Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 December 1885 — A Much-Used but Little-Known Wood. [ARTICLE]

A Much-Used but Little-Known Wood.

“Did you ever wonder what knifehandles nre made ot?” asked a dealer in fancy >. oods of a New York reporter, as he hauled out a shapeless block from his store of spoils from many tropical forests. “Outside of bone and tor-toise-shell and pearl, so-called, which every ond recognises, the majority of knife-handles are made out of a close, fine-grained wood, about the name and pedigree of which 9,999 out of every 10,000 persons are ignorant. It is known to the trade as cocobola wood, and it comes in large quantities, millions of pounds a year, from Panama. It is of special value for knife-handles because of its close texture, freedom from knots and flaws, and consequent disinclination to split. Many wellknown kinds of wood require varnishing and polishing and filling up of crevices before they attain the beauty for which they are famous. Of course that sort of thing can’t be done in the case of knife-handles, and something must be used which doesn’t require fixing up. Cocobola is rarely used for cabinet-making, because being a gummy wood, it doesn’t glue well. The same qualities that make it of use in the manufacture of knife-handles render it valuable for the making of wind instruments like the flute. It comes to us in chunks, not in strips and planks like other woods. Sometimes these pie es will weigh 500 and 000 pounds, but generally much less than that. It costs 2-J (ents a pound now, but before freights went down and the Isthmus was opened up so thoroughly it used to cost double that price. ”