VIDEO LINK:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwHjaNt4vdxyWFg4Wm5CZkdiTHM/view?usp=sharing
CTV REGIONAL CONTACT(JOEL HASLAM):MAY 29TH/2010, 6:30PM , MUSEUM VISIT, INTERVIEW AND CHAINSAW EXHIBIT.
ARTICLE,HISTORY,EXHIBITS AND INTERVIEW WITH "CTV REGIONAL CONTACT".
Picture: Joel Haslam, Me and Peter the camera man.
Picture: Joel Haslam, Me and Peter the camera man.
FARMSHOW NEWSPAPER MAGAZINE: ARTICLE ON THE MARCH 2010 ISSUE BY DEE GOERGE, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR.
THE STEAM DONKEY
An endless variety of steam, gas, diesel, or electric power plants, plus drums to hold wire rope; all used to haul logs from the woods, to load at landings, move equipment, rig up trees, and in the old days , to lower cars down inclines... The most common makes were Seattle, Portland, Tacoma, named after iron works in those cities, Vulcan, Smith and Watson, and others named after the company which built them... 26 different types of steam donkeys were built in the Pacific Northwest by one firm alone. In 1913, one company built 51 donkeys in a 49 day period, all sold before they left the plant to fill rush orders...Donkey was a term originally applied to a little steam engine of less than one horsepower. A man by the name of Dolbeer adapted a ships capstan for his logging rig, and it is possible that he also brought along the seafaring term for the engine itself.Steam logging equipment has marked our journey through time as the West Coast became part of national industrialization. The use of steam donkeys in particular were machines that typified the heyday of logging in the West, machines whose power and grace left a mark on the men as well as the mountains. Those steam donkeys that still exist create a three dimensional scrapbook of history. Donkeys are, in fact, a link to the "glory days of logging," as one writer put it. Those who worked the "big woods" around the steamers speak of a time, now gone forever, with reverent nostalgia. However, it is not necessary to be a steam logging equipment lover to morn the demise of steam donkeys. You don't even have to like donkeys or logging history, but it is important to realize that: (1) of the thousands that were built during the age of steam, only thirty some remain in Oregon. (2) Of those remaining in Oregon, few are anywhere near operating condition. (3) Only a few donkeys built during this time period up to 1930, were not steam powered. How could these machines have disappeared so fast? Why have the traces been almost totally erased? Were the Willamette Two-Speeds, the Lidgerwood skidders, and the duplex loaders only devices used to transport logs from stump to railroad, useful then, but now forgotten? ...MERV JONHSON.
UNDERWATER TREE CUTTING.
A submersible robot called the Sawfish can harvest healthy timber from long-forgotten underwater forests. Clear-cutting never looked so green. Up From the Deep: Piloted by a joystick jockey at the surface of the water, the Sawfish can cut 250 trees in eight hours. 1) COMMAND AND CONTROL: Lowered into the water by a crane, the sub connects to a diesel generator on the surface with a 720-foot cord. Inside a container on the barge, a pilot (inset) scans video from eight under-water cameras and maneuvers the Sawfish with a joystick. 2) ROAM: The ROV has a 75-HP engine and seven directional thrusters, allowing it to move safely through treacherous terrain. 3) CUT: To fell a tree, the Sawfish clasps the trunk with its steel pincers so its 54-inch chain saw can rip through the wood. 4) RETRIEVE: Waterlogged wood doesn't float, so the Sawfish screws airbags into the tree trunks using a hydraulic ratchet. The buoyant bags raise the trunks to the surface. 5) STORE: A tugboat rigged with a pair of hydraulic claws drags cut logs onto one of several floating storage bunks. I’m standing on a steel barge in the center of Ootsa Lake, a 154-square-mile reservoir in northwestern British Columbia. A chafing wind blows from the west, where the snowy, nearly treeless slopes of the Kitimat Range vanish into overcast skies. I jump as a voice booms over the outdoor PA system: “Clear to cut!” A few seconds later, a massive spruce tree erupts from the murky water.Two hundred feet below, a remotely operated vehicle dubbed the Sawfish is wielding a 54-inch-long chain saw. On the deck of the barge, an operator sits inside a cramped, dimly lit control room made from a shipping container. He’s maneuvering the Sawfish with a joystick, and his eyes are locked on a video feed of footage from eight underwater cameras embedded in the contraption. A generator delivers power to the sub through a 720-foot-long