Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: we're back with part two of our series on the
Speaker 1: invention of the chainsaw. And now last time I think
Speaker 1: we left off after we've been talking about the reasoning
Speaker 1: behind chains as a as a cutting surface rather than
Speaker 1: just a solid blade or even as opposed to a
Speaker 1: giant circular saws. But this time we wanted to come
Speaker 1: back and talk a little bit more about the early
Speaker 1: history of power saws leading up to the modern chainsaw,
Speaker 1: as well as some rather rather distressing medical digressions. Well,
Speaker 1: before we get into the medical stuff, I want to
Speaker 1: come back to something I mentioned in passing. In the
Speaker 1: last episode, I mentioned how I had I was vaguely
Speaker 1: familiar with stuff like the misery whip and other uh
Speaker 1: you a lumberjacking techniques and technologies based on a cartoon
Speaker 1: that I saw when I was a kid, or and
Speaker 1: probably saw more than once, you know, probably had on
Speaker 1: a VHS tape or something. Um I described it and
Speaker 1: our producer Seth, who is well versed in the cartoon universe.
Speaker 1: He told me, oh, well that I think the one
Speaker 1: you're talking about is nineteen fifty five. Up a Tree. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is a Disney short featuring Donald Duck as well
Speaker 1: as Chip and Dale. And this is absolutely it. This
Speaker 1: is the one with scenes of you know, Donald is
Speaker 1: chasing the chip monks around trying to cut down trees.
Speaker 1: They're all sorts of weird mishaps with saws. Do you
Speaker 1: remember this one at all, Joe, certainly, not in any detail,
Speaker 1: not in any more than the sort of images you
Speaker 1: described last time. Well, I'm going to cut right to
Speaker 1: the end and see if this rings a bell. This
Speaker 1: is the last two sentences from the Wikipedia summary for
Speaker 1: Up a Tree, from quote all Donald can do is
Speaker 1: watch with day's grief as his home is rocketed into
Speaker 1: the hair and explodes three times. Chippendale pretend to comfort Donald,
Speaker 1: then proceed to roll in the ground and laugh hysterically.
Speaker 1: Chippendale the sociopaths. They are bad friends. Granted, you know,
Speaker 1: Donald did a lot of bad things before that, so
Speaker 1: he was very much getting his come upance. But you've
Speaker 1: taken out of contacts. That sounds that sounds pretty rough.
Speaker 1: No one should have to watch their home explode three
Speaker 1: times and then be brutally mocked by chipmunks. Yeah. Now, wait,
Speaker 1: is this before Chippendale wherever rescue rangers. I thought they
Speaker 1: would need to be rescuing people whose house that was
Speaker 1: decades later. That was like a nineties thing, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: this was this was the back in the fifties when
Speaker 1: it was just all about you know, in a way,
Speaker 1: there was kind of a a very shallow environmental message here,
Speaker 1: uh that Donald is bad for going after their habitat
Speaker 1: and distressing their home, and Chippendale are good for wanting
Speaker 1: to maintain the pristine nature of their natural environment. The
Speaker 1: term is tree poaching. Donald was tree poaching also, he
Speaker 1: was I think he was being rather unsafe with some
Speaker 1: of the saws. M I made that up, by the way, there,
Speaker 1: I've never heard of tree poaching. Well, I mean it is.
Speaker 1: You could certainly get into trouble for cutting, for felling
Speaker 1: trees on someone else's land. That would be a type
Speaker 1: of poaching, right, especially if they're full of sentien chipmunks. Uh, okay, Okay.
Speaker 1: So the next thing that I think we have to
Speaker 1: talk about in the history of the chainsaw is uh
Speaker 1: that we've been focused on the road leading to power
Speaker 1: chainsaws for logging and construction. But you may well have
Speaker 1: seen a sort of viral dig you know, article floating
Speaker 1: around a couple of years ago, talking about how the
Speaker 1: original invention of the chainsaw was as a medical device,
Speaker 1: invented for use in childbirth. Now, one of one of
Speaker 1: the really surprising things is that, in one sense this
Speaker 1: is true. In the eighteenth century there was such a
Speaker 1: thing as the obstetric chainsaw. However, as you might guess
Speaker 1: from the period, one big difference is that this was
Speaker 1: not a motorized device, which maybe makes this discovery even
Speaker 1: more alarming. Yeah, because when you hear the words medical
Speaker 1: chain saw, it sounds ridiculous and potentially grotesque, or it
Speaker 1: sounds like the sort of futurist extrapolation you find in
Speaker 1: sci fi, where you know, sometimes it will be like
Speaker 1: in the future, chainsaws will be so small they can
Speaker 1: be used for surgical procedures. You know. Where it's where
Speaker 1: you're like, actually that that technology was not headed that direction,
Speaker 1: sci fi author, I'm not sure why you chose to
Speaker 1: focus on that, um, but you you you encounter that
Speaker 1: sort of thing in science fiction from time to Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: sometimes in sci fi medicine, you just get little like wands,
Speaker 1: little magic wands, Like one magic wand just opens the
Speaker 1: body up for whatever kind of procedure, and then you
Speaker 1: touch the body with another glowing wand and it instantly heals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like they basically had that technology and like Star Trek
Speaker 1: next generation. Uh oh yeah, that's right, Ason X. Here's
Speaker 1: a quick horror question for you, Joe. You're you're far
Speaker 1: better versed in the the Friday world here at the
Speaker 1: film universe. Did Jason Voorhees ever picked up a chainsaw?
Speaker 1: Or did he just know that that would be gimmick infringement,
Speaker 1: that that that was let to face his thing and
Speaker 1: he should back off. I believe this is a point
Speaker 1: a lot of people are confused on. As far as
Speaker 1: I know, Jason has never wielded a chainsaw. The closest
Speaker 1: he ever gets is, I believe in Friday thirteen, part seven,
Speaker 1: which is the one when which he battles a girl
Speaker 1: with psychic powers. Uh and uh so that one's uh
Speaker 1: quite funny and a lot of fun. But in that
Speaker 1: one he does use a power saw, but it is
Speaker 1: not a chainsaw. It is a motor driven hedge trimmer
Speaker 1: with a circular saw at the end of a long pole. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he sticks it right into Terry Kaiser's abdomen. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that that that sounds right. He knew better. He
Speaker 1: knows better than to pick up the chainsaw that's not his.
Speaker 1: He can have literally any other tool, but not the chainsaw.
