White Oak-(Continued from page 54)

hite oak is as widely dispersed $ ever. It has not been comletely exterminated in any exensive region. White oak of as igh grade goes to market now as ver in the past, but in smaller mounts, and the lower grades go 1 proportionately larger quantiies. In other words, prime white ak has passed its best day. A undred years of use and abuse n States west of the Alleghany nountains, and two hundred years in some of the regions east, have reduced original forests to remnants. But with all that, white oak remains undisputed king of American hardwoods.

At its best, white oak attains a height of 125 feet and a diameter of 6, but that size is unusual. A diameter of 3 feet and a height of 100 is above the average. The leaves are peculiar in that they hang on the branches until late winter, sometimes dropping only in time to give place to the new crop. They turn brown after the first hard frost. In some sections of the Appalachian region white oak coppice (sprout growth) is known as "red brush," because of the adherence of the brown leaves during winter. The leaves of some other species have the same habit.

The wood of white oak is very strong, stiff, heavy and durable when exposed in all kinds of weather. Scarcely any any other wood which can be had in merchantable quantities equals white. oak in these qualities. It rates high in fuel value, and 6,000 pounds of dry wood when burned leaves about 245 pounds of ashes.

The color of the heartwood is light brown; the sapwood is thin; medullary rays are numerous and large; pores large, summerwood broad and dense.

The medullary rays of no wood in this or any other country are more utilized to commercial advantage than those of white oak. Quarter-sawing is for the purpose of bringing them out. They are the bright streaks, clearly visible. to the naked eye in the end of an oak log, radiating from the center outward like the spokes of a wheel. Many are too thin to be visible without a magnifying glass. By quarter-sawing, the rays are cut edgewise and appear as bright streaks or patches, often called "mirrors," on the surface of boards. The woodworker knows how to finish the boards and treat them with fillers to bring out the figures.

White oak is a porous wood. Some of the pores are large enough to be visible without a glass, and twenty times as many more can be seen only when magnified. The direction of the pores is up and down the trunk of the tree, and they are seen to best advantage in the end of a stick, although they are always more or less visible on the side of a board when the cutting is a little across the grain. The pores thus cut diagonally across are taken advantage of by the finisher who works stains and fillers into them, and changes their natural color, thereby accentuating the wood's figure.

To be Continued