It is not easy to compile an account of the uses of Spanish oak by the
various industries of this country, for the reason that other oaks pass
by its name and it is known by names which should not be applied to it.
It is shown, however, where special studies of its utilization have been
made that it is a useful wood for many purposes. It is a useful
furniture material, and though statistics do not give separate figures
for it, evidently the total quantity consumed yearly runs into many
millions of feet. It is much employed in the manufacture of tables,
chiefly for frames, but occasionally as the outside material. It may be
quarter-sawed, if good logs are selected. The chair factories in North
Carolina use about 44,000,000 feet of oak yearly, and Spanish oak
supplies a rather large share of the material. It is employed as
interior finish in that state, and also for mission furniture, brackets
for telegraph and telephone poles, refrigerators, and kitchen safes.
Slack coopers and manufacturers of boxes and crates find the wood
suitable for their wares; but its open pores stand in the way of its use
for tight cooperage.
Similar uses of the wood occur in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, and
it may be assumed that they occur also in all other portions of Spanish
oak’s range. It goes to wagon shops in Texas where it is substituted for
red oak. It is employed also in the manufacture of rice hullers and
cotton gins. Lumbermen in northern Louisiana use log trucks with axles,
felloes, and other heavy parts of Spanish oak, and it is frequently
preferred for stone wagons.
In practically all large shipments of southern red oak to the North,
some Spanish oak is mixed. It could not be otherwise, since this wood is
cut in the forest with other red oaks, is sawed and stocked with them,
and goes with them to market.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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