Speaker 1: Right he he doesn't want to get into legal trouble. R. Plus,
Speaker 1: he's very much a stealth stalker type character, right right,
Speaker 1: except I guess this thing does make noise. I mean,
Speaker 1: Jason generally does not go for for power tools. He
Speaker 1: prefers the classic, the manual implements, the machete, the big
Speaker 1: old steak or spike. That's his territory, simple melee weapons. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: Well getting back to medical chainsaws then, Um, the the
Speaker 1: paper we were looking at for this came from uh
Speaker 1: Skipping at all Uh and it was It's titled the
Speaker 1: Chainsaw a Scottish Invention from the Scottish Medical Journal. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is uh what forty nine number two. This is
Speaker 1: from two thousand and four. So it's pointed out by
Speaker 1: Skipping at all in in in this paper. Uh. The
Speaker 1: interesting thing is that we have two different Scottish inventors
Speaker 1: in the eighteenth century who may have independently come up
Speaker 1: with the concept of a medical chainsaw off sorts, and
Speaker 1: we do have to have that caveat of sorts, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna get to something that more closely resembles what
Speaker 1: we might or at least checks off more of the
Speaker 1: boxes for what we think of as a chainsaw. Now
Speaker 1: again we're not talking about tiny gas powered chainsaws. In fact,
Speaker 1: we're originally talking about a non mechanical invention. We're talking
Speaker 1: about a quote chain hand saw, a fine serrated link
Speaker 1: chain which cut on the concave side. So this was handheld,
Speaker 1: hand powered you pull it back and forth, very much
Speaker 1: in common with some of those chain based cutting techniques
Speaker 1: that we were talking about in the first episode when
Speaker 1: you say, yeah, like one of the power saw design
Speaker 1: and again this would not be powered. But one of
Speaker 1: the power saw designs we talked about in the previous
Speaker 1: episode was one where a tree would be cut down
Speaker 1: with a cutting chain, but the chain did not revolve
Speaker 1: around a fixed bar. Rather, the chain rotated freely around
Speaker 1: the tree trunk to just saw right through it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the first of these inventions was devised in the
Speaker 1: early seventeen eighties by Scottish surgeon surgeon John Aitkin Uh.
Speaker 1: It was intended for use in childbirth, specifically for a
Speaker 1: syenthusiastomy in which the cartilage of the pubic synthesis is
Speaker 1: divided to widen the pelvis, allowing childbirth. UM. Now, this
Speaker 1: particular saw design UM was considered a promising method as
Speaker 1: it avoided potential damage to surrounding tissues if a scalpel
Speaker 1: was used. UM. But it was seventeen ninety before the
Speaker 1: saw was produced and as this paper explains, it was
Speaker 1: never really widely picked up. Okay, so that's one of
Speaker 1: the designs. The second was devised by Scottish surgeon James Jeffrey,
Speaker 1: is a means of removing disease joints with having without
Speaker 1: having to result to full limb removal. And one of
Speaker 1: the notable things about this saw Jeffrey saw is that
Speaker 1: it actually did see a fair amount of use. It
Speaker 1: was a notable improvement over the stiff bone saw and
Speaker 1: a version was even used in neurosurgery and surgery. And
Speaker 1: indeed we did get to a mechanized version of this.
Speaker 1: So we went from something that again is like a
Speaker 1: chain that you pull back and forth to cut, and
Speaker 1: then you end up with this thing that was called
Speaker 1: an osteo tom. This was a hand cranked version of
Speaker 1: this that essentially had an infinite chain loop on it.
Speaker 1: You'd crank it and you would have it essentially would
Speaker 1: function like a little chainsaw. I mean you look at
Speaker 1: a picture of it and it looks like some sort
Speaker 1: of like a weird handheld steampunk uh chainsaw dagger. One
Speaker 1: of the interesting things discussed in this Scottish Medical Journal
Speaker 1: paper is the idea that these chains for trying to
Speaker 1: cut through bone with this little damage to the surrounding
Speaker 1: tissue as possible were uh at least partially inspired by
Speaker 1: looking at watch chains from watches of the eighteenth century.
Speaker 1: Obviously these would be bigger than those though. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and another big thing about this, uh, this innovation and
Speaker 1: ultimately this whole like this whole area of innovation, is
Speaker 1: that you want to move towards precision, but you you
Speaker 1: also want speed. Uh you're still performing. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: so either either you're performing you know, in some cases
Speaker 1: you should be still would be talking about full limb removal,
Speaker 1: but otherwise you're you're trying to get in there and
Speaker 1: removed diseased and damaged pieces, and you want to get
Speaker 1: in and get out as quickly as possible, but also
Speaker 1: as precisely as possible. Yeah, And in the case of
Speaker 1: this obstetric procedure that would cut through part of the
Speaker 1: pelvis in order in order to widen the passage for childbirth,
Speaker 1: the symphysiotomy procedure from the eighteenth century. There was a
Speaker 1: pressure leading to this, which is that, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of mortality during childbirth at the time,
Speaker 1: and uh, the process of Cesyrian section at the time
Speaker 1: also had a high mortality rate for myers, and so
Speaker 1: this was an alternative that was seen as something that
Speaker 1: could possibly lead to better outcomes in saving the life
Speaker 1: of both the mother and the child during delivery. But
Speaker 1: again that one didn't really pick up so much, but
Speaker 1: the osteotome did. But as luck would have it, it
Speaker 1: was superseded by the giggly twisted wire saw in the
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century. So, uh, you know, even though the
Speaker 1: osteotome was was pretty advanced there for a minute, um,
Speaker 1: it was beat in the race by this other bit
Speaker 1: of sawing technology, the giggly twisted wire saw. It was
Speaker 1: ultimately cheaper, and it avoided the two main issues with
Speaker 1: the chainsaw, and that is breakage and the chain getting
Speaker 1: stuck in the bone. The giggly twisted wire a saw
Speaker 1: was narrower and it provided a quicker cut and if
Speaker 1: the wire was damaged, it was easy to pull out
Speaker 1: and then you could just use a fresh length of
Speaker 1: the wire. So there you go, early chainsaws in eighteenth
Speaker 1: century medicine. Though again we must stress not not motorized chainsaws,
Speaker 1: but yeah, using chains for cutting bone. It does, in
Speaker 1: fact go back to multiple inventions from the eighteenth century.
Speaker 1: I have to say that the just the just getting
Speaker 1: back to like the frightening names of things. The giggly
Speaker 1: twisted wire saw also sounds kind of terrifying um And
Speaker 1: maybe it's because giggly also sounds a little bit like giggles.
