UTILIZATION OF DOGWOOD AND PERSIMMON 
35 
suit of the scarcity and consequent advanced price of persimmon 
blocks. These 100.000 blocks are made into lasts for children's shoes 
which are small and the design of which does not change frequently. 
Lasts for women's shoes change so frequently that the expense of 
discarding persimmon lasts would be too great. 
For other lasts the industry has been forced to substitute maple, 
although persimmon is harder, withstands battering better, and is 
more wear resistant. This illustrates one of many substitutions in 
American industry of less satisfactory woods, because of depletion 
of our timber, and in this case timber with properties that give it 
highly specialized uses. 
Persimmon dimension manufacturers sell both sawed and rough- 
turned blocks to last manufacturers. The lasts are turned to the 
Fig. 22. — Sawed strips of persimmon for golf-club heads drying in the open 
shape of a metal pattern, are sanded, polished, and given a coat of 
shellac in the process of manufacture. Some difficulty is experienced 
in maintaining the exact size of the lasts throughout the year. Like 
the shuttles, they absorb moisture in factories in the summer when 
the windows are open and swell accordingly: in winter, with arti- 
ficial heat in the building and the windows closed, the lasts shrink. 
The shellac coating is not moisture proof. In the manufacture of 
shoes this change, no matter how slight, is exceedingly annoying. 
Persimmon, being more dense than maple, will swell and shrink 
somewhat more, and this fact constitutes the only objection to it for 
this use. Like the shuttle manufacturer, the shoe-last manufacturer 
would welcome an impregnating material which would be impervious 
to moisture and would hold constant the shape of the lasts. 
