Chainsaws: A History

Chainsaws: A History
by David Lee

Chainsaws: A History
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Book Summary Information

Author: David Lee
Collaborator: Mike Acres
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-12-01
ISBN: 1550173804
Number of pages: 216
Publisher: Harbour Pub.
Product features:
  • ISBN13: 9781550173802
  • Condition: Used - Very Good
  • Notes: 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Book Reviews of Chainsaws: A History

Book Review: Great history of chainsaws, but---
Summary: 4 Stars

I am a Certified Arborist and climber. As such, I use chainsaws almost every day when I'm up in the trees or on the ground. I enjoyed this book and found the histories of the many manufacturers fascinating, the photos of old and rarely seen chainsaws great. My one problem with the book concerns how each manufacturer's history is presented: Each company is given a separate chapter and so each time you get up to the present time with one company and turn the page, you're back in the early 1900's with the next company. I think a more integrated approach would work far better when it comes to understanding how the industry developed, although I'm sure the author would have new headaches organizing his book along those lines. It would make for a much better read, I think, if we could read about what was going on with each company during a specific, say, decade, and see what was going on with their competitors at the same time. The timeline in the back of the book helps, towards that end, but the book needs to use the timeline in its organizational approach, as I see it. Still, this book is a great one for chainsaw enthusiasts and I salute the author for a job well done!

Summary of Chainsaws: A History

Winner of the 2007 Award for Best Non-Fiction Book from Arts Hamilton

Winner of US Magazine Independent Publisher's IPPY Award for Best Western Canadian Regional Title


"It rips, and cuts, it makes a horrible racket--a chainsaw is a frightening thing. I write not to glorify its terrible power but to acknowledge its place in the most sweeping revolution that technology has wrought in the 20th century--the revolution of individual empowerment."

So begins author David Lee in this first-ever book on the worldwide history of the chainsaw, an invention that transformed the forest industry and eventually became the indispensable companion of every red-blooded country dweller. Chainsaws, it turns out, have a curious history and since the 19th century they have taken on many forms. From 600-pound steam-powered behemoths to gas chainsaws mounted on wheeled carriages to diesel chainsaws and electric chainsaws with portable generators, this book musters a curious collection of contraptions and inventors the like of which we haven't seen since Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. Carefully tracing the evolutionary threads of countless short-lived pioneer devices, author Lee, working together with a worldwide network of chainsaw buffs, traces the roaring, woodchip-and-oil-sprayed progress of what is now a lightweight modern machine that holds a place of honour in the world's woodsheds.

Chainsaws is a handsome gift book full of wonderful old and new photos along with priceless chainsaw ephemera that will warm the heart of anyone who's ever held a power tool. From Andreas Stihl's Black Forest experiments to Vancouver's booming WWII chainsaw industry, to the postwar race to develop one-man saws, the rise and fall of Canada's proud Pioneer brand, and the late entry into the field of the centuries-old arms manufacturer Husqvarna,it examines why the chainsaw is no good for massacres (in Texas or elsewhere), and why it is unlikely to replaced by any new high-tech inventions such as lasers.

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