Vintage Chain Saws

If you ever wondered where today’s chainsaws came from, read on.

A lot of major manufacturers of chainsaws claim to have invented the first chainsaw around 1920. However, The 1830s osteotome invention of German Bernard Heine seems to be the precursor of the modern-day chainsaw. The links of the chain have small teeth for cutting with the edges set in an angular fashion and with the chain moving around the guiding blade by turning the sprocket wheel’s handle.

Another person who claims to have invented chainsaw is Californian inventor Muir, who was the first to put a chain on a blade for use in logging. However, his invention neither succeeded commercially nor practically.

Other models of early automatic chainsaws are the 1861-Hamilton saw, which was made by two men and which looked like a spinning wheel. Another is the American riding saw in the 1880s; this saw looked like a rowing machine in which cutters sit.

The “Strunk” chainsaw is a vintage chainsaw manufactured by Strunk Manufactor of Stroudsborough, Pa. Its carburetor is a bowl-and-float type that sits at a forty-five degree angle; it was manufactured by Tillotson. “Bulldog” is the term given to the pull starter. This is a heavy and unique piece of machinery, with the casing containing beaver decal. The bar, measuring around twenty inches, is also called Strunk and has a half-inch chain.

In 1926, German mechanical engineer Andreas Stihl won the patent for the “Cutoff Chain Saw for Electric Power”. Stihl was born in 1867, and was also a founder of a company that produces a steam boiler prefiring system in Germany. In 1929, he patented the first chainsaw powered by gasoline, called the tree-felling machine; it was the first hand-held mobile chainsaw meant for cutting wood. He is credited as the inventor of the mobile and chainsaw run by motor.

The chainsaw presented during the summer of 1905 at Eureka, California, is credited as the world’s oldest chainsaw. It is driven by two cylinders, is cooled by water, and has marine-type motor set at ninety degrees from normal. The inventor is unknown.

Joseph Buford Cox, an experienced chainsaw operator of gas-powered chainsaws, is acknowledged as inventor of a revolutionary new chainsaw.

In 1972, Atom manufactured its own brand of chainsaws and is known as the first chainsaw company to come up its own line of chainsaws with electronic ignition and turbo action, with a self cleaning and patented air cleaner.