Felling Trees Electrically.--"Burn 'em down with hot wires," is the advice of H. W. Bousman, General Electric engineer, when it comes to felling trees or pruning jobs about your property.
Mr. Bousman recently felled a large tree by the "hot-wire" method in his back yard at lO4 Collins Street, Scotia. And the project was so successful that he plans to eliminate another undesirable tree on his property, by the same method.
"It was a simple task," he says. "I had a large black locust tree which needed to be eliminated in order to improve my landscaping, but it was too near the house to be chopped down--not to mention the danger involved for such an inexperienced lumberjack.
"Neighbors had told me that professionals had rather high charges to fell trees of the same size on their property, so I rigged up a contraption to burn them down with hot wires. And it worked wonderfully."
Mr. Bousman felled the tree in sections, first burning off the upper branches, then parts of the Io-inch trunk.
Nichrome wire, which can be made "red hot" and still maintain its mechanical strength while being pulled through the timber, was attached in a semi-circle to the branches. A transformer was then connected with the wires in order to get high current at low voltage, he said, and then it was just a matter of "turning on the juice."
Weights were used to pull the burning wires through the wood. While Mr. Bousman allowed the small branches to fall freely as the hot wire cut its way through, he explained that it was necessary to tie ropes around the trunk sections and then to adjoining trees in order to have them fall without damaging his home or other trees.
"The hot-wire system," he said, "does the job accurately and at the same time eliminates all personal danger to the worker."
Burning off the small limbs was a rather rapid process, but it required all night for the wires to cut through the trunk, the diameter of which was approximately IO inches.
"As soon as I am able to purchase a transformer," said Bousman, "I plan to fell other trees on my property, as well as lend the apparatus to some neighbors who wish to fell trees after witnessing my demonstration."
Mr. Bousman said he also has another useful idea for his device. This winter he plans to use the hot-wire system for thawing the ice from around his garage doors.
"I expect to make a permanent installation with some resistant alloy at the base of the doors," he said. "Then when we have a freeze and the garage doors stick, as they did many times last winter, all I will have to do is turn on the hot-wire system for a neat thawing job.