The Flying Dogwood Shuttle

The Flying Dogwood Shuttle Sheila Connor In earlier times it was the strength and durability of dogwood, not its beauty, that attracted attention. Right up to the end of World War II the pro- Working with wood once meant dealing duction of wooden goods played a major role with either the whole tree or with products in the New England economy. While fuel made from portions of its trunk, and the wood, pulpwood, and lumber for ties, poles, qualities specific to each species-its capac- and beams left the forest or sawmill in rough ity to bend, its moisture content, hardness, form, a thriving concentration of regional strength, or brittleness as well as its ability industries converted forest resources into to hold nails, take paint, and saw easily- more finished "secondary" products. The determined which trees were used. One such shuttles, spools, and bobbins manufactured tree, the native flowering dogwood, Cornus for the textile mills as well as the lasts and florida, is now best known for its beautiful fillers destined for shoe factories were not spring blossoms. But in earlier times it was only made and used in New England but the strength and durability of its wood, not were also exported worldwide. And all of its beauty, that attracted attention. New England’s products-wooden or not- The Demand for the Shuttle were packed and shipped in pine crates and Dogwood excelsior out of mills from Maine to For over a century, the dogwood’s usefulness Connecticut. to the nation’s textile industry would com- By the 1960s, textile and shoe manufac- pete with its value as an ornamental tree. turers had all but forsaken New England. From the American Industrial Revolution’s Like their predecessors the tanning, naval northern beginnings until long after most stores, and shipbuilding industries as well textile manufacturers moved their opera- as the arms and charcoal makers, they had tions south and left New England’s mills ceased to be great consumers of wood. New standing silent, the wood of the flowering technologies evolved, and just as large-scale dogwood was an intrinsic part of the weav- manufacturing dwindled in New England, so ing process. In the complex process of weav- too has the role of wood. The age of the plas- ing cloth, one simple device remained tic "peanut" has no need for paper packing unchanged: the fast-flying, bullet-shaped or its nearly forgotten precursor, the won- shuttle made of dogwood. derfully fragrant excelsior. Pocket calcula- The first shipment of dogwood logs bound tors have completely replaced rock-maple for England left America in 1865. After their and even plastic slide rules. Cedar and arrival, it is presumed that these logs were spruce canoes are made of Kevlar and fiber- cut, seasoned, and turned into shuttles for glass ; and baseball bats, formerly made of England’s textile mills. Up until midcentury, ash, are now fabricated in aluminum. boxwood (Buxus sempervirens) shuttles had 18 19 been the mainstay of the industry, but as the lumber needed for shuttles rose proportion- ally to the number of looms in operation in the Northeast and in England, the American tree became a popular substitute. By the third quarter of the nineteenth century, the use of dogwood had increased markedly. The wood of flowering dogwood is hard, heavy, tough, close-grained, and abrasion- resistant. When textile manufacturers real- ized that the longer a dogwood shuttle was in use the smoother its satiny wood became, dogwood became the wood of choice. Smoothness rose to top priority soon after John Kay, an English carpet weaver, invented a mechanized shuttle in 1733. Prior to Kay’s invention, almost any hardwood made a sat- isfactory shuttle; hand weavers simply passed the small, oblong piece of wood that held the bobbin from one hand to the other. As a weaver of carpets, Kay had to deploy two workers, one on either side of his large, oversized looms, to toss the shuttle back and forth. Besides requiring two people for the work of one, the shuttle often dropped uncaught onto the warp threads, damaging the fabric and stopping the loom. Inspired, The bullet-shaped weavmg shuttle made of dog- no devised a doubt, by clumsy workers, Kay wood was pnzed for its satmy smoothness Photo by driver attachment controlled by a cord that the author. propelled the shuttle from one side to the other. But because the shuttle now remained in contact with the warp threads as it shot ern Maine southward into northern Florida. back and forth, a wooden shuttle that Even in the center of its commercial range, checked, split, or had rough edges was worse which is in the southern Mississippi Valley than useless. Kay’s invention, aptly called and the southern Appalachian Mountain the flying shuttle, was the first step in the region, this tree is seldom found growing in automation of weaving. pure stands. In the years of its commercial use, woodcutters had to scour between ten The Lowell Mills and fifteen acres of forest before finding The first American mill to produce shuttles enough flowering dogwoods to harvest a cord began operating in Lowell, Massachusetts, in of wood. While it is not rare in eastern about 1875. Like its English counterparts, Massachusetts, this small understory tree the Lowell mill acquired dogwood logs from appears with greater frequency in the the forests of Virginia. Flowering dogwood Connecticut River Valley and in Rhode grows in the wild from extreme southwest- Island and Connecticut. The fruits and flower buds of Cornus florida. 