Ash wood

“ You will see the oak shaved up on the side of the breeze. But the ash stands upright, as if in a warm woody dell. We have no tree that attains a greater height than the ash; and certainly none that equals it in beauty of leaf. It bears pruning better than any other tree. Its timber is one of the most useful; and as underwood and fire-wood it far exceeds all others of English growth. From the trees of an avenue like that of Lord Hardwicke a hundred pounds worth of fuel might, if the trees were ash, be cut every year in prunings necessary to preserve the health and beauty of the trees. ”

“ The wood shrinks moderately, seasons with little injury, stands well, and takes a good polish. In carpentry, ash is used for stairways, panels, etc. It is used in shipbuilding, in the construction of cars, wagons, etc., in the manufacture of all kinds of farm implements, machinery, and especially of all kinds of furniture; for cooperage, baskets, oars, tool handles, hoops, etc., etc. The trees of the several species of ash are rapid growers, of small to medium height with stout trunks. They form no forests, but occur scattered in almost all our broad-leaved forests. ”

“ Tool handles and oars are made of white ash and it is superior as fuel. The reddish-brown heart-wood, with paler sap-wood, is tough, elastic, hard, and heavy. It is not durable in soil and becomes brittle with age.
Ash trees are late in coming into leaf. When all the forest is green and full of blossoms, the ash trees are still naked. Not until May do the rusty yellow winter buds of the white ash swell and throw out on separate trees their staminate and pistillate flower clusters from the axils of last year's foliage. ”

“ Already the ash trees, whose foliage has passed with much rapidity through olive-green and olive-yellow to tan-brown, which still holds a little of the olive tint, stand bare and gray against the sky, like the red maples, sure prophets of winter. The ash is never profuse of leaves. It drops them first of all in the autumn and{97} is among the latest to put them forth in the spring. Even in the height of summer you cannot say that its foliage is dense; and when the slender brown leaves lie upon the ground they do not make a thick carpet. They merely crisp under foot instead of rustling. ”

“ The importance of ash in the industries of the country does not depend on the quantity but the quality of the wood. Although the various species are produced in thirty-nine states, as shown by mill statistics, the total yield is less than 250,000,000 feet a year. That is exceeded by several woods, among them hickory, elm, beech, basswood, chestnut, and even larch.
The wood of ash which has grown rapidly is generally considered superior to that of slow growth. ”

“ THE ASH.—The wood of the Ash is considered the best timber for all purposes of strong husbandry utensils. The wheels and axle-trees of carriages, the shafts for carts, and the cogs for mill-work, are principally made of this timber. The young wood when gown in coppices is useful for hop-poles, and the small underwood is said to afford the best fuel of any when used green. ”

“ Nothing can have a better effect than an old Ash hanging from the corner of a wood, and bringing off the heaviness of the other foliage with its loose pendent branches. And yet in some soils, the Ash loses much of its beauty in the decline of age. The foliage becomes rare and meagre; and its branches, instead of hanging loosely, start away in disagreeable forms; thus the Ash often loses that grandeur and beauty in old age, which the generality of trees, and particularly the oak, preserve till a late period of their existence. ”

“ In the South the white ash is undersized and the wood is of poor quality. In the Northeastern and Central states it is one of the most important and largest of our timber trees, with wood more valuable than any other ash. ”

“ The wood of the white ash is extremely valuable on account of its toughness and elasticity. It is preferred to all other native woods for small tool handles, such athletic implements as rackets, bats, and oars, and agricultural implements. ”

“ The wood of the white ash is heavy, tough, and strong, and is much used for agricultural implements, tool handles and oars, for the interior finish of houses and in the construction of carriages. Emerson tells of an ash which was felled in Granville many years ago, the wood of which furnished three thousand rake stalks. The tree from which I took the following photograph, stands on a farm in Sterling, Massachusetts, and measures over fourteen feet in circumference, five feet from the ground. ”

“ The wood of the Ash is very valuable, and will bring as much money as that of the Oak or Elm. It is used for all kinds of work—for furniture and for ship-building, and for making wheels and poles, and it lasts well and does not readily split. ”

“ The same velvety down covers the new shoots. Summer and winter this sign never fails.
Red ash seeds are extremely long and slender, and have the most graceful outlines of all the darts that various ash trees bear. The heavy, round body has a wing twice its length by which the wind carries the seeds far away. Very gradually an ash tree launches its seeds. It is easy to understand why the family is so scattered through any woods, for the wind is the sower. The reddish bark of the twigs and trunk of this tree seems to be the justification for its name. Its brown wood is inferior to white ash. ”

“ In general appearance the wood resembles white ash, but it is usually considered stronger and more springy. The trunks of young trees are largely or entirely sapwood. Sometimes no heartwood is formed until an age of [418] seventy or eighty years is reached. Many manufacturers of ash tool handles prefer this species to any other ash, because of its thick, white sapwood. It is often made into handles for hoes, rakes, shovels, pitchforks, spades, and snaths for scythes. Makers of vehicles draw liberally upon this wood within its range, as do furniture makers and the manufacturers of flooring. ”

“ The wood gradually merges from a dark band full of large pores to one paler in color and of denser texture. It is very distinct in oak and ash. The coarser belt was formed first. The spring wood, being so open, discolors by the accumulation of dust when exposed to the air. The closer summer wood is paler in color and harder, the pores almost invisible to the unaided eye. The best timber has the highest percentage of summer wood. ”

“ The red ash is very much like the white, but the wood is less valuable. It is a spreading, broad-headed tree, and the trunk is erect and branching. It is not so tall as the black ash, yet its trunk is three times as thick. ”

