Tools of the Trade

The tree surgeons at The Tree Company (London) use many tools to help carry out the various tree related operations involved in Arboriculture. Tree surgeons need a few hand tools including sledgehammers, stake drivers for planting and the humble axe. They are all important members of the tool box.

There are a few different types of axe, including the splitting axe and the felling axe. They are a versatile tool and are not limited to felling or splitting. These days we use chainsaws to fell trees but the axe is used to split wood, either for fire wood or just to make big logs smaller so we can extract timber from those small London gardens. The hand tools we use take a pounding and they do break from time to time. 

An axe head is like an old friend, so we are keen not just to replace them when they break. We take them to a tool merchant where the broken handles are loving replaced for us, using air-dried ash wood. It does not take long and that old axe head lives to fight another day.

The Tree Company at the Arb Show 2013

The Tree Company (London) had a good presence at the 2013 ARB Show. Two of us managed to miss the rain and attended on Friday.

We saw the presentation by Vikki Bengtsson from The Ancient Tree Forum on veteran pruning techniques. The coronet cut was demonstrated by some tree surgeons, with a safe and time efficient method being shown. Our tree surgeons at The Tree Company (London) have been using the coronet cut in Richmond Park in South West London, and selected other sites, for a good few years now and it is a pleasure to see the technique becoming common practice.

We also saw a great collection of vintage chainsaws with none of the safety features that come as standard on modern machines. Three of our tree surgeons attended on Saturday when it rained a fair bit but that didn't dampen the spirits. The climbing competition was the point of focus, with some good competition and techniques on show.

We will be going to see two giants of the tree world on Tuesday the 24th at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew in West London, http://www.trees.org.uk/aa/news/ISA-CAS-Expert-s-Question-Time-152.html. Jeremy Barrell and Dr David Lonsdale will be talking and taking questions on tree safety in light of recent court decisions. It should be fun and very informative.