THE ASHES : THEIR CHARACTERISTICS AND MANAGEMENT. 5 
cent into vehicles, including automobiles; 7 per cent into planing-mill 
products; 6 per cent each into furniture, refrigerators and kitchen 
cabinets, and car construction; 3 per cent each into boxes and crates, 
agricultural implements, and ships and boats (chiefly oars), and 1 
per cent each into fixtures, sporting and athletic goods, musical 
instruments, machine construction, and hames. It is also used in 
small quantities for pump sucker rods, tanks, pulleys and conveyers, 
trunks, printing materials, rollers, elevators, picker sticks, professional 
and scientific instruments, brushes, patterns and flasks (for foundry 
work), litters, and airship frames and propellers. 
Long handles for shovels, forks, hoes, and rakes of all kinds, 
short "D" handles for shovels and spades, and boat-hook handles 
are made almost entirely from ash, as it alone seems to have the 
proper combination of qualities — straightness of grain, a high degree 
of stiffness and strength perpendicular to the grain, suitable weight 
and hardness, and capacity to wear smooth in use. The same 
qualities make it desirable for agricultural implements, sporting 
and athletic goods, and boat oars. For making h< ndles, rapid- 
growing second-growth white and green ash, which yieid the strong- 
est and stiff est wood, are the best and the most often used. Old- 
growth ash is usually considered too fine grained and brittle for 
handles. All standard baseball bats are made from ash of the 
strongest second growth. Practically all long oars and sculls (14 
feet and over in length) and a large percentage of short oars and 
paddles are made from ash. For large-sized Oars select old growth 
is much used in order to get the proper size. Black ash as a rule 
is not suitable for oars, as it will water-soak and become soft and 
spongy. 
About 90 per cent of creamery butter tubs are made from ash, 
for which it is the most desirable wood because it imparts no dis- 
agreeable flavor. For the same reason it is extensively used in 
refrigerators, kitchen cabinets, and churns. Its wood is very easily 
worked up into staves and heading for tubs and churns, the supply 
coming mostly from bottomland green ash of the lower Mississippi 
Valley. Ash hoops are made mostly from black ash in the Lake 
States. 
In the vehicle and automobile indus tries strong second-growth 
white and green ash is used extensively as bentwood for bows, as a 
substitute for hickory and white oak for tongues, and for single and 
double trees. Ash is also used for vehicle bodies and panels, for which 
old growth of all species is preferred, as it can be obtained in greater 
widths, is not so liable to warp as second growth, and holds glue 
better. 
