1 The British Columbia Provincial Museum recently came into ownership for the initial patent documents as well as 2 pictures of a string saw which can be possibly the very first created in Canada. James Shand, millwright and farmer in Dauphin, Manitoba, patented his “endless” string saw in 1918. The concept found him as he ended up being fencing his quarter-section of land and unearthed that the barbed-wire, drawn by ponies, had sawn through a seven-inch pine post. Working in their shop and making use of his son’s bike sequence with cutting teeth placed, Shand produced two doing work models. Shand utilized one saw for a short time within the use of Manitoba Bridge and Iron Functions and in 1919 he took both working models to British Columbia, looking to spark curiosity about chain saw production.
2 even though the designs had been small with possibly a 24″ knife (little for western coast wood), Shand did grapple because of the issue which had previously thwarted chain saw development — a relatively lightweight source of power. He used a small fuel motor, frequently called a “one-lunger”, which sent capacity to the string through a Bowden cable. Modern as machine ended up being, the industry revealed no curiosity about its manufacturing, and after another 6-year term when it comes to patent, Shand allowed his liberties to lapse in 1930.
3 the notion of a string saw was not new. Inventive thoughts have been working since 1858 whenever Harvey Brown of New York City patented their “endless area sawing mechanism”, the first unit to utilise moving saw bits on helpful information club Further inventions accompanied through the nineteenth and early 20th hundreds of years hut none ended up being effortlessly lightweight because they had been powered by large gas or steam engines. That which was to become the final occasion inside mechanization associated with forests had been remarkably sluggish to build up.
Diagram of Shand’s sequence: cutting teeth had been of “scratch” variety which was the kind utilized until after World War II as soon as the “gouge” type chains were introduced.
4 The answer to an useful chain saw was one in that your gas motor had been a light however essential part of the sequence saw. In 1929 the Reed-Prentice Corporation of Worcester, Mass., started development and also by 1939 had created 10 designs of much too heavy while they had been run on cumbersome 4-cycle engines. Since the anxiety wore on, the lead in the field was taken by a German industrialist, Andreas Stihl, whose headquarters were in Stuttgart. He produced for use by the German Army a much enhanced, light and effective, 2-cycle engine which overcame the situation of many early fuel engines — large weight to horsepower proportion.
5 1936 had been the pivotal point in the development of string saws in British Columbia. The logging business had been coping with the constraints of he anxiety but per guy fallage prices had been dropping as loggers, depleting easy to get at huge wood stands, were obligated to cut smaller trees on more rugged terrain. On top of that logging organizations had been having increasing trouble finding employees willing to use the old-fashioned cross-cut saw at the same time when various other areas of industry had become mechanized. This situation had been specially important with companies like Bloedel, Stewart and Welch which needed to transfer the greater amount of sophisticated labour of metropolitan areas to exert effort their remote logging businesses; these men had been less happy to use hand-falling methods than were their rural counterparts. The full time had been propitious for experiments with brand-new methods and new equipment.
6 the possibility regarding the power saw within the forests had been getting understood in 1936. Progress was in fact made in the Ca redwoods with big gasoline-driven drag saws. But this development wasn’t appropriate British Columbia. a Ca logger would-be content to haul this large machine through the redwoods as he had to cut just a few trees each and every day; in British Columbia as much as forty or fifty trees needed to be felled to achieve the same economy in terms of board feet dropped.
7 In 1936 the Pacific Logging Congress in Eureka, Ca, made the introduction of a practical sequence saw important. Reports for the successful use of a Dow sequence saw in Ca in 1933-34 had been motivating. The successful demonstration regarding the German Stihl saw prompted the assembly to anticipate enthusiastically that “day of the faller and bucker, a few of the most skilful and picturesque figures in the woods are over except in little functions”.
The German Stihl saw bought in 1938 by Wellburn Timbers Ltd. It is now into the number of B.C. woodland Museum, Duncan, B.C.
Resource: B.C. Provincial Museum
8 due to an answer passed away within Congress, Bloedel, Stewart & Welch tried two sequence saws at their particular Vancouver Island Franklin River operation: the United states Dow saw and also the German Stihl saw. Quickly other programs were testing out a wide variety of saws, with Stihl being the most accepted. In 1938 Donald J. Smith started a dealership for Stihl saws in Vancouver plus one of his very first consumers had been Wellburn Timbers on Vancouver Island. Even though the “Hitlers”, as they were known to west shore loggers due to their German source, had been available in both gasoline and electric models, the former were more practical for woodland procedure.