high-voltage cable that also encloses a set of fiber-optic lines to transmit guidance commands from the pilot.If you’re on the shoreline or live nearby, underwater timber harvesting is remarkably quiet: no screaming chain saws or smoke-belching heavy machinery. In a steady, splashing procession, tree after tree bobs to the surface, where a small tugboat rigged with a pair of hydraulic claws grabs the trunks and tows them into something called a bunk, a partly submerged U-shaped cradle. I can see three bunks from the barge. Each stores up to 300 trees and can be raised onto a second transport barge that holds up to 1,000 logs. The Sawfish and its four-person crew will fill it in just four days.This unusual harvesting method is made possible by a submersible that can probe the deepest reservoirs for under-water trees to cut and deliver to the surface. It was developed by Chris Godsall, the 38-year-old founder and CEO of Triton Logging. The company is based near Victoria, but the principal underwater logging operation is at Ootsa Lake, almost 750 miles to the north. The lake was formed in 1954, when Alcan, the world’s second-largest aluminum producer, built a hydroelectric dam here to power its smelter. The water behind the dam flooded millions of lodgepole pine, spruce, Douglas fir, and hemlock trees, leaving some $1.2 billion worth of timber preserved in a kind of suspended animation. In the cold, dark, oxygen-poor water, tree wood won’t decay for thousands of years. And Ootsa is one of 45,000 spots around the globe where dams have inundated valleys and submerged vast forests. By some estimates, there is $50 billion worth of marketable timber at the bottom of these man-made lakes. Godsall is quick to point out that he has the only technology able to retrieve it.To gather up a few logs, it might seem like lunacy to deploy the same kind of sophisticated and pricey ROVs used to explore the Titanic or investigate 9,000-foot-deep geothermal vents along the mid-Atlantic seafloor. But do the math and Godsall’s method starts to make good financial sense. Operated by just one person, a so-called feller buncher—the fastest and cheapest way to harvest timber on land—can cut at least 500 trees a day. But then it takes an additional three-member crew up to three weeks to trim and load the trees for transport. A single Sawfish is more efficient. It may clear only 250 trees in an eight-hour shift with four crew members, but there’s no need to skid the logs down a hillside and truck them to a mill. Instead, a barge delivers the trees to the mill faster and more cheaply, and because they’ve been submerged they’re generally already stripped of foliage and bark. A Sawfish, including the control room, tool shop, and power generator, costs $800,000 to $1 million, depending on the gadgetry packed into the ROV. That’s significantly less than the onetime equipment cost of roughly $1.5 million needed to run a comparable feller buncher operation. Add up all the numbers and, while conventional harvesting costs about $50 per cubic meter of wood, Peter Keyes, an executive at a global timber wholesaler and marketer, estimates Godsall’s cost at closer to $40. “Sure, there are big R&D costs to pay down,” Keyes says. “But the technology has given Godsall access to all these trees as if they were on land. It’s like finding a new penny.”There are environmental advantages to the Sawfish method as well. Conventional aboveground harvesting contributes to deforestation, a cause of global warming that’s responsible for the release of 25 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions. But because underwater trees are already dead, cutting them down doesn’t worsen the situation. And with underwater logging, there are no unsightly clear-cuts and no spotted owls to worry about.I first meet Godsall when he arrives at my motel in Burns Lake, a soggy, desolate logging outpost about a two-hour drive from Ootsa. Tall and lean, with neatly combed brown hair, he’s wearing tennis shoes, faded jeans, and a blue windbreaker. Later, as we drive through dense forestlands in his rented sedan, Godsall tells me how he got interested in trees. Nine years ago, while working as a marketing consultant in Toronto, he took on a client in the log salvage business. Wet Wood Underwater Fibre Recovery employed loggers to search riverbeds and shallow lakes for sunken timber with potential market value. Eventually, Godsall signed on with Wet Wood full-time as general manager. He soon realized that hunting for a log here and there wasn’t exactly the way to rake in the dough. It was akin to collecting soda cans for the five cent return deposit—profit