Speaker 1: It sounds a little mab. It makes me think of
Speaker 1: Dr giggles. Uh. I'm not sure how this guy would
Speaker 1: have pronounced it. I think the guys that the wire
Speaker 1: saw was named after was Leonardo Giggli or this could
Speaker 1: be Gigli or because remember there was that movie with
Speaker 1: like Ben Affleck and whoever in it it was, It
Speaker 1: was spelled the same way, and that one was called Gelie.
Speaker 1: But I don't know, I didn't see that when I
Speaker 1: saw Dr Giggles instead. Well, you probably invested your time
Speaker 1: more wisely. I don't know, arguable, but I was looking
Speaker 1: that up. And of course Larry Drake was was great
Speaker 1: in that. Larry greg was Drake always made for a
Speaker 1: nice villain. But I was I had in my mind
Speaker 1: that like the character's name was Giggles, Like he was
Speaker 1: Dr Giggles, but now he's Dr Evan Rindle, Like that's
Speaker 1: not scary. Why why aren't they call him Dr Giggles
Speaker 1: that this year just said his name is Dr Giggles.
Speaker 1: We would have bought it. This is Steven Giggles. Yes,
Speaker 1: Stephen Ill House Giggles. I mean it's a horror movie.
Speaker 1: It's like you can get lean into it. I mean,
Speaker 1: just ask um, ask Cronenberg. You know you need to
Speaker 1: actually make the names a little bit removed from reality. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think Dickens had the right philosophy for naming characters.
Speaker 1: Just go full idiophones, Like the character's name should sound
Speaker 1: like what they do. Mr Jaggers, Dr Giggles. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's all right there it's just waiting for you. But
Speaker 1: I guess we should come back to the topic of
Speaker 1: of early power saws leading up to the chainsaw in
Speaker 1: logging itself, in in logging and woodworking. So there was
Speaker 1: a source I mentioned in the previous episode that I
Speaker 1: just want to mention again because it's a good one
Speaker 1: and I've referred to it a number of times here.
Speaker 1: This is a book called Chainsaws, a History by David
Speaker 1: Lee with Mike Acres uh And as I mentioned in
Speaker 1: the last episode, this is a very photography focused book.
Speaker 1: It's just lots and lots of beautiful photographs of gorgeous,
Speaker 1: you know, nasty looking chainsaw paws and in various poses,
Speaker 1: sitting on a log, sitting in a workshop, kind of
Speaker 1: rusty looking, maybe kind of threatening somehow, I don't know,
Speaker 1: even though nobody's wielding it. It's full of vibes. But
Speaker 1: of course, like the title would imply, this book does
Speaker 1: trace a lot about the early history of chainsaws and
Speaker 1: how we got to the first models that people today
Speaker 1: would recognize as a chainsaw. You look at them and say, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what a chainsaw is. So I think in this uh,
Speaker 1: in this story, we left off somewhere around the World
Speaker 1: War One era. And uh, and I guess that's where
Speaker 1: we'll pick up. Lee writes about this period, noting that
Speaker 1: there was one thing during this era that was an
Speaker 1: attempt at mechanized solutions in logging that actually did not
Speaker 1: involve a cutting chain, but rather a wire. So this
Speaker 1: was something he calls the wire rope tree feller. Uh.
Speaker 1: And again it might not count as a saw since
Speaker 1: it doesn't have teeth. Instead, the idea was just to
Speaker 1: use rapidly moving metal wires to cut own trees by
Speaker 1: pure friction, as the wire was sort of dragged across
Speaker 1: the wood surface. Now, you can probably get some obvious
Speaker 1: disadvantages there. It's not going to be nearly as as
Speaker 1: good at cutting through the tree, But I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe there's some trade off in that you
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to bother with sharpening it. You just realize, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're just gonna we're just gonna rub this wire all
Speaker 1: the hell. Yeah, well that's what I'd be afraid of.
Speaker 1: That wire gets all rubbed the hell and then what
Speaker 1: if it snaps. I mean, you have a cable like
Speaker 1: that snapping. Uh, It sounds like a very dangerous situation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want to be standing near it. And here's
Speaker 1: another interesting idea that was apparently floated at some point.
Speaker 1: How about a metal wire heated by electricity. Okay, you
Speaker 1: use the new technology of electricity to get that wire
Speaker 1: red hot and then just let it burn right through
Speaker 1: the wood as you're sliding it across the trunk. Well,
Speaker 1: that does sound like typical um, like electrical age enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: What can't electricity do for us? Um? But yeah, that
Speaker 1: sounds awful because you're potentially just catching the trees on
Speaker 1: fire at that point. And there are some other things
Speaker 1: he mentioned there. There was something called a power feller,
Speaker 1: which looks like it's sort of just a a saw
Speaker 1: that swings in an arc and and gradually cuts its
Speaker 1: way through a tree. So I think this would be
Speaker 1: one with a fixed blade, and then another one that
Speaker 1: had just a bunch of augers that were like drill
Speaker 1: or bore holes down at the tree at the at
Speaker 1: the ground level, so it would fall over and not
Speaker 1: even really leave a stump. But Lee highlights a big
Speaker 1: problem with almost all of these existing designs, which is
Speaker 1: that they were in reality no more efficient or not
Speaker 1: much more efficient than a couple of experienced sawyers with
Speaker 1: a misery whip. I mean, as grueling as the labor was.
Speaker 1: You know, it's hard work out there in the forest
Speaker 1: with the two main cross cut saw working on a redwood.
Speaker 1: Uh this was a skill that people had developed and
Speaker 1: they'd gotten really good and fast at it. And of course,
Speaker 1: human bodies and human muscles are very versatile and bulky
Speaker 1: machines of this period are not very versatile. Uh So
Speaker 1: it might, you know, you might have a machine that
Speaker 1: can cut through a tree faster than a human or
Speaker 1: maybe not even and maybe that might not even be true.
Speaker 1: But even if it can, might require a lot of
Speaker 1: set up. It might have a lot of bulky equipment.
