no cross grain. Sugar maple, however, is not as 

 often em2:)loyed as white ash, hickory, and red mulberry. Other bent- 

 wood handles occasionally manufactured from sugar maple are for 

 parasols and umbrellas. Here, too, maple is not as important as some 

 other woods, and in quantity it is perhaps surpassed for umbrella 

 handles by the diminutive nanin'berrv bush of Xew Jersey {Vihiimum 

 f rum folium). 



MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. 



When sugar maple is made the outside, visible wood of pianos, 

 bird's-eye or curly growth is generally selected. Maple is rarely fin- 

 ished to imitate any other wood. The bird's-eye maple is frequently 

 seen in kaolin sides and in other small instruments, but the curly or 

 v.avy growth is usually preferred where the surface exposed is small, 

 l^ecause it can be displayed to better advantage than the bird's-eye. 

 Though occasionally accorded a prominent place as an outside wood 

 in the making of musical instruments, maple is oftener hidden 