20 tutes had been tried, no wood with similar qualities had been found. Farmers and woodlot owners were urged to contact block mills or buyers to arrange for the sale of marketable trees. As late as 1945 a U.S. Department of Agriculture publication commented, "Shuttles are indispensable to the cotton, woolen, and silk mills of the country." Plastic shuttles replaced wooden ones shortly thereafter, but they didn’t last long. New shuttleless looms were designed, and within a generation New England mills still using the old machines were antiquated, sur- passed by their southern competitors. Except for artisans who use hand looms and a few specialty weavers who create one-of-a-kind fabrics on older wooden power looms, fabric is now woven entirely by shuttleless looms. Flying shuttles made of satin-smooth dogwood have become a thing of the past. The Future for New England Forest Products Today new methods for processing wood and Although boxwood was used in the original tree products determine how many New Plympton Skate, as shown here m an 1884 adver- England species are used. In some cases, tisement m Spalding’s Manual of Roller Skating, it these advances have permitted the substitu- was soon replaced by the stronger, more durable tion of one wood (or a combination of woods) The roller skate was invented dogwood. by furni- for another. The of durable ture manufacturer James Leonard Plimpton. Having development resin adhesives World War enjoyed a winter of ice skatmg m Central Park, he synthetic during was determined to continue skating year-round. II expanded and redefined an entire range of Withm one year he had invented and patented his wood-based products. Glue-laminated tim- roller skate, organized the New York Roller Skating bers, exterior plywood, and sandwich panels and undertaken a Association, promotion campaign thin of wood bonded to a thick " (two facings directed at the "educated and refined class core of weak and low-density material such as rubber foam, foamed glass, cloth, metal, By 1926, ninety percent of the flowering or even paper) increased the capacity of wood dogwood harvest went into shuttles. Most to bend, weather, and provide thermal insu- were manufactured in Massachusetts and lation. It even makes the wood more fire Rhode Island, and over half were exported resistant. to Germany, France, and Great Britain. In Raw materials need not come from the 1942, demand for military cloth and war- forest in log form: particleboard, flakeboard, use textiles heightened the need for shut- waferboard, and oriented stand board all use tles to the point that the country ran out of wood that is first reduced to small fragments reserve supplies. The U.S. Department of and then bonded. Sawmills no longer create Agriculture issued a plea for harvested dog- waste; every part of a log is usable, whether wood, noting that although many substi- as bark, chips, or sawdust. And coarser 21 The Dogwood Through the Seasons When the dogwoods flower the Arnold stalks. In spring the peduncle lengthens to Arboretum seems to sparkle. Although become an inch to an inch-and-a-half long. most of the Arboretum’s major groups of The bud’s protective scales, the bracts, trees are arranged taxonomically, when it begin to unfold, enlarge, and turn white. came to siting the dogwoods Charles Some trees have pinkish-white bracts, and Sprague Sargent, the Arboretum’s first occasionally a tree will sport bracts of a director, wisely chose to ignore scientific deeper pink. dictates and instead followed the advice of By midsummer, two to five berrylike Frederick Law Olmsted. Rather than drupes, each containing two very hard, restricting them to their place in botani- notched stones that enclose the seeds, have cal sequence, Sargent interwove them developed. By fall, these oval-shaped dru- throughout the grounds just as they grow pes are a brilliant red and become a source in natural forests. of food for migrating flocks of birds. Flowering dogwoods can reach forty Dogwood leaves are from two to five feet in height, but in New England they inches long, have wavy margins, and grow usually grow to only fifteen to twenty- opposite one another.

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