Speaker 1: You gotta move around and all that. And a lot
Speaker 1: of loggers were ultimately like, yeah, we we we've got
Speaker 1: our methods and they work just fine, so we'll stick
Speaker 1: with those. But nevertheless, there were some, uh some of
Speaker 1: these powered saws in the early twentieth century. One thing
Speaker 1: that's kind of interesting is that it seems like even
Speaker 1: after the creation of the gas engine, and even after
Speaker 1: some chainsaw prototypes had been proposed, a lot of logging
Speaker 1: ventures still seem to prefer huge gas powered drag saws,
Speaker 1: these ones with a solid blade that would just be
Speaker 1: working back and forth powered by a motor. And I
Speaker 1: think the idea is that the big drag saw is
Speaker 1: uh is just rugged, it's dependable, it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: you know what you're getting there. It's like it has
Speaker 1: less moving parts and less to get broken up than
Speaker 1: than a chainsaw does. But at the same time, the
Speaker 1: chainsaw has its own advantages. It's lighter, it's smaller, it's
Speaker 1: faster at cutting, especially once you have some revolutions that
Speaker 1: would come later in changes to the cutting surface, so
Speaker 1: changes to the teeth on the chain, and changes to
Speaker 1: the power source. But so, how do you get from
Speaker 1: this era where where largely the misery whip and then
Speaker 1: big old drag saws are still very popular, say in
Speaker 1: the twenties through the fifties, to the modern chainsaw era
Speaker 1: that we know and love today. Well. Lee writes that
Speaker 1: one of the first chainsaws made for forestry was a
Speaker 1: device called the Sector, which was invented by A. V.
Speaker 1: Westfeldt in Sweden in nineteen nineteen. Now they're still some
Speaker 1: ways that this is not going to be much like
Speaker 1: a chainsaw, that you would recognize today. For one thing,
Speaker 1: this model still separated the saw component from its power source.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is its shape. This is not
Speaker 1: like the chainsaws you're picturing that have a long bar
Speaker 1: with a chain that rotates around them. This one has
Speaker 1: a weird wishbone shape. So you've got to imagine a
Speaker 1: handle like on a shovel. But then that shove handle
Speaker 1: splits into a y fork like a you know, y
Speaker 1: peeler that you peel a potato with. And then at
Speaker 1: the two ends of the y fork are powered rollers
Speaker 1: that quickly rotate a cutting chain. And the rollers are
Speaker 1: powered by an outboard motor that is connected via a
Speaker 1: drive shaft that looks like this short thick tube. So
Speaker 1: you've got an outboard motor and then that's got a
Speaker 1: drive shaft leading to this y shaped thing that's got
Speaker 1: a shovel handle on the end, and uh, and then
Speaker 1: you would use that to sort of I guess poke
Speaker 1: the peeler end, the y end at the tree where
Speaker 1: the chain would cut it. I'm looking at a picture
Speaker 1: of it now, and this is the most one of
Speaker 1: the most incomprehensible inventions I've ever looked at, Like it's
Speaker 1: just it almost makes no sense that it looks like
Speaker 1: the sort of thing where leather Face or Jason were
Speaker 1: to show up with it, you would just be like, no,
Speaker 1: go home, go home. Yeah yeah, laugh at leather Face.
Speaker 1: And then he gets all sad and the sad music
Speaker 1: plays and he walks off, hang in his head and
Speaker 1: he need a friend, he needs some family members with him.
Speaker 1: Looks like to carry this thing. Yeah, apparently that was
Speaker 1: one of the things that really interfered with pickup of
Speaker 1: the sector because the separate outboard motor made this model
Speaker 1: quite difficult to use. Like any you want to reposition it,
Speaker 1: you might have to reposition the two parts, and so
Speaker 1: it just looks like a real pain. But you can
Speaker 1: see the beginning here. You can see how okay, once
Speaker 1: you have this device. Uh, if you were to refine
Speaker 1: this quite a bit, we could move towards something more
Speaker 1: like what we'd imagine a chainsaw being. Now. Like a
Speaker 1: lot of the things we talk about on this show, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's one of those inventions that comes about by iteration
Speaker 1: and combination, So it is hard to identify a single
Speaker 1: inventor or moment of invention for the chainsaw. Instead, it's
Speaker 1: like a lot of things kind of changing over time
Speaker 1: to look more and more like what we consider a
Speaker 1: chainsaw today. Uh And it's a process that goes roughly
Speaker 1: from the mid nineteenth cents until about nineteen twenty, by
Speaker 1: which time we finally start to get stuff that looks
Speaker 1: like a modern chainsaw. And one of the first commercially
Speaker 1: successful chainsaws of this form we would recognize today is
Speaker 1: the Wolf. It's just serendipity that they have these great names,
Speaker 1: because this wasn't like a brand name somebody came up with.
Speaker 1: It was actually a dude's name. This was Yeah, this
Speaker 1: was a machine produced by a firm founded in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty by an American engineer named Charles Wolf. Wolf was
Speaker 1: born in eighteen seventy one. I've seen a claim a
Speaker 1: couple of places that Wolf was involved in the creation
Speaker 1: of the first modern submarine for the U. S. Navy
Speaker 1: under the direction of John Holland in the eighteen nineties.
Speaker 1: Uh So this was mentioned in Lee's book, and I
Speaker 1: saw it referenced in another article. But I was looking for,
Speaker 1: I don't know, more solid historical information on that, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't find it. So I don't know about that.
Speaker 1: But I have at least seen that claimed, but whether
Speaker 1: or not he had submarine experience. According to his son,
Speaker 1: your Rome, Charles Wolfe was an extremely experienced engineer who
Speaker 1: had worked on a number of different types of projects.
Speaker 1: So he worked on electric railways, on transportation infrastructure like
Speaker 1: bridges and tunnels. He worked on dams and and water systems.
Speaker 1: And he had some experience in the nineteen aots and
Speaker 1: in the nineteen tens with sawmills and lumber. And at
Speaker 1: some point while he was working in the lumber world,
Speaker 1: he came across a prototype chainsaw that was never put
Speaker 1: into commercial production, but then the the idea apparently stuck
Speaker 1: with him, and then eventually, along with an electrical engineer
Speaker 1: named Frank Redman, wolf came up with a design for
Speaker 1: an electrically powered chainsaw of basically the form we see today.
Speaker 1: So it's a cutting chain that moves along the outside
Speaker 1: of a flat bar. It's driven by an electrically powered
Speaker 1: sprocket with teeth based on the classic design of the
Speaker 1: cross cut saw blade. The teeth of the cutting chain,
Speaker 1: not the teeth of the sprocket. Sorry, and this would
Speaker 1: be the Wolf rob I've attached a picture of the
Speaker 1: wolf for you to look at. Um. The company would
Speaker 1: go on to develop many subsequent variations. They eventually had
Speaker 1: a compressed air driven model, and I think eventually, many
Speaker 1: years later even in an internal combustion model. But this
Speaker 1: electric chainsaw really seems like the granddaddy. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: you look at this and you're told that this is
Speaker 1: the wolf, and you you agree this is the wolf.
