History of logging

History of axe

The first heavy axe was just a crudely sharpened stone. Such a tool (its history, according to different sources, dates back to 800 to 400 thousand years ago) was used as a hammer, chisel, scraper or weapon. If we believe that a handle is a necessary requisite of a hammer, this invention will get a lot younger. Axe-handle is only 30 thousand years old. Axe is the first two-part tool. Actually, to connect two elements turned out to be quite a complicated engineering task. This is why they were initially tied together with animal tendons or leather strips. As soon as the mankind mastered the art of melting metals, people started making copper axe-handles.

Among such first inventions there is a toothed axe with a narrow oblong blade oriented across the handle. Man started using an axe to fell trees considerably later, in the late 8th century. Rapid development of European civilization brought about the need for clearing large areas covered by dense forests. The Middle Ages saw the invention of a curved handle. This feature made an axe an even more popular loggers’ tool.

Mass production of axe as a felling tool started in the United States in 1830s. The Collins brothers' axes, whose blade's weight was equal to the weight of a handle, had dominated the market till 1880s, when they were essentially superseded by a power saw.

History of saw

It is believed that saw had been invented before any historic records were made. Among the earliest specimens, there are stone pieces with notched edges. They were mostly used for making an ornament on a bone or a soft stone. Ancient Egyptians made saws from bronze with diamonds and other precious stones as teeth. Teeth of the ancient Egyptian saws were inclined towards the handle allowing for improved cutting traction. Saws of this type are still used in the East.

Ancient Greeks and Romans believed that first saws had been made by the will of gods using mandibles and vertebral columns of large fish. In the Bronze Age, saws were made from bronze, and in the Iron Age — from iron, with a relatively convenient handle of a foxtail type. Only after people started forging iron could saws compete with axes. Appearance of first iron saws dates from around 50 B.C.

For many years of their history, people have been successfully using bow-saws. In our country, it was still possible to find them in the post-war period. Their thin blades made from alloyed steel had an interesting feature — the back thicker than its cutting part with a complex teeth profile.

In late 1920s — early 1930s, Swedish Sandviken manufactured spring-mounted Kompis saws functioning in the following way: First, a rod was set against a tree trunk and then the former was fitted with a return spring. The other end of the saw was connected to a single-handed hack-saw, which was pulled to one side by a logger and to the other — by a spring.

History of saw-mills

One of the first saw-mills appeared in Germany in 1322. It was a saw-mill of a hydraulic type. Soon, similar saws started to be used in Holland. In English-speaking countries, saw-mills came into use with difficulty. The first saw-mill mounted by Germans on the British Isles in 1633 awaited a gloomy fate — it had been destroyed by insurgent loggers. They called tools developed as a result of a technological progress the devil's invention since they threatened their wages and well-being.

Unlike in England, the first American saw-mill built in 1631 on the Salmon Falls river (now South Berwick, Maine) did not meet such resistance. The saw-mill in Maine, as well all the successive ones built in the course of two centuries, was of a reciprocal type.

The first saw-mill appeared in New Orleans. However, it awaited the same sad fate — it was also destroyed by loggers.

Felling equipment

First felling equipment appeared in the middle of the 19th century. For instance, the device invented by an American engineer Hamilton in 1861, involved two workers rotating with handles a toothed fly-wheel, thus bringing a saw blade into reciprocal motion. Around the same time, Russian inventor Zhouravsky presented for the first time a saw with a toothed disk as a cutting tool. It was mounted on a frame sliding horizontally on two grooves and rotated by a hand drive.

Band saws

The first band saw consisted of an endless steel band with teeth set along one edge, the band saw form was patented in Great Britain in 1808. However, band saw came into use in logging industry only in the last quarter of the 19th century. Nowadays, various types of band saws are used all over the world, starting with a thread-thin ones and finishing with immense saws with a length of fifteen meters and width of one-third of a meter, rotating on pulleys with a diameter of two and a half meters and a speed of five hundred revolutions per minute. Such saws possess excellent technical characteristics and can saw logs with a high speed. Modern band saws are fitted with teeth on both sides and can saw in both directions.

Electric saws

In Germany, in the early 20th century, a method of tree-felling with electricity was invented. First, steel wire was wound around a tree trunk. Then, an electric motor was switched on and the wire started rotating quickly like a conveyor belt. Heated by current and friction, it charred the wood and easily cut the trunk. Danger of fire was practically excluded, since the wire was not red-hot. Appearance of electric motors opened new possibilities for creation of various types of saws. The simplest saw was arguably developed by mechanic Kharlamov from Arkhangelsk, Russia, in 1936. It consisted of a frame-mounted electric motor with an elongated shaft fitted with a conic friction roller touching upon a saw disk and bringing it into rotation. The Kharlamov saw was usually operated by a motor-mechanic with an assistant.

