🚀 go-pugleaf

About spikes and preservation.

The goal of spiking is to stop the harvest.   The mechanism is not
to break the chainsaw that cuts the tree.  The intent is to break
the blade of the "head" saw at the mill.

A head saw is built big enough to accommodate a very large tree.
Usually the limiting factor is the method used to haul the log to
the mill.  If trucks are used then the limit is 14 feet if "wide
load" procedures are used.  If the tree is larger than the limit,
it is dynamited or split with jacks until it is small enough to be
hauled.  This results in a radial saw blade that must be 29 feet
in diameter, including shafts and carriages, or a bandsaw blade
over 40 feet long, including drive and idler wheels.

The timber industry had a very effective method of not allowing
their head saw blades to be broken.  They put a man very close to
the head saw blade without any guard.  When a spike was hit, the
man was hit by the broken blade.  The last major incident resulted
in  injuries that included a broken jaw and a neck laceration
within one inch of the jugular vein.

The technique was very effective.  All of the environmental
activists in the area stopped spiking.

You might say, "Likely story, an industry would not have that low
regard for life."  But notice what happened this last week:  the
industry safety procedures were so lax that three men were killed
in a tree debarker.

The environmentalists never thought that mill owners would put the
bottom line before their employees' lives, but they did when they
saw the spikes coming, and they did again when they allowed this
most recent tragedy to occur.

That is the alpha and omega of spiking as I see it.