margins were slim, and the work was tedious and time-consuming. Also, it could be unpopular with the public because scouring lake beds can upset ecosystems, churning up silt and debris that then threaten fish and wildlife.One day during a meeting, a client showed Godsall an image of an underwater forest at the bottom of a reservoir. “I had become so obsessed with retrieving lost logs that the picture of a whole forest of trees under-water seemed at once surreal, obscene, and too good to be true. I was convinced it was trick photography.” But the photo was genuine, and a few weeks later Godsall approached his bosses with a question: “Why are we hunting for sunken logs when there are entire forests waiting to be reclaimed?” Godsall suggested they build technology to go after all the standing underwater timber in the world. Everyone just laughed. Godsall resigned two days later, and in May 2000 he launched Triton.Godsall is from a clan of overachievers—his father, he says, is a “compulsive entrepreneur”; his mother, an “extremely creative” art gallery owner. One brother is a Hollywood director; another battles infectious diseases in Africa. But building a new, unproven technology from scratch made him nervous. “I am not an engineer,” he admits. “It was one thing to have a good idea, quite another to execute it.” He assembled a design team from a cross-section of fields, including commercial aviation, undersea exploration, and marine biology—there was even an engineer from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.During his years as a consultant, Godsall had seen all sorts of contraptions and schemes for retrieving sunken logs—submersible cranes, scuba divers with pneumatic chain saws, and a “tree mower” that was dragged like a straight razor along shallow lake beds. Most didn’t work, some were extremely dangerous, and very few could go much deeper than 60 feet. But Godsall knew that in Ootsa, nearly three-quarters of the good timber is more than 60 feet below the surface. “We had to make that our territory,” he says.The team needed to invent something totally new—like the Sawfish. About the size of a VW bus and painted bright yellow, the sub can dive to 1,100 feet—deeper than any reservoir on earth—and fell a tree in two seconds. Besides advanced video imaging, sonar, and GPS capabilities, the ROV has a 75-horsepower engine and seven directional thrusters, making it extremely agile. And the vehicle is robust enough to withstand an errant tree toppling on it underwater. The Sawfish has a set of 52-inch-long lobsterlike steel pincers used to attach the ROV to the base of a tree while cutting. A powerful waterproof chain saw, mounted on a hinged mechanical arm, can slash through trunks up to 8 feet wide.Perhaps the most ingenious innovation, though, is Godsall’s solution for bringing trees to the surface. Underwater timber is waterlogged and doesn’t float. So the Sawfish attaches airbags to each tree before cutting it. Using a mouse, keypad, and joystick, a remote pilot can load an airbag on a chain-driven conveyer belt located inside the belly of the Sawfish, then engage a hydraulic ratchet that ejects the bag, screws it onto a tree trunk, and fills it with 5 cubic feet of air. After the log floats to the surface, a tugboat drags it into a storage bunk, and a crew member removes the reusable bag. The Sawfish can deploy up to 50 airbags before engineers have to raise it for a refill.In August 2002, preparing for its maiden voyage, Triton engineers loaded the Sawfish onto the back of a semi and hauled the sub 14 hours to Ootsa Lake. “We cut the first tree and everybody cheered,” Godsall recalls. “We cut another tree and everybody cheered. Then we cut a third tree and the Sawfish broke and everybody went home.” There were other setbacks—airbags exploded, the Sawfish got its tether lines wrapped around branches—but Godsall persisted. To work out the kinks, he raised more money (for a total of roughly $1.2 million) and built a floating R&D lab on a reservoir near Triton’s headquarters.Triton now operates two Sawfish vehicles on Ootsa Lake, and Godsall plans to build 10 more. He aims to harvest 45,000 trees a year in Ootsa Lake and hundreds of thousands more in other reservoirs. The timing is perfect: Demand for decks, hardwood floors, and roofs crafted from sustainable timber is increasing. Just as organic food swept into grocery stores in the 1990s, Godsall is planning to line the lumber aisles of Home Depot and Lowe’s with underwater-harvested timber. He’s also talking to Ikea about an exclusive deal to provide wood for tables and chairs. And the Triton logo is becoming an “Intel Inside”-type seal that retailers can slap on products to attract green-minded buyers. A study by the Forest Stewardship Council, a nonprofit based in Germany, says the market for so-called good wood, which includes underwater logs, grew 25 percent in each of the previous two years to hit $5 billion in 2005.Godsall is also eager to expand operations beyond Canada. He recently met with reservoir managers in the US, Australia, South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia to broker additional deals. One project involves clearing trees from the bottom of Volta Lake in Ghana, where seasonal drops in the water level bring submerged timber dangerously close to the surface. Trees have punctured holes in boats and passenger ferries sinking them and killing hundreds of people in the past four years alone.Most salvage loggers believe that reservoirs conceal 200 million to 300 million trees worldwide. “That’s a low estimate,” Godsall says. “We’re continually discovering reservoirs with trees in them. There’s one in Brazil called Tucurui with $1 billion worth of timber.” Eastern Europe is another untapped frontier: “It has the largest reservoirs with the most trees.” But pinpointing underwater forests is tricky. Godsall’s team studies old maps that show where forests once stood. They also use specialized sonar to verify the existence of trees and underwater cameras to identify the variety—spruce, pine, fir, or rare hardwoods such as teak and ebony. Some species are more valuable than others, and Godsall wants the sticks that will bring in the most money.To snag the best logs, Godsall hires people who know trees and can make snap decisions about wood quality based on a quick scan of underwater camera footage. Take Josh Chernov, a marine biologist and one of Triton’s five pilots. He’s inside the Sawfish’s control room atop the barge, watching six LCD panels relay video from the submerged cameras. Sitting in a Star Trek-style captain’s chair, he uses a joystick to zoom around a stand of valuable lodgepole pines at the bottom of Ootsa Lake, ignoring nearby timber of lesser value. There’s a muffled whir in the corner from the 2.8-GHz off-the-shelf Wintel PC—that’s the Sawfish brain. Chernov clicks a button on the joystick to toggle between video feeds, panning a front-mounted camera across the lake bed. The scene is eerie: A lost forest beckons from the shadowy depths, ancient giants still standing proud in the 46-degree-Fahrenheit water.At the moment, however, Chernov is about to slice through the 3-foot-wide trunk of a lodgepole pine. He deftly glides the Sawfish to the base of the tree, where it hovers a few feet above the lake bed before clasping onto the trunk with its pincers. While the Sawfish clutches the tree, Chernov switches to a different camera, this time with a view from behind the hydraulic airbag ratchet. From this angle, I can see a column of fluorescent airbags stacked single file in a storage compartment. Another click on the joystick and the ratchet telescopes forward, snagging an airbag, bolting it to the tree, then inflating it.He radios over the PA: “Clear to cut?” “Roger, clear to cut,” a deckhand calls.Chernov starts the chain saw, which swings out from inside the nose cone of the Sawfish and slices through the trunk in seconds. Because the airbag is affixed to the base of the trunk, the tree inverts 180 degrees before beginning its ascent. I step out of the control room and onto the deck just as it bursts through the surface of the water. “It’s kind of like watching the Apollo rockets go up,” says Dave Menzies, a Sawfish operator who spent 20 years as a pilot for a commuter airline before joining Triton. Moments later, another log appears, then another. There is enough timber in Ootsa Lake to keep the Sawfish busy for 50 years—and plenty more lumber in Panama, Malaysia, and other countries where Godsall hopes to begin harvesting by 2008.“Mother Nature never intended for trees to be underwater,” Godsall says. But that’s where forest after forest has ended up. He still marvels at the perfect preservation of the submerged trees. Just waiting, he says, to be harvested guilt free and for profit, by the Sawfish. Michael Behar (michael@michaelbehar.com)
PNEUMATIC AIR SAW:
There are no information about air saws to my knowledge simply because the production was not intended for common residential use or commercial use. This is currently under development…….
http://quasiturbine.promci.qc.ca/EProductQT75SCChainsawPneu.htm
Pneumatic Chain Saw: TYPE A IngersollMANUFACTURED BY:WOLF (Reed Prentice Corp.)INTRODUCED:1927MOTOR:Ingersoll Rand
OLD PICTURE AIR SAW INGERSOLL.