The effort of combining merits of a bow-saw with possibilities of an electric drive resulted in the appearance of quite interesting inventions. The bow-saw turned out to be the most productive one, since it had a cutting section in the form of an endless band stretched on the pulleys. One of the pulleys had a wire attached to it from an electric motor drive. This machine was worked out by researchers from Sverdlovsk Forestry Engineering Institute in the 1940s.

Cutting chains

However, neither a disk, nor a band, not even a ring-shaped blade came to be the basis of modern portable power saws. In fact, it was a cutting chain first proposed by an American Brown already in 1858. His contemporaries failed to fully appreciate both his invention and its main merit — compactness. Maybe, Brown himself could hardly imagine that first production samples of such saws would appear only in several decades. They were rather heavy, bulky and hard to operate alone. A case in point, Sector power-saw developed in the 1920-1930s by a Swedish engineer Westfelt. Its cutting chain stretched on the triangular contour through chain-wheels (one of them driving) was driven by a gasoline engine through a bevel drive and a long shaft. An interesting thing, — a crew operating the Swedish saw consisted of at least three loggers. The most popular saw among Russian loggers in the 1930s was VAKOPP electric saw whose name had been made of the first letters of its inventors' names. This saw turned out to be simpler, easier-to-use and lighter than its predecessors. Later, researchers of the Moscow Forestry Engineering Institute fitted their Karelka saw with an engine with an increased current frequency of 200 to 400Hz. However, the technique using a cantilever chain blade made a somewhat better showing. This was the component included in the electric saws provided to fellers in the 1950s.

Gasoline saw

However, among the most popular there were power saws with gasoline engines, which in the course of time practically superseded electrical ones. Usually, an engine was placed on the one side of the saw chain, and a strainer with a lubrication system — on the other. The main advantage of gasoline saws in comparison with electric saws was in their autonomy — they did not depend on an exterior power source and did not need a supplying cable. Even nowadays, legendary Drouzhba (Friendship) gasoline saw, which was named in commemoration of the 300th anniversary of the Union of Ukraine and Russia, is widely used in rural areas. Being simple and reliable, this saw has become for many years the main tool of our loggers. Later, it was superseded by a more efficient and powerful Ural power saw, the main composition of which was in many ways similar to Drouzhba saw.

Winches

Among the first mechanical facilities, winches, which had been initially manufactured for peat development, came to be employed on logging sites in the 1930s. They had been further upgraded and used for timber hauling, storage and loading.

Skidding tractors

In the course of time, ground-based fuel-powered facilities — caterpillar tractors — were connected to the winches. These were mostly machines with a capacity of 60 to 80 hp. Following the World War II, George Yakovlevich Kotin, the famous creator of legendary T-34 tank, developed with his colleagues, specialists in tank-building, on the order from Soviet government the first logging machine practically over a period of two years. The tractor was equipped with a suction gas engine operating on fuel chocks. The fuel chocks were 50mm × 50mm blocks normally cut from birch which has a high calorific value and is less demanded as compared to lumber or saw logs of other species. Production of KT-12 logging tractors was commissioned to Kirovsky Machine Plant in Leningrad. Later, the low-power KT-12 was superseded by TDT-40 with a more powerful diesel engine. The documentation prepared for production of a new tractor was handed over to a newly renovated Minsk Tractor Plant. Apart from tractor skidding, a considerable volume of skidding was animal-drawn. It was based on the use of special carts and devices. For this purpose, lifting tongs were manufactured. Animal skidding acwas very efficient- 7.5 to 20 c.m. of timber per shift, depending on the volume of stored raw-materials and distance. Later on, mass production of skidding tractors was carried out on the basis of Onezhsky Armory Plant. Onezhsky Tractor Plant became a worldwide leader in logging tractor-building. Its most popular model was TDT-55, legendary make No.55. Over 50 years, the plant manufactured over 300 thousand logging tractors and frames for various forestry machines, which increased logging volumes in the USSR up to 400 million cubic meters per year.

Wheelbase tractors

Further development of machine-building allowed usage of more environment-friendly logging techniques. In this connection, starting from the 1960s, the world experienced a global intensification of wheelbase tractor construction. Invention of artificial rubber, as well as new tire production techniques with improved traction of different profile and pressure allowed for creation of new movers and increasingly versatile machines. Wheeled tractors are faster and more mobile in comparison with a caterpillar tractor, thus inflicting less damage to forest soil and vegetation.

Logging combines

Subsequently, the logging process concentrated on the development of logging combines, first bulky and clumsy, but then year after year getting more and more sophisticated. In the 1980-1990s most of the machine-building companies started to manufacture precisely this type of multifunctional machines. This is the way the logging machine-building developed in Finland, Germany, Canada and USA.