Speaker 1: This looked this This is a brutal looking tool right here.
Speaker 1: It looks like the kind of thing that's some sort
Speaker 1: of like a futuristic UM cave troll would wield in
Speaker 1: some sort of you know, a combat scenario. It's a
Speaker 1: and and and and also it weirdly looks like it
Speaker 1: has a screaming face on the I guess what we
Speaker 1: might infer to be the pommel or the or part
Speaker 1: of the hilt of the chainsaw. Where's the screaming face.
Speaker 1: I'm not seeing it. Look at the turn your head sideways.
Speaker 1: Oh no body, And then the at the top is
Speaker 1: this head that's kind of going it's not no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's not screaming. It's singing an angelic chorus of joy
Speaker 1: for the power that is now in your hands. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're absolutely right. This does look like something that
Speaker 1: would be like fused onto the wrist of a super
Speaker 1: mutant in in whatever kind of waste land or um
Speaker 1: or Actually, this looks like this should be what leather
Speaker 1: Face was carrying instead of that green chainsaw that nobody
Speaker 1: remembers the color of. But he would have he would
Speaker 1: have needed electricity for it, right, Well, yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: at least this first model. Yeah, that that would make
Speaker 1: it probably difficult to run around in the That would
Speaker 1: be a great scene, like he's about to get you,
Speaker 1: but then he runs a little bit too far and
Speaker 1: it unplugs chainsaw. The one thing that's interesting to note,
Speaker 1: so we think of the chainsaw as being primarily for logging,
Speaker 1: for you know, taking down trees and bucking them out
Speaker 1: in the forest. Uh, though several sources I've looked at
Speaker 1: note that the wolf did not actually take over the
Speaker 1: logging business. That you might call this the first commercially viable,
Speaker 1: commercially mass produced chainsaw, but it was really more popular
Speaker 1: for work with prepared lumber, for example, in construction. It's
Speaker 1: real advantage was that it could quickly make fine, accurate cuts,
Speaker 1: and in the decades Following this, other mass producers would
Speaker 1: enter the games, such as German companies like Steele and
Speaker 1: Dolmar and more and more. So the chainsaw is on
Speaker 1: its way now, but we need actually one more major
Speaker 1: innovation before it really takes over the logging world. And
Speaker 1: this is what brings us to Joe Cox and the
Speaker 1: so called bug chain. Uh. So I I loved when
Speaker 1: I came across this story because who would have thought it.
Speaker 1: Even the history of the chainsaw has important episodes of
Speaker 1: bio mimetic engineering in it. Um. So yes, let us
Speaker 1: speak of the bug chain. So in the nineteen forties, uh,
Speaker 1: the misery whip was still in wide use in the
Speaker 1: United States, even though plenty of power saws had been
Speaker 1: brought to market by this time. Uh. And for a while,
Speaker 1: I think you could blame this on power saws being
Speaker 1: too big, too bulky, too delicate, dependent on external power
Speaker 1: sources and so forth. But by the forties you had
Speaker 1: better designs, you had more compact internal combustion designs, and
Speaker 1: yet there were still problems. And so here I want
Speaker 1: to start referring to a paper that I was reading
Speaker 1: called A Lesson from Nature. Joe Cox and his revolutionary
Speaker 1: saw chain by Ellis Lucia. Now, Lucia says that one
Speaker 1: big problem with with widespread take up of the chainsaw
Speaker 1: was problems with the cutting chain. Uh. These chains of
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties were modeled on the blades of traditional
Speaker 1: cross cut saws. So if you picture a misery whip
Speaker 1: or one of these cross cut saws, you can probably
Speaker 1: see it in your mind that it has these these
Speaker 1: sharp sort of razor sharpened teeth that would be dragged
Speaker 1: through the curve. Remember that's the cut part of the
Speaker 1: tree trunk. To cut to knock away would essentially by
Speaker 1: scratching at it with a sharp surface. So Lucia compares
Speaker 1: this to rapidly dragging the tip of a knife for
Speaker 1: a sharp nail over the wood. And so, of course
Speaker 1: this does work for sawing things if you apply enough force.
Speaker 1: But Lucy says, actually there was a lot of waste
Speaker 1: and the cutting teeth on the chains would tend to
Speaker 1: get dull very fast. So this again led to a
Speaker 1: lot of wasted time having to re sharpen dull chains,
Speaker 1: and so in many cases, loggers thought that the old
Speaker 1: cross cut saws were still more efficient even as late
Speaker 1: as the nineteen forties, but Lucia writes that this was
Speaker 1: up ended by changes in the saw chain design that
Speaker 1: can be traced back to this American logger and engineer
Speaker 1: named Joe Cox. So short bio on Joe Cox. It
Speaker 1: seems like he had about a million jobs. He was
Speaker 1: born in Oklahoma in nineteen o five. He left home
Speaker 1: at sixteen to work in railroad shops in Colorado, and
Speaker 1: then from here he uh he went on through apprenticeships
Speaker 1: and self teaching to become a qualified machinist. He worked
Speaker 1: at an auto agency and did a bus line where
Speaker 1: he learned a lot about mechanics and engine repair. And
Speaker 1: then he worked building a gas line in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: And then he helped to build, according to this article,
Speaker 1: some powdered milk processing plants, which I assume we're somewhere
Speaker 1: in northern California or near San Francisco, which makes me wonder,
Speaker 1: could Joe Cox have been involved in building the Northern
Speaker 1: California dairy Works plant that is featured in Halloween three, Oh,
Speaker 1: the one that's supposed to be the silver shamrock factory.
Speaker 1: No answer on that, but I am mighty intrigued. But
Speaker 1: he operated a welding shop in Arizona. He did auto repair.
Speaker 1: He was an electrician. I did some wiring in homes. Uh,
Speaker 1: he designed a home water heater or product. And he
Speaker 1: did some welding for some oil dren concerns in Texas.
Speaker 1: But then he eventually moved along with his brother to Oregon,
Speaker 1: where they got involved in the logging industry. And it
Speaker 1: was here, working as a logger and a logging engineer,
Speaker 1: that he noticed there was plenty of room to improve,
Speaker 1: to improve on the chains being used in these less
Speaker 1: than impressive power saws of the day. And this article
Speaker 1: actually has an interview with Joe Cox. It was written
Speaker 1: at a time when when he was still alive. So
Speaker 1: I want to include some of his quotes because they're great.