Reed-Prentice/Timberhog were made only on special order request mainly for industrial use with specific contracts and quantities for the military (WW2) and underwater tree cuts when flooding an area for hydro-electric dam in the north. Contractors used them to salvage good trees cut to sell in the paper mills. To operate, they required around 70 cfm and were hook up to a portable engine/compressor/ air hose on a trailer attached to a “jeep” or an “all terrain vehicle”. For the military , they used them for land and road access in the wars …. building temporary bridges for crossing rivers and cutting trees underwater. This is why they are so rare and finding a good one in decent shape is a bit tough.The “Wright” air saw (and gas saw) since it had reciprocating blades needed no oiling and was used by butchers and ice block cutters on lakes…..again mostly for industrial use.
The new "green solution" is to salvage all the trees that have been left uderwater when doin hydro dam contruction. Using mechanized robots (deep water recovery) or pneumatic saws is the way to go.
SOME OF MY SAWS IN MUSEUMS AROUND THE WORLD.
SIR WILLIAM PRICE MUSEUM, JONQUIERE,QUEBEC,CANADA
Centre d'Histoire Sir-William-Price
1994 Rue Price
Jonquière, QC G7X 7X8
Canada
Centre d'Histoire Sir-William-Price1994 Rue PriceJonquière, QC G7X 7X8 ,Canada
WEB PAGE:sirwilliamprice.com
+1 418-695-7278
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TMS MUSEUM IN SLOVANIA
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VLADO-MUSEUM CURATORCatskill's Finest Seasoned Fireplace Wood-NY
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GEORGE BABA....Williams Lake , British Columbia ...........MALL 6
FARM SHOW AND EXHIBITS IN FRANCE
Memory lane Heritage village, Nov-Scotia, Canada
ARTICLE IN NOVA-SCOTIA...IN PROGRESS BY Gordon HammondSpecial Projects Voluntee
Lake Charlotte Area Heritage Society
5435 Clam Harbour rd.
Lake Charlotte, Nova-Scotia
1-877-287-0697
In Search of Nova Scotia’s First Chainsaw
By Gordon Hammond, Lake Charlotte Area Heritage Society, January 2015
The motivation for this brief review of the introduction of chainsaws into Nova Scotia was a project commenced by the Lake Charlotte Area Heritage Society in 2014 to restore the Society’s woodworking and metalworking shop within Memory Lane Heritage Village to what might have been in existence in the area prior to July 1 1950.
In order to plan the restoration, research was undertaken to determine what kind of woodworking and metalworking shops existed in the surrounding area between 1940 and 1950. One aspect of this research was to determine if chainsaws might have been used in local forestry operations and thus could have been found in association with a local sawmill or wood manufacturing operation.
An on-line search for relevant information did not produce any directly applicable results. Similarly, a search at the Provincial Archives of Nova Scotia produced a negative result. However, an appeal via an interview with the local CBC morning radio program was more successful, leading to Mr. Alain Lamothe, a chainsaw collector, restorer and researcher who owns a private chainsaw museum in Ottawa .
Mr. Lamothe, along with Mike Acres of Vancouver, who runs the Chainsaw Collectors Corner are the deans of chainsaw history in Canada and a fount of accurate knowledge and a willingness to share this knowledge. With the help of these two men and a copy of “Chainsaws – A History” , researched and written by David Lee in conjunction with Mike Acres, the search began.
The first key piece of information is that any chainsaws purchased and used in Nova Scotia prior to July 1 1950 would likely have come from one of the few Canadian chainsaw manufacturers who actively sold their product right across the country. It is possible that an American-manufactured saw might have been acquired by itinerant Canadian loggers working in the US, or through friends and family in the US, but probably not through an American manufacturer distributing their saws within Nova Scotia, as no such arrangement is known to have existed at that time.
The manufacture of chainsaws in Canada essentially begins in 1939 with the advent of WW2 and the consequent stoppage of Imported chainsaws from Germany. German chainsaws, particularly those made by Stil and Dolmar, were recognized as some of the best in the world and were available in Canada from about 1936 onwards. But it was not until 1937, when Andreas Stihl signed an agreement with the D. J. Smith Company of Vancouver as his North American distributor, that sales increased. By 1939, on the eve of WW2, just one of the leading west coast logging companies had thirty two-man Stihl machines at work.
