RANSOME’S PATENT COMBINED TREE FELLER AND CROSSCUT SAW.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1615, 24 April 1879, Page 3

RANSOME’S PATENT COMBINED TREE FELLER AND CROSSCUT SAW.

Many attempts (says the “ Town and Country Journal ”) have been made, both in England and America, to apply steam machinery to tree felling, but hitherto without success, or, at least, such success as to make it remuneratively supersede the woodman’s axe or cross-cut saw, the machines invented having been so complicated and difficult to move and adjust that a great waste of time in shifting them from tree to tree and preparing them for work, was incurred. It has been estimated that this machine is capable, with the help of four men, to shift it from tree to tree, of doing as much felling per day in a week as could he done by sixty expert woodmen with the axe or cross-cut, although the lime which is required to fell or cross-cut it is less than two minutes; and as the medium size (which will tell trees up to four feet diameter at the bull) weighs less than four hundredweight, it can be readily carried about by four men. It works with incredible rapidity, sawing down an oak or elm tree three feet in diameter in less than

fi'C minutes, and attended by a gang of four men one machine will, with ease, fell eight trees, averaging thirty inches in diameter, in an hour, including the time occupied in moving and fixing it. The machine consists of a steam cylinder of small diameter, having a long stroke, attached to a light wrought iron frame, upon which it is arranged to pivot on i 1 a centre, the pivoting motion being worked by a hand wheel turning a worm which gears into a quadrant cast on the back of the ci Under. The saw is fixed direct to the end of the piston-rod, wldoh is made to travel in a true line by guides, and the teeth of the saw are of sueh a form as to cut only during the inward stroke By this simple device saws as long as nine or ten feet call he worked without any straining apparatus or guide, as its own cut h sufficient to guide the saw in a straight line through the tree, ai d as the teeth offer no resistance to (die outward stroke, all possibility of the saw buckling is avoided. The mactiine is supplied with s'eam at a high pressure from a small portable boiler, through a strong flexible steam-pipe ; and as this may be of considerable lergth, the boiler may remain in one place until the machine has cut down all the trees within a radius which is determined by the length of the pipe. When fixed for felling the machine is merely laid on the ground, and set fast by a strong screw to a trident pointed bar, which is driven firmly into the tree with a few blows of a sledge hammer. When fixed for cross-cutting it is held to the tree by a hinged dog-hook driven into the log close to the saw. The chief advantages claimed for this machine by its inventors are—--Ist. That it effects a great economy of labor, as one machine attended by a gang of four men will do more work than forty woodmen. 2nd. That it effects a great economy of timber, for as it saws the tree off close to the ground, it saves in every tree of two or three feet in diameter several cubic feet of the best part of the wood, which would be cut into chips if felled by the axe.

Last winter this machine was exhibited at work in the presence of Mr Gladstone —the noted tree-felling statesman —and though it might seem something like adding insult to injury to ask a man to witness the success of an invention which would leave him without his favorite occupation, still the hon. gentleman was warm in his admiration, and gave it as bis opinion that the steam treofeller would do as much work in a minute as a woodman with an axe could do in an hour. It is probable that this machine will be found particularly valuable in the forests of New South Wales, because the timber is generally large and of a hard nature, while manual labor is excessively costly.