“ Little description of the Mountain Ash is needed, for in recent years it has come so much into favour that it is now one of the commonest of the trees planted in little suburban gardens and fore-courts. Its hardiness, its indifference to the character of the soil, the fact that other plants will grow beneath it, and the absence of need for pruning—all these points unite to make it suitable and popular for growth in restricted spaces. But the wood on the hillside is the natural home of the Mountain Ash, and in the Highlands its vertical range extends to 2600 feet above sea-level. ”

“ There are many old superstitions in connection with the ash, and there is a midland counties saying that if there are no keys on the ash, within a twelvemonth there will be no king.
There are several fine American varieties, and both in the States and in Canada the wood is used for purposes similar to ours.
The Alder (Alnus glutinosa, &c.) is never a very large tree. It is supposed to be in maturity when it is sixty years old. It will grow in wetter places than any other tree in Europe—even than the willow. Though the wood is soft, it is very durable in water. ”

“ The strain breaks loose the tissue that forms the spring wood, and separates the bands of tough, dense summer wood into strips suitable for basket weaving. Black ash is used for chair seats, barrel hoops, furniture, and cabinet-work. ”

“ There are slight differences in the leaves and seeds, but, as in other trees, when we have once seen an ash seed we can always thereafter distinguish an ash tree. Fig. 102 shows the seed of the red ash. It is a winged seed, with the seed part inclosed by the wing.
Fig. 102. Red Ash
The compound leaf of the white ash has from five to seven leaflets and the black ash has from seven to [93] eleven. The wood is hard, tough, and elastic, has a handsome grain, and is used for many purposes besides making oars, such as furniture, carriages, and those farm implements which require strength. ”

“ What I wish to say is, that finishing your woodwork without paint does not, necessarily, require the said wood to be of the kinds commonly called "hard." Any wood that is not specially disposed to warp, and that can be smoothly wrought, may be used. Those you mention are all good; so are half a dozen more,—the different kinds of ash, yellow-pine, butternut, white-wood, cherry, cedar, even hemlock and spruce in some situations. There are several important points to be religiously observed if you leave the wood, whatever the variety, in its unadorned beauty. ”

“ The first is typical of any dry thin-walled cells, as is usually the case in seasoned white pine and spruce, and in the early wood of hard pines, hemlock, and other species with decided contrast between the two portions of the growth ring. As a rule buckling of a tracheid begins at the bordered pits which form places of least resistance in the walls. In hardwoods such as oak, chestnut, ash, etc., buckling occurs only in the thinnest-walled elements, such as the vessels, and not in the true fibres. ”

“ Ash is a coarse wood, but possessed of considerable strength, and is distinguished for its great toughness and elasticity, and is usually employed where severe shocks and wrenches have to be encountered, such as for agricultural implements, the felloes and spokes of wheels, and the shafts of carriages, for hammer-shafts, and for spring purposes generally wherever wood is employed for that purpose. ”

“ The wood’s appearance suggests the heartwood of ash. It probably reaches its best development in Texas where it is manufactured into boxes, crates, and even furniture, but not in large amounts. It is reputed to be a rapid grower, and it may be under the most favorable circumstances, but it is usually of rather slow growth. The wood splits readily into thin strips which are employed in making baskets for harvesting cotton. ”

“ The reason is found in the fact that trees of slow growth do most of their growing early in the season, and the wood is porous; but trees of rapid growth lay summerwood on abundantly, and it is dense. Few species show a sharper line between spring and summerwood than ash, for which reason the annual rings are clear-cut and distinct. What figure ash has is produced by the growth rings, and not by medullary rays. Quarter-sawing brings out no additional beauty. Slight crooks in many logs produce a moderate cross grain in lumber, which gives to finished ash its characteristic figure or grain. ”

“ The Most Difficult Woods.—Ash is by far the most difficult wood to work. While not as hard as oak, it has the disadvantage that the entire board is seamed with growth ribs which are extremely hard, while the intervening layers between these ribs are soft, and have open pores, so that, for instance, in making a mortise, the chisel is liable to follow the hard ribs, if the grain runs at an angle to the course of the mortise. ”

“ From its great flexibility it is seldom employed where rigidity is a desideratum. The combination of strength with flexibility is the characteristic of ash, and when the wood is from a young tree, or a tree not too old, it is an invaluable wood in many respects ”

“ In ring-porous species, such as oak, chestnut, ash, black locust, catalpa, mulberry, hickory, and elm, the larger vessels or pores (as cross sections of vessels are called) become localized in one part of the growth ring, thus forming a region of more or less open and porous tissue. The rest of the ring is made up of smaller vessels and a much greater proportion of wood fibres. These fibres are the elements which give strength and toughness to wood, while the vessels are a source of weakness. ”

“ It is seldom listed in statistics of woods which go to sawmills, yet it is known that a good many logs find their way to mills, while wagon makers and slack coopers employ it in producing their commodities. The tree is an abundant seeder, and the seeds continue to fall during most of the winter.
Red Ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica) is neither a large tree nor very abundant, yet it has a wide range and is put to use wherever lumbermen find it convenient. The lumber generally passes in the market as white ash, and for most purposes it is as good, but is rated lower than that wood in elasticity. ”

“ Studying different trees, it is found that in the pines, wood with narrow rings is just as heavy as and often heavier than the wood with wider rings; but if the rings are unusually narrow in any part of the disk, the wood has a lighter color; that is, there is less summer-wood and therefore less weight.
In oak, ash, or elm trees of thrifty growth, the rings, fairly wide (not less than one-twelfth inch) , always form the heaviest wood, while any piece with very narrow rings is light. On the other hand, the weight of a piece of hard maple or birch is quite independent of the width of its rings. ”