As the North American distributor for Stilhl saws, the D. J. Smith Company had developed the capacity to repair Stihl saws and to make parts from scratch if parts were not speedily available from Germany. Thus the company was well positioned to start building its own saws, essentially duplicating the Stihl saws, when WW2 commenced in 1939 and the importation of German-made saws stopped.
With the advent of WW2 the forest industry of Canada expanded rapidly and because the trees on the west coast were generally much larger than those in central and eastern Canada, there was a market for the heavy, expensive, two-man saws with long bars that were then state-of-the-art. Lighter, one-man saws with shorter bars, more suited to the smaller trees supplying the forest industry of central and eastern Canada, were not developed until 1946.
The wartime years saw a proliferation of chainsaw development and manufacturing in Canada, primarily but not exclusively, in Vancouver. The D. J. Smith Company was taken over by Reed-Prentice, a major American saw manufacturer, in 1940, producing both American-designed saws as well developing a number of its own design. Then, in 1943, the ownership of the D. J. Smith Company changed hands again when it was purchased from Reed-Prentice by a consortium of Vancouver businessmen who renamed it Industrial Engineering Limited (IEL). Don J. Smith, as a part owner of the D. J. Smith Company, took his proceeds from the sale of the company and moved to Guelph, Ontario, where he founded Hornet Industries Ltd. During this same time period another Vancouver-based manufacturer, Power Machinery Ltd. was established, and in 1947 issued its first chainsaw. The only other known Canadian chainsaw manufacturer in business prior to 1950 was Precision Parts Limited, located in Montreal.
Thus it is probable that any chainsaw purchased in Nova Scotia prior to July 1 1950 would have been made by Industrial Engineering Limited (IEL), Hornet Industries Ltd., Power Machinery Ltd., or Precision Parts Limited.
The possibilities for Industrial Engineering Limited (IEL) saws are: • Model L, two-man saw, 1944-47 • Model F, two-man saw, 1944-47 • Model G, two-man saw, 1947-48 • Model M, two-man saw, 1947-49 • Beaver, one-man saw, 1946-48 • AB Pioneer, one-man saw, 1948-50 The possibilities for Hornet Industries Ltd. saws are: • Model HJ, one/two-man saw , 1946 • Model DJ-3500H, one-man saw, 1948 • Model D, one/two-man saw, 1948 • Model DJ-3600H, one-man saw, 1950
The possibilities for Power Machinery Ltd. saws are: • Universal, one-man saw, 1946 • Universal A, one-man saw, 1948 • Woodboss, one-man saw, 1949 • Redhead, one/two-man saw, 1950
The possibilities for Precision Parts Limited saws are: • Type 1, one-man bow saw, 1946 -1952 • Type 2, one-man saw, 1946 - 1955 • Type 3, two-man saw, 1946 - 1950
However, there is still a possibility that a US-manufactured saw might have made its way to Nova Scotia prior to 1950. There was a surplus of saws in the US at the end of WW2 and well-established work and family connections between the Maritimes and the US east coast. The most likely possibilities are saws made by Disston, Titan, McCulloch or Mall.
As of January 2015, the earliest chainsaw in Nova Scotia for which there is a solid provenance is a Hornet Industries’ Model HJ one/two-man chainsaw, serial number 5219, purchased in the summer of 1947 . The saw was purchased for $290 (roughly equivalent to 25 weeks of pay at that time) by A. C. Decker and Sons, who used it to cut large yellow-birch trees at River Lake near Mooseland. This saw is still in the possession of Henry Decker of Upper Musquodoboit, now 90 years of age, who remembers the purchase clearly.
In July 1946, Mr. Decker was discharged from the Canadian Army in Halifax, at the age of 21, after returning from service overseas. While serving, he had directed that half of his pay be assigned to his mother in return for a 25% interest in a company his father was forming (A. C. Decker and Sons)
to purchase from receivership a water-powered sawmill near Mooseland. Upon discharge, Mr. Decker went to work for the family company and he clearly recalls that in the summer of 1947 Carney Rector brought the same saw out to where they were working at River Lake. To reach their logging site required a boat trip and the salesman started the saw in the boat, presumably demonstrating how easy it was to start! The ensuing demonstration on the large (3’ diameter ) hardwood trees was successful (although a notch was needed on the largest trees to accommodate the “helper handle” and the company bought the saw on the spot. Mr. Decker recalls that “anything was better than a crosscut saw”, although the purchase had to be approved by his father “who was the boss”. The saw itself was well cared for, being brought back to the bunkhouse every night to be sharpened (they could only afford one chain) and then placed behind the stove where it was warm. In the morning the saw would be taken outside to be started to make sure everything was working well before heading out to work. The saw was used until at least 1951 as Mr. Decker’s mother has an entry in her diary noting that the saw had been used to cut up railroad ties in Middle Musquodoboit.
