Slack coopers convert this wood into their wares in many regions. The pores are too open to permit its use as tight cooperage, where liquids are to be contained, but for barrels and kegs of many kinds, as well as for boxes, baskets, and crates, it meets all requirements. It is good fuel. Many burners of brick and pottery show it preference, and charcoal burners make a clean sweep of it when it occurs in the course of their operations; though when it is desirable to save the by-products of charcoal kilns or retorts, yellow oak is considered less valuable than birch, beech, and maple. The bark of this tree is employed less now than formerly for dyeing purposes. Aniline dyes have taken its place. In pioneer times the bark was one of the best coloring materials the people had, and every family looked after its own supply as carefully as it provided sassafras bark for tea, slippery elm bark for poultices, and witch hazel for gargles. The oak bark was peeled, dried, and pounded to a powder. The mass was sifted, and the yellow particles, being finer than the black bark, passed through the screen, and were set apart for the dye kettle, while the screenings were rejected. Various arts and sciences were called into requisition to add to or take from the natural color which the bark gave the cloth. Salts of iron were commonly employed to modify the deepness of the yellow. The acorns of this oak are bitter, and escape the mast hunters. Old stumps have little need to send up sprouts, for acorns keep the species alive. Yellow oaks are in no immediate danger of extermination. Nature plants generously, and the tree can get along on poor soil where the farm hunter is not apt to molest it. It has a fairly thick bark, and is able to take care of itself in a moderate fire, except when the seedlings are quite small. The young tree’s tap root is much developed, and goes deep for moisture, and the growing sapling flourishes on ground where some other species would suffer for water.