Speaker 1: I like the way he talks. Uh. He's describing working
Speaker 1: with his brother in the Oregon logging industry, and he says,
Speaker 1: we fell limbed and bucked small frozen, naughty pine timber
Speaker 1: and three ft of snow our first winter here. We
Speaker 1: were paid fifty cents a thousand. We earned about four
Speaker 1: dollars in ten hours of hard work. And it was hard.
Speaker 1: And so the way Cox tells the story, one morning
Speaker 1: he and his brother were working out somewhere east to
Speaker 1: the Cascades and they were asked to try out a
Speaker 1: new power saw, which was a stump saw mounted on
Speaker 1: wheels with the chain allegedly driven by a motorcycle engine.
Speaker 1: Which that that's cool, that that's hacking, and Cox says
Speaker 1: that they could immediately see that this power saw was
Speaker 1: just not very good, like they could actually fall a
Speaker 1: tree quicker with the hand saw. And then I want
Speaker 1: to again read his direct quote. This seems strange to
Speaker 1: me because the power saw had plenty of stuff. Uh
Speaker 1: So I think he's saying by that that he recognizes
Speaker 1: that the motor that's driving it is powerful and should
Speaker 1: outperform human muscles if the cutting edge were better, if
Speaker 1: that were more efficient, And he goes on, I was
Speaker 1: a pretty fair filer at the time and figured that
Speaker 1: if I could make a power saw cut as efficiently
Speaker 1: as a cross cut, it should practically fall through the wood.
Speaker 1: It just made sense. And with such a cutting tool,
Speaker 1: sawing timber would be a lot easier. And so, according
Speaker 1: to this story, Cox tells he had a breakthrough one
Speaker 1: day when he was out in the woods and he
Speaker 1: whacked a rotten stump with an axe, accidentally revealing a
Speaker 1: cavity in the wood that had been made by the
Speaker 1: larvae of a well known and much reviled insect of
Speaker 1: the area, the timber beetle or er Gotti's spicy ladas.
Speaker 1: I looked this insect up, but apparently it's also known
Speaker 1: as the pine sawyer beetle. It has a very large,
Speaker 1: very beautiful, disgustingly beautiful, almost a raucous belonging, uh larval
Speaker 1: form that I don't know, Rob, how would you describe
Speaker 1: this creature? Um? Yeah, I think that all matches up,
Speaker 1: but also just screams protein. Like if you're a bird,
Speaker 1: you're excited looking at these photos, you just PLoP one
Speaker 1: of these in a hot dog bun and your set. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it looks in a way, it
Speaker 1: looks like a big old shrimp, shrimp of the woods. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's freshman catch of the day. Uh So. One of
Speaker 1: the photos I found of this thing is of somebody
Speaker 1: holding one in their hand and it's like it's as
Speaker 1: big as the palm of their hand. Almost. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: this is a big, big boy for I didn't have
Speaker 1: time to research this, but I am curious now if
Speaker 1: this particular um larva is edible by humans, so I
Speaker 1: don't know if there any foragers out there that can
Speaker 1: let us know. Email us Okay, now here, I want
Speaker 1: to read directly a section from Lucia's article, because this
Speaker 1: is wonderful. So Lucia writes, the larvae of this beetle,
Speaker 1: cursed in the kind of verbiage formerly applied to oxen
Speaker 1: by the old bull whackers, have an amazing ability for
Speaker 1: cutting and destroying huge quantities of timber. Although the busy
Speaker 1: grub is hardly the size of a stout man's finger,
Speaker 1: I don't know that that seems sizeable to me. Continuing,
Speaker 1: the hated grub turns good timber into sawdust, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter whether the trees are alive or sound snags
Speaker 1: and windfalls that might be salvaged. The winged adult beetle
Speaker 1: deposits its eggs beneath the bark of a dead tree, or,
Speaker 1: when faced with an overpopulation problem, under the bark of
Speaker 1: living trees. The vast Tillamook Burn and the other regional
Speaker 1: forest disasters promised feasts that would last the timber beetle
Speaker 1: and his offspring many generations. Although the way they worked
Speaker 1: wholesale destruction of salvageable timber might be accomplished in a
Speaker 1: few brief years. So this larva is a workhorse. And
Speaker 1: Cox claims he was looking at this little larva and
Speaker 1: and marveling at it and wondering how it was so
Speaker 1: good at tunneling through the stiff fibers of tree trunks.
Speaker 1: And so he tells that he armed himself with a
Speaker 1: magnifying glass and began to study closely the cutting and
Speaker 1: boring behavior of this grub. And what he discovered was
Speaker 1: that rather than scraping or scratching at the wood straight ahead,
Speaker 1: instead the larva would move side to side, sort of
Speaker 1: shaving out parts of the wood with C shaped jaws.
Speaker 1: And so, inspired by the jaws of this larva, Cox
Speaker 1: went on to design a cutting chain for saws based
Speaker 1: on exactly this type of action. So I was trying
Speaker 1: to understand exactly what the difference was here, and I
Speaker 1: think I finally got it. So chains that came before
Speaker 1: tended to have these cutting teeth, sharp teeth which would
Speaker 1: scrape at the wood like a knife, and they would
Speaker 1: alternate with what we're called raker teeth, which were these
Speaker 1: hook shaped bumps designed to scoop away debris after it
Speaker 1: had been cut away from the wood by the sharp teeth,
Speaker 1: and that would clear out the curve. Ok, So that
Speaker 1: that's the old design. But I found the new design
Speaker 1: described in an article written for Offbeat Oregon, which is
Speaker 1: like an Oregon based through a weird local history column.
Speaker 1: And this was written by Finn J. D. John in
Speaker 1: September called watching Bugs in a Stump led to the
Speaker 1: modern chainsaw, and John describes the the new design Cox's
Speaker 1: design like this. The cutting teeth were hook shaped chisels
Speaker 1: that would bite into the wood and essentially carve away chips.
Speaker 1: And those chips were big enough and clean enough that
Speaker 1: rakers weren't necessary to clear them out of the curve.