Mr. Decker does not recall that anyone else had a chainsaw at the time, most people thinking that they were crazy to pay so much money for a saw. However, he does recall that a Doug Glawson of Mooseland did buy one later, and that he thinks the Canadian Lumber Company in Stewiacke might have had some, and that these purchases would probably have been for two-man saws because he does not recall one-man saws being used until about 1954.
The only other pre-1950 saw with a proven Nova Scotia connection is a Hornet Industries Model HJ (the same model as the Decker saw) serial number 4963, now in the collection of Alain Lamothe. This saw was probably purchased by the Heffler Lumber Company of Sackville, Nova Scotia but no other information about this saw is known, other than an un-dated newspaper clipping with the caption “A lumberman at work…Royce Heffler using a Hornet chainsaw, the first commercially available chainsaw in Nova Scotia”. Although the serial number for the Heffler saw is lower than the Decker saw this does not necessarily mean that the Heffler saw is older as the company did not appear to follow a strict serial numbering by model. This without more information about the purchase of this saw we cannot be certain that it was purchased in Nova Scotia or purchased before the Decker saw .
The author of this article is grateful to the Nova Scotia Forest Products Association for circulating this information to its membership to see if they have any additional information that could help document where, when and how chainsaws were first introduced to Nova Scotia. Anyone with any information is asked to contact Gordon Hammond by email at midpoint@ca.inter.net or by mail to 33 Beach Road, Clam Harbour, Nova Scotia, B0J 1Y0. If anyone has a saw that they think is 1950 or earlier please take photographs and look for manufacturer’s serial numbers and send them to me with whatever other information might be available. I will then attempt to date the saw.
Gordon Hammond
Special Projects Volunteer
Lake Charlotte Area Heritage Society
PO Box 1937, Lake Charlotte
Nova Scotia, B0J 1Y0
May 7th 2015
Open house and exhibit at the largest Stihl Dealer in Canada with the President of Stihl, Greg J. Quigg(light blue shirt) and store owner Michel Poirier at TRIOLE/OTTAWA 613-748-3991
Michel Poirier, Me , Greg J. Quigg, president of Stihl Canada.
autograph of carbon blade bar by Hans Peter Stihl given as a gift
Mitchel CYCLE Inc.
road 164 Mitchel,Ontario,Canada
Bartlett Tree Experts
Youngblood Road
Charlotte, NC
HORNET HJ acquired for showroom....(before...saw on the right).
After cleaning and painting...saw ready for shipping.
Publié le 01 juin 2016 à 22h00 | Mis à jour le 01 juin 2016 à 22h00
LIEN :
http://www.lapresse.ca/le-droit/chroniqueurs/denis-gratton/201606/01/01-4987407-passionne-a-la-tronconneuse.php
Passionné à la tronçonneuse
Alain Lamothe possède une collection de 650 scies mécaniques et tronçonneuses.
ETIENNE RANGER, LEDROIT
CHRONIQUE / Le Gatinois Alain Lamothe, 62 ans, a un musée dans la cour-arrière de sa résidence du secteur Aylmer.
En fait, ce n'est pas un musée tel qu'on les connaît. Mais c'est tout comme. Et chaque été, des gens s'arrêtent chez lui pour admirer sa collection plutôt unique et inusitée.
M. Lamothe a dans son hangar l'une des plus imposantes collections de scies à chaîne et de scies mécaniques antiques au monde. Je n'exagère pas: au monde. Sa collection personnelle se chiffre à 650 (!) scies mécaniques et tronçonneuses fabriquées entre 1915 et 1970.
