North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["del stubbs" <pinewoodel@hotmail.com>]

        Tom, you remind me of another type. A fellow woodworker made me a 
copy of 
an old French hygrometer,elegantly simple......take a thin strip of wood, 
can be 1/4" by 1/16"by 3".....   or a similar proportion 3 feet long that 
can be viewed at 100 paces. Glue an identical sized strip of wood to it with 
the grain absolutly opposite... going crossways.   It uses the dramatically 
different directions of expansion in a hygroscopic material like wood, and 
of course it gets no finish!  The greatest expansion is tangental to the 
tree i.e. the arc of the growth rings moves twice as much as the radiius.  
Fasten one end and the other end will arc considerably back and forth.
        Another great tid-bit about wood is tylosis (sp?), the marvelous 
membranes 
that block liquid in quercus alba- white oak   so that they can be used for 
wine etc.   Now red oaks have the opposite characteristic, take a stick of 
red oak say 2 feet long, stick one end in dish soap and blow on the other, 
you won't believe the foam! Dat's vy dey don't use red oak fer 
casks......Mn. Del


>From: Tom Olenio <tolenio@sentex.net>
>Reply-To: nafex@yahoogroups.com
>To: nafex@yahoogroups.com
>Subject: Re: [nafex] Mist Propagation Alternatives
>Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2001 14:46:21 -0500
>
>Hi Gordon,
>
>I bet you thought I was nuts making my own homemade hair hygrometer, but I
>found the plans for it online.  Things never change;
>
>                                    [Image]
>
>                http://www.allstar.fiu.edu/aero/Experiment15.htm
>
>Now I need to find a 9" hair....   good thing I have nieces.
>
>regards,
>Tom
>--
>Thomas Olenio
>Ontario, Canada
>Hardiness Zone 6a
>
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com


------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-~>
eGroups is now Yahoo! Groups
Click here for more details
http://click.egroups.com/1/11231/0/_/423498/_/981509625/
---------------------------------------------------------------------_->