Hickory hickory and woods that are harder, but the combination of strength, toughness, hardness, and stiffness found in hickory wood is not found in any other commercial wood. It is used for tool handles, bows, wheel spokes, carts, drumsticks, lacrosse stick handles, golf club shafts (sometimes still called "hickory stick", even though made of steel or graphite), the bottom of skis, walking sticks, and for punitive use as a switch (like hazel), and especially as a cane-like hickory stick in schools and use by parents. Paddles are often made from hickory. This property of hickory wood has left a trace in
Ship's wheel of sections each made up of stacks of three "felloes", the "facing felloe", the "middle felloe", and the "after felloe". Because each group of three felloes at one time made up a quarter of the distance around the rim, the entire outer wooden wheel was sometimes called the "quadrant". Each spoke ran through the middle felloe creating a series of handles beyond the wheel's rim. One of these handles/ spokes was frequently provided with extra grooves at its tip which could be felt by a helmsman steering in the dark and used by him to determine the exact position of