Manual felling — snedding in a pine tree
Photographs are courtesy of Colin Lawson son of Wilfred Lawson, a forester who trained at Benmore Forester Training School in the years 1948-1950.
One of a series of images of hand felling large pine trees and converting the felled stems. The location and year is not known but could be Thetford Forest or the Dean Forest where Wilfred Lawson could have been on the forestry student exchange course.
The rest of the images contained in the PDF show younger men working with axes and crosscut saws while some old men look on or are demonstrating the proper working methods.
The second last image shows an operator working at a bark peeler shaving off the bark form what could be pit props. Note the large volume of sawn material stacked in the distance behind. The last image is of someone ‘brashing’ a very heavy branched beech tree.
Groups: Forester Training Schools and Universities, Forestry in Action