Keeping hold of the tools of old
From the Autumn 2007 edition of Bush Telegraph Magazine.
The electronic age has brought great changes in the tools that we all use at work every day, and forest management is just the same.
But luckily for the sake of history there are people like Tony Yates, a Forests NSW audit officer, who has a hankering to see that the tools of old are not just discarded and forgotten.
He has collected some of the tools that have been used in Australian forestry over the past century, and would still be useful today.
One of his favourites is the Abney level.
“This is an accurate brass instrument, a square brass tube,” Tony said. “It was used in road surveys, in particular, but wherever you needed to get an angle. The operator looked through the lens at a levelling device inside, which marked off the angle in degrees and minutes on the side.”
The operator could set the angle of slope, or grade, a road was to take, and keeping the angle steady, walk off around a contour which would become the road.
Another was an angle reader, which performed the job of a compass in basalt areas.
“Magnetic compasses won’t work where there is a lot of basalt disturbing the readings,” Tony said.
“The angle reader did the same job, but was developed in-house by forestry survey staff. I don’t know if there is still an example around.”
But the old brass compass is still part of Tony’s collection today, even though they have been taken over by the fluid style c compasses that are easier to carry and better to use.
“We used to have to wait for the old compass needle to settle down before we took a reading,” Tony said.
“They were a basic bush tool which we used with a steel chain up until the early 1970s.
“Road builders today still use theodolites, but they are far more sophisticated than the original models.”
Survey and tree marking teams also used rangefinders to estimate distances.
These were especially useful in marking out filter strips in drainage lines, where the country was steep and difficult.
“Supervising forest officers of a harvesting operation were interested in horizontal distances, so if there were rough gullies they could take readings without clambering around too much,” Tony said.
“There are now laser type instruments which do the same job much more accurately”.
Another timber industry oddity Tony is fond of is the CSIRO wood identification cards, which had a series of holes and patterns according to the various features.
To select a certain set of features, the user inserted a needle in the appropriate holes, and the cards for the wood species with the required attributes would drop out of the pack.
“I found my set in the Urbenville office when it was being decommissioned,” Tony said.
“I also came across the service manual for the old Le France fire engines which the Forestry Commission used as fire tankers. They were designed as airport fire tankers but because of their size made good forest fire fighters.”
“It is a 50-year-old document, quite interesting stuff.”
Tony hopes that there is scope for Forests NSW to add to the collection of old instruments and material that might make a more formal collection, preferably interpreted for public display.
In the meanwhile Tony and other foresters with an interest in forestry history are concerned that the value of such relics is appreciated by future generations.