Speaker 1: Finding the chisels to tended to grab too much wood,
Speaker 1: Joe added a bump in the metal just in front
Speaker 1: of the chisel on each link of the chain. By
Speaker 1: filing down the bump or gauge, he could control how
Speaker 1: big a bite each chisel took. And then I found
Speaker 1: a picture also for us to look at rob So
Speaker 1: it looks like with with Joe Cox's design, the cutting
Speaker 1: side is on the top of this diagram. You're looking
Speaker 1: at now, so what it looks like is the cutting
Speaker 1: side has these little sort of curved chisels, the cutting
Speaker 1: teeth or tube shaped blades, alternating from one side of
Speaker 1: the chain to the other, so shaving out a little
Speaker 1: tube shaped chip on the left and then doing one
Speaker 1: on the right, back and forth forever. So I think
Speaker 1: the difference is that instead of cutting like a sharp
Speaker 1: bladed saw, just like a knife point. This would shave
Speaker 1: out a kind of thin tunnel. And apparently the chain
Speaker 1: that Joe Cox designed cut faster and more cleanly than
Speaker 1: the chains that came before and needed less resharpening, so
Speaker 1: this was a clear improvement. He patented his design and
Speaker 1: eventually nineteen forty seven he founded a firm called the
Speaker 1: Oregon Saw Chain Corporation, which was later known as Ohmark,
Speaker 1: which would become a multimillion dollar company and would revolutionize
Speaker 1: the power saw business. And at this point, by the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, I think this is when we hit the
Speaker 1: turning point, and there's really no going back from the
Speaker 1: chainsaw to the misery whip. I guess unless you were
Speaker 1: just trying to make a point or something, there there
Speaker 1: would be no Texas misery whip massacre than well, I
Speaker 1: think this is a great place to come come back
Speaker 1: to the Texas chainsaw massacre, and and also just to discuss,
Speaker 1: like what is the cultural trajectory of the chainsaw from
Speaker 1: here on out. I was reading a bit about this
Speaker 1: in the The Icon City of Chainsaws From the Backyard
Speaker 1: to the Barbecue by Christopher Curry, and he writes the
Speaker 1: following quote, two years nineteen fifty and nineteen seventy four
Speaker 1: are vital and understanding the icon city of the petrol
Speaker 1: powered handheld, single operator chainsaw. Nineteen fifty was the year
Speaker 1: in which the tool was introduced to the American market.
Speaker 1: It was a backyard revolution. Men were empowered with a
Speaker 1: remarkable new technology for clearing undergrowth, trimming branches, and felling trees. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you no longer need to be an experienced logger
Speaker 1: or have a buddy to work the misery whip with you.
Speaker 1: Just one person with one power tool can go out
Speaker 1: there and master the landscape exactly now seventy four that
Speaker 1: he mentions that, of course, is when Texas chainsaw massacre
Speaker 1: comes out. And that's that's a that's kind of where
Speaker 1: he keeps, you know, ping pong it back and forth,
Speaker 1: between like the cultural role of the chainsaw and how
Speaker 1: it is reflected in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Uh. And
Speaker 1: and I think it's it's worth driving home here that. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you don't know much about the Texas Chainsaw Masacre,
Speaker 1: maybe you've seen it. You've seen it once, you know,
Speaker 1: you saw years ago. It's easy to dismiss it and
Speaker 1: think it's just this, it's just this shocking work that's
Speaker 1: about titilation. But Toby Hooper had he had political ambitions
Speaker 1: in creating the film, like he wanted to make a
Speaker 1: political film that wasn't about politics. He wanted so it's
Speaker 1: not a film that is just about chainsaws roaring, you know,
Speaker 1: in in the rural setting and chasing people and blood
Speaker 1: and screams. Um. It is trying to say something and
Speaker 1: I think, you know, arguably it does a fantastic job
Speaker 1: doing so tell me more, Okay, so, uh, Curry writes
Speaker 1: the chainsaw though during this period, it was imbued with
Speaker 1: the power of both a status symbol and a phallic
Speaker 1: symbol for it's predominantly male users of this time. Additionally,
Speaker 1: it became a thoroughly American symbol of status and power,
Speaker 1: as quote, cutting down trees. It is an especially significant
Speaker 1: part of American history, which which is true. I mean
Speaker 1: that is part of the the story of the colonization
Speaker 1: of North America by Westerners, by Europeans. Um. And then
Speaker 1: you know, what do you have? You have these expansive forests.
Speaker 1: What do you do with those expansive forests, Well, you
Speaker 1: start cutting them down? Um and uh and and of
Speaker 1: course to a certain extent that makes sense, because what
Speaker 1: does would give you wood gives you homes, it gives
Speaker 1: you it gives you ships, it gives you um, you know,
Speaker 1: all these things you can create out of it, all
Speaker 1: your tools. But also would meant fuel as well. And
Speaker 1: so here comes the chainsaw uh and it allows you
Speaker 1: to harvest uh material and and uh and fuel for
Speaker 1: energy production. Quote. Such a radical technological transformation of the
Speaker 1: basic means to cut down trees sidles up alongside such
Speaker 1: intrinsically American notions as self determination, manifest destiny, the logging industry,
Speaker 1: and the myth of frontier. And so from here, Curry
Speaker 1: goes on to argue that the Texas chainsaw massacre massacre
Speaker 1: very much builds on all of this. The saw, your family,
Speaker 1: the chainsall family. If you will in the Texas Chainsaw massacre,
Speaker 1: cannibalism and murder aside, they are a rural version of
Speaker 1: the American dream. They are entrepreneurs doing what they have
Speaker 1: to do to survive in the face of economic and
Speaker 1: social change. Yes, they're they're rather self sufficient, aren't they. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and this again, this is very much intentional on
Speaker 1: on on Toby Hooper's part commenting on consumer culture and
Speaker 1: the chainsaw is all about consumption again, either in its
Speaker 1: intended role is that of a tool for the consumption
Speaker 1: of trees for the for the material uses and for
Speaker 1: fuel uses, or in this extrapolated fantastic role as a
Speaker 1: weapon of murder and dismemberment. So you know, it ultimately
Speaker 1: becomes a situation. It's easy to lose this because we're
Speaker 1: so fascinated with the idea of the chainsaw as weapon.
Speaker 1: But it's like leather face is is is felling humans.
Speaker 1: It's humans as trees cut down to sustain others. Because
Speaker 1: I remember, they weren't just It wasn't just about cutting
Speaker 1: up um teenagers from the city. It was about making
Speaker 1: barbecue out of them. A supply and demand. Now, one
Speaker 1: thing I've never noticed before we did this episode is
Speaker 1: that the family in the Texas Chainsaw Masker are named
Speaker 1: the Sawyers, which the Sawyers are the people who work
Speaker 1: the saws in the log mystry. I never put that
Speaker 1: together either until Manning Manning the misery whip their Sawyers.
