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HOW BALSA WOOD CAME TO BE USED Declared to Be Invaluable Product of an Idle Mo ¬ ment Its Development A ship captain idling in a South American har ¬ bor one day many years ago noted that the Ecua dorean natives used in making rafts logs of an ex ¬ traordinary light wood woodIn In June 1904 the General Slocnm burned in New York waters with the loss of 1000 lives largely because the old boats life belts were rotten rottenA A man in Norfolk after long experimentation developed a process for impregnating any wood with a waterproof and rotresisting solution which pene ¬ trates to the center of any piece of timber coating the cell sand ducts with a thin but permanent film filmAs As a result seventeen German submarines were sunk by ithe 250mile mine barrage across the North Sea As another result meat and eggs may be cheaper a few years hence henceNow Now for the explanation which links these facts apparently so widely isolated The observing ship captain was and is A P Lundin He retired from the sea to study life saving devicest His first study was to aid in perfecting a system of davits for launching lifeboats but the Slocnm disaster diverted his attention to the necessity of better life preservers than the traditional cork affairs So he sent to Ecuador for a little of the wood which he recalled seeing the natives use It is called balsa wood balsa is Spanish for raft Captain Lundin was disappointed at first for he discovered that the stuff rotted quickly and paint helped to preserve it not at all allENCYSTING ENCYSTING PROCESS SOLVES PROBLEM PROBLEMEnter Enter the man from Norfolk Col R A Marr who wasnt interested in life preservers particularly but in piling and the like Nevertheless it proved that his encysting process made balsa wood perfectly durable That solved the problem of proper life preservers and balso preservers and life rafts are to be seen on every transport and navy ship and are almost universal of merchant ships of this and other nations Then the war and suddenly the navy demanded 70000 balsa bouys It got them at the rate of 1000 a day toward the hist A temporary factory had to be built for this order alone It had been learned that balsa bouys were the only kind which would withstand the long sub ¬ mersion and the crushing effect of depth charges which were necessary in laying the mine barrage in the North Sea That barrage it is believed ac ¬ counted for seventeen Uboats UboatsBut But what has all this to do with cheaper meat Why only this that it has been found that balsa is infinitely better than cork or shavings or any of the otlier insulating materials now used for lining refrigerators refrigerator cars and refrigera ¬ ting ships Refrigerator cars lined with balsa will weigh a ton or so less than the meat cars used nowadays will save ice and will wear longer Now that the war demand for balso wood has died this new line is to be developed Cheaper icing and transportation means cheaper meat of course courseHOW HOW BALSA WOOD TREE GROWS GROWSBalsa Balsa wood has become so important indeed that Cornell University has given Professor W W Rowlee head of its botanical department two years leave to go to Central America and Ecuador to study the best methods of growing cutting planting and propagating the trees The scientific name is Ochroma Lagopus The tree looks like the familiar cottonwood while the dressed woodlooks like clear white pine The leaves of the seeding are two and three feet across but they get smaller and smaller as the tree grows older About mid ¬ summer on the third year from conspicuous buds five or six inches long which stand upright like candles on a Christmas tree yellow or white blos ¬ soms emerge Later the flowers fall and the pod develops to about one inch in diameter six to eight inches long The pod then breaks releasing large quantities of golden brown cotton a single pod yielding enough to fill a bushel basket The natives use this fibre for pillows and mattresses Paradoxically it is easier to cut down a tree than to climb it so that is the destructive method the natives adopt to get the cotton cottonDry Dry balsa weighs 73 pounds a cubic foot cork weighs 137 pounds and spruce 27 pounds The heaviest wood known the other extreme is que ¬ bracho wood which weighs 91 pounds the cubic foot Balsa has a strength about half that of spruce But the most marvelous thing about the balsa tree is the way it grows The United Fruit Co has records showing at trees have grown to a height of thirtysix feet in jone year There are no rings in the cross section of the log for the reason that the growth goes on uninterruptedly throughout the twelve months Professor Rowlees record shows the tree gains about five inches in diameter each year so that a tree of two feet to two feet and a half in diameter a good sizeable log can be produced in five to six years yearsAirplanes Airplanes and hydroplanes particularly the lat ¬ ter are using much balsa wood Wing braces are made of balsa and spruce in Ibeams It is useful also for pontoons But in the vast and as yet almost unexplored fields of balsas possibilities as an insulator due to its cellular structure lies its greatest future and its chief economic values as a preventer of much of the present waste of perish ¬ able food products All because of a ship captain interesting himself one dull afternoon by watch ¬ ing the Ecuadorean natives on their buoyant rafts
