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Excerpt from American Agriculturalist, Volume XXXVIII—No. 12,
December, 1879.
How to Make Splint Baskets
In the winter season a stock of baskets for use in
the barn, the stable, or the field, may be very easily
made. The best material is splints of hickory, oak,
black ash, or any other wood that can be separated into
layers.
The
best timber is the butt of a straight-grained young
tree, cut about eight feet long. In clearing timber land,
it is common to select these butts and sell them
to basket-makers by the cord, at two or three times
the value of common timber. The butts are split
into narrow pieces, which have the annual layers
arranged conveniently for being rived into splints.
The manner of splitting is shown at fig. 1.
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Fig. 1. |
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These strips are split again, if necessary to bring the
splints to a proper size for working, which is 1-1/2 inch
or 2 inches for large baskets; the smaller strips, down
to half an inch, may be used for hand-baskets, strawberries,
etc., or for binding the edges of larger baskets. The
split pieces are steeped in water for some days, to loosen
the different layers of the wood, when they are beaten
with a mallet upon a block, fig. 2, until the layers
are separated and can be split apart with a knife, fig.
3, attached to a handle at right angles, so that it may
be used conveniently for splitting, fig. 4.
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Fig. 2—Loosening the fibres.
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Fig. 3—The knife. |
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