A bark hack is a tool used to remove pine tree bark to promote the flow of pine resin, which is used in naval stores production. The tool consists of a wooden shaft with a weighted butt and hook-like, replaceable, U-shaped blades at the head.
The bark hack is swung much like an axe and is used to create a hatched chevron pattern ("cat face" or less frequently, a "blaze") into trees' exposed sapwood. The weighted end helps the operator follow through with the force necessary for the hooked blade to scoop out chips of hard pine wood.
Famous quotes containing the words bark and/or hack:
“We certainly leave the handsomest paint and clapboards behind in the woods, when we strip off the bark and poison ourselves with white-lead in the towns. We get but half the spoils of the forest.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Painting consumes labour not disproportionate to its effect; but a fellow will hack half a year at a block of marble to make something in stone that hardly resembles a man. The value of statuary is owing to its difficulty. You would not value the finest head cut upon a carrot.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)