By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
This tool, in German called Baumreisser, and produced, predominately by German and Swiss tool makers, such as Victorinox (Switzerland) and Otter (Germany), has been an important tool for the forestry worker and forester in time past.
The tree marking knife, the Baumreisser (tree ripper), was used in the past by forestry workers after a tree had been felled and the branches removed used to mark the cutting length depending on the timber grade. Foresters too used this tool in order to mark trees for removal, either small trees for thinning operations or even large trees in mature stands. Those were marked with a cross, an “X”.
It has, in recent decades, been replaced, some would say superseded, by the spray can and the paint ball gun for marking trees for felling, whether large or small, and even as a marker as to where to make the cuts in a trunk according to timber value and class.
As far as I am concerned, however, the tree marking knife cannot and should not ever be seen as superseded and replaced as spray paint is not sustainable and that for at least two reasons.
Spray paint is costly in the long run and while a tree marking knife costs up to $60, depending on quality and source, it will last a lifetime and more, if looked after. Paint, on the other hand, is costly in the long run. While a can of the stuff may “only” cost a few dollars at a time over time it will be much, much more than the cost of the tool.
The measuring staff of the woodsmen that I have encountered in years gone by in Europe used to have a built-in “bark ripper” for the purpose of marking the place where to cross cut the trunk.
The folding Baumreisser, the tree marking knife, is better though as the forester can carry that with him easily on a “patrol” and mark trees for removal as and when they are noticed.
I encountered such a tree marking knife again only recently on the Felco stand at the 2011 RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show when the marketing manager showed me one of which they were given boxes and did not really know what they were for.
Initially even I, as a professional forester, failed to recognize them as I had only encountered them with a fixed blade or as part of another tool and I mistook the took for a hoof knife. Shame on me, I know.
It would appear that makers – some of them at least – are in the process of divesting themselves of the stock of those tools in the – in my opinion false – belief that the end of the tree marking knife has come.
The ones that I saw (and of which I was given a box) are made by Victorinox and are, in fact, no longer shown in their range. German makers still seem to produce them though.
As far as I am concerned we will be looking for this tool in the future again once petroleum – and the pain is based on it – has become unaffordable.
As far as I am concerned the tree marking knife, the Baumreisser, is far from dead and we will find that we will be happy to still have the skills to make them when the time comes and stocks left.
© 2011
