Do you know what the most important feature is on a chainsaw? It's the chain, of course. A man named Joseph Buford Cox helped us all out by rethinking the purpose and use of the modern chainsaw chain. A long time ago in 1946 Joseph was cutting up some firewood on a very chilly day. Fatigued and tired from his labors, he rested is bones for a minute and noticed some strange and curious activity going on in a tree stump nearby. As he caught his breath and relaxed his muscles he realized that a timber-beetle larva, really not much bigger that Joseph's finger, was chewing its way through that solid tree trunk by going both with, and across the wood grain. This action intrigued him because that's not how chainsaw chains cut at that time.
In 1946 there were gas-powered chainsaws in use, but they were not very effective. The chainsaw chains were terrible and not very efficient. Talk about maintenance and busy work; just to keep the chainsaw cutting required a lot of filing, sharpening, and then more filing, taking up time that should have been spent on cutting down those trees. Joseph watched this timber-beetle working away and started thinking that maybe it knew something he didn't. After all, these beetles have been cutting through tree wood for a lot longer than man had been doing it. "I spent several months looking for nature's answer to the problem," Joe recalled. "I found it in the larva of the timber beetle."
What he observed and realized was that if he could duplicate the larva's alternating C-shaped jaws in steel (that is, in a new type of chainsaw chain), it just might catch on. He went to work in the basement shop of his Portland, Oregon home and came up with a revolutionary new chain. The first Cox Chipper Chain was produced and sold in November, 1947. The basic design of Joe's original chain is still widely used today and represents one of the biggest influences in the history of timber harvesting, and all because a regular guy took a break from his tedious work, and noticed that a beetle was doing what he was doing, only more effectively.
Well, since then of course there have been more improvements on the basic chainsaw chain in cutting ability, safety and stamina. We have Mr. Joseph Buford Cox to thank however, for noticing a humble timber-beetle larva that was simply out, on the same day, doing its job in a way that inspired Mr. Cox.