«J'en ai de l'Allemagne, des pays scandinaves, de la Slovénie, de la Russie, d'un peu partout au monde, quoi, dit-il. Je coopère avec les archives nationales, les sociétés d'histoire, des musées et d'autres collectionneurs de scies à chaîne au niveau international. J'échange des pièces de ma collection avec des collectionneurs européens en retour de l'une de leurs pièces. Et j'en ai achetées plusieurs dans des encans aux États-Unis, dans les Maritimes, en Ontario et ailleurs. Et plusieurs musées ont acheté mes scies au fil des années.»
Mais les voisins d'Alain Lamothe n'ont rien à craindre. Ce dernier n'est pas amateur du film Massacre à la tronçonneuse.
Technicien chez Bell Canada à la retraite, M. Lamothe est plutôt un passionné. Un vrai de vrai. Et il connaît son affaire. Il peut vous nommer chacune de ses 650 scies, leur fonctionnement, où elles ont été fabriquées et en quelle année. Il connaît l'historique de pratiquement toutes les compagnies de tronçonneuses de l'époque. Il peut vous dire si une scie à chaîne était populaire ou non à l'époque, et pourquoi. Et je n'ai pas osé lui demander, mais je parierais qu'il connaît le numéro de série de chacune des pièces de sa collection.
«J'ai toujours été passionné de la mécanique de petits moteurs, dit-il. J'avais 13 ans et je réparais des tondeuses dans la cour arrière de la maison de mes parents, à Hull. Ma collection, je l'ai commencée quand mon père m'a donné trois scies à chaîne qu'il avait depuis des années. Mais je dirais que j'ai vraiment eu la piqûre pour ce passe-temps il y a une vingtaine d'années. Je m'amuse. Je suis à la retraite et ça occupe mon temps.»
Alain Lamothe se fait un plaisir de partager sa passion avec les visiteurs.
«J'ouvre mon "musée" à la fin du mois de juin et n'importe qui peut le visiter, c'est gratuit, dit-il. Je ne fais pas ça pour faire de l'argent. Et je ne pense pas que ce serait très payant non plus. Ce n'est pas comme si on fait la file pour le visiter. Mais j'accueille parfois des employés de compagnies d'émondage, des gars de chez Hydro-Québec et des passionnés comme moi. Et ils repartent pas mal impressionnés par ma collection.»
«Mais ce sont surtout des gens d'un certain âge qui s'arrêtent pour voir ça. Les jeunes n'ont pas grand intérêt là-dedans. Je les comprends. Mais en même temps, c'est un peu dommage. Parce que c'est quelque chose d'une autre époque et c'est un peu l'histoire du pays. Et c'est aussi l'histoire de l'Outaouais parce que notre région est intimement liée à l'industrie du bois.
- Mais qu'adviendra-t-il de votre collection, M. Lamothe, quand vous ne serez plus de ce monde?
- Je vais faire ce que d'autres collectionneurs de scies à chaîne de partout au monde ont fait avant moi. Je vais dresser une liste de grands collectionneurs d'un peu partout sur la planète avec qui je fais affaires et je vais donner priorités à ces gens-là. Cette liste sera dans mon testament.
- Et votre épouse en pense quoi de votre collection?
- Elle aime ça. Et elle, sa passion, c'est le scrapbooking. Donc j'ai pris le hangar pour mon musée. Elle a pris le sous-sol de la maison pour son passe-temps. Ce musée m'a donc coûté mon sous-sol», lance-t-il en riant.
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TFO television show 24.7 to be aired on the new season 2016 this fall. (time and dates to come at a later date this summer).
Interview with TFO/Jean Philippe and cameraman Stephane
Showing a COMO/COMET DIESEL CHAINSAW
Opening the museum with more than 650 saws to look at.
Showing some chainsaw signs, a rotary Dolmar KMS4 chainsaw (orange)and the world's largest gear driven saw, a PM (Power Machinery 385) with Jean-Philippe and cameraman Stephane.
TF0: 24:7 preview.......
LE DROIT 27 DECEMBRE 2018 .............TECHNICAL INFORMATION PRECISION ON THE PM UNIVERSAL A.
01-02.June 2019.....journey to Köln ..(15th international oldtimer chainsaw meeting-Köln, Germany) friends collectors.
Guy from France
Jens from Germany
Rene from Switzerland with Precision 2 man saw.