Speaker 1: It does follow the Dickens convention. It does, it does?
Speaker 1: What do they do? They saw? Um? I was also
Speaker 1: thinking a bit about the line the Saws family. Um.
Speaker 1: I think that's predominantly from Sexas Chainsaw Maskar too, right,
Speaker 1: part of a fun little bit of a grizzly dialogue
Speaker 1: in there. But the idea that the saw is family
Speaker 1: and what is the saw? Uh? As Curry points out
Speaker 1: in this article, the saw is consumption. Look, the saw
Speaker 1: is this way of life through consumption. So of course
Speaker 1: the Saws family, and I think this is ultimately a
Speaker 1: rather biting commentary on the American way of life. You know,
Speaker 1: our lives are consumption. You cannot separate consumption from all
Speaker 1: of these other ideals of what we are and what
Speaker 1: we want out of the world, out of the out
Speaker 1: of life, and out of like just the raw substance
Speaker 1: of the country. Yeah, okay, And so if this is
Speaker 1: the intended point, it makes sense that you would use
Speaker 1: the chainsaw, because I think we were talking about this
Speaker 1: at the very beginning of the first episode, something about
Speaker 1: the the aesthetic impression made by the chainsaw is kind
Speaker 1: of alarming at the rate at which it like goes
Speaker 1: through things. Yeah, absolutely, uh you know. I also I
Speaker 1: had to look up the exact quote from TCM two
Speaker 1: because it's it's actually pretty good. This is Drayton, uh,
Speaker 1: the old one of the older member of the family,
Speaker 1: not the old old man who can you know, barely move,
Speaker 1: but the uh, the the the the younger old man
Speaker 1: in the family. And he's telling leather Face. He's saying,
Speaker 1: you have one choice, boy sex or the saw sex
Speaker 1: as well, nobody knows, but the saw, the saw is family.
Speaker 1: So that that kind of gets into sort of these
Speaker 1: these phallic ideas too, and the masculine aspects that are
Speaker 1: tied up in the chainsaw and its role in the
Speaker 1: American culture, the idea that on one level, you have
Speaker 1: you have potential creation, um, but but who knows what
Speaker 1: comes with creation? Creation is a risk. But consumption we
Speaker 1: know exactly where consumption goes. We know where where the
Speaker 1: saw leads to. That is the safe way that is
Speaker 1: the traditional way, and of course that is the way
Speaker 1: that the saw your family sticks to the saws yet
Speaker 1: another Texas Chili cook Off competition trophy. You know, coming
Speaker 1: back to the to the technological side, one of the
Speaker 1: things that really interests me in reading that the story
Speaker 1: of Joe Cox and the redesign of the chainsaw blade
Speaker 1: is that we managed to have all these decades of
Speaker 1: people having the idea to apply new types of power
Speaker 1: motors and engines to drive saws, to like make sawing
Speaker 1: more powerful, to outstrip what could be done by human muscles,
Speaker 1: but going so long in this process without making the
Speaker 1: significant improvements to the cutting chain like Joe coxwould um
Speaker 1: that would eventually revolutionize the power saw business. It I
Speaker 1: don't know it, uh, something seems metaphorically significant there as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and it also perfect that they turned to to
Speaker 1: larvae to to get this answer, because you know, what
Speaker 1: are what do larvae do? They consume? That's all they do. Like,
Speaker 1: that's the job of a larva is to consume and
Speaker 1: grow bigger so that it can take on the next
Speaker 1: stage of its of its life. So in a way,
Speaker 1: it's like the perfect spirit animal for the chain saw
Speaker 1: as well. So I feel like these episodes have forced
Speaker 1: me to think long and hard about to to rethink
Speaker 1: the role of the chainsaw in Texas Chainsaw Maska. But
Speaker 1: there's plenty of other room to to, you know, to
Speaker 1: consider as well, Like what how do we interpret the
Speaker 1: chainsaw in the Evil Dead movies? What does that mean? Why?
Speaker 1: Why is it groovy? And is it truly groovy? I
Speaker 1: don't know. Oh, that seems very different somehow. When Ash
Speaker 1: picks up the chainsaw the wheel against the demons or
Speaker 1: the Dead Eyes, that almost seems like it is somehow
Speaker 1: an emblem of human civilization and human technology, the good
Speaker 1: and ordered part of the world, which you know is
Speaker 1: is the one thing you can hold to, sort of
Speaker 1: like man the Gates of Thermopoli against uh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: against the Advancing Magical Team, uh, you know, whatever you
Speaker 1: call it. Where do the Dead Eyes come from? I
Speaker 1: don't even remember um from the Dead world. I don't
Speaker 1: know that the hell. Maybe they're bad. They're not here.
Speaker 1: They're bad. They're not bad, I mean, they're not human. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's also worth thinking about the fact that we've tried.
Speaker 1: We're talking about like in the Leather Face UM area,
Speaker 1: and also in this sort of again coming back to this, uh,
Speaker 1: this sort of masculine interpretation of the chainsaw on American
Speaker 1: culture very much, this idea that like the chainsaw as
Speaker 1: extension of of of human identity and the human body,
Speaker 1: Ash actually makes the chainsaw a part of his body, right,
Speaker 1: replacing his hand with a chainsaw um, which is of
Speaker 1: course wonderfully you know, on brand and over the top,
Speaker 1: especially for the third movie. Oh yeah, what does it
Speaker 1: say that your hand can be possessed by a demon
Speaker 1: but your chainsaw can't. Yeah, like the the hand is corruptible,
Speaker 1: the chainsaws beyond corruption. Don't trust the flesh, turn trust
Speaker 1: the saw. All right, Well, there you have it, the chainsaw,
Speaker 1: the invention of the chainsaw, and and hopefully more than
Speaker 1: enough seasonal horror consideration thrown in there as well to
Speaker 1: keep things uh nice and HALLOWEENI. In the meantime, if
Speaker 1: you would like to check out other episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind, you know where to find them.
Speaker 1: Check the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. We
Speaker 1: have core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Artifact on Wednesday,
Speaker 1: listener mail on Monday, and then on Friday we do
Speaker 1: weird how cinema. That's our chance to to just really uh,
Speaker 1: you know, bear down and talk about a weird movie
Speaker 1: uh for an extended period of time. And then over
Speaker 1: the weekend we usually run a vault episode, which is
Speaker 1: here we run huge things. As always to our excellent
Speaker 1: audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: just to say hello, you can email us at contact
Speaker 1: at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to
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