This month's issue of TCI has a cabling article on page 32--subscriptions are free, and online: http://www.tcia.org/PDFs/TCI_Mag_July_07.pdf
When I read in Dennis Ryan’s article on cabling (July 2007 issue) that “you shall use a lag instead of an eyebolt in a decayed limb”, I reached for my ANSI Support Standards. I’m no expert on the subject, but common sense told me the opposite was true. Sure enough, ANSI said “Lag-threaded hardware shall only be installed in sound wood.” This is confirmed in the BMP’s, which the article listed as a reference. Dennis seems to have it backwards, or there was a typo or an editing error. TCIA typically does an excellent job upholding ANSI, so it was surprising to see this slip.
The first ANSI Support Standard reads “All necessary pruning should be performed prior to installing a tree support system”, but I did not see pruning mentioned at all in the article. The risk from many weak forks can be made acceptably low through pruning alone, so it seems that pruning could have been mentioned. It was also disappointing to read the author’s opinions that synthetic ropes are “ugly”, while “a steel cabling system …is not visible to most people”.
Steel cables are easy to see, so one wonders whether the author’s aesthetic bias indicates a deeper prejudice against dynamic cabling. Maybe it’s just the blinding glare off the snow in Massachusetts. Anyway, what place does this degree of subjectivity have in a scientific or even a technical article?
When I read in Dennis Ryan’s article on cabling (July 2007 issue) that “you shall use a lag instead of an eyebolt in a decayed limb”, I reached for my ANSI Support Standards. I’m no expert on the subject, but common sense told me the opposite was true. Sure enough, ANSI said “Lag-threaded hardware shall only be installed in sound wood.” This is confirmed in the BMP’s, which the article listed as a reference. Dennis seems to have it backwards, or there was a typo or an editing error. TCIA typically does an excellent job upholding ANSI, so it was surprising to see this slip.
The first ANSI Support Standard reads “All necessary pruning should be performed prior to installing a tree support system”, but I did not see pruning mentioned at all in the article. The risk from many weak forks can be made acceptably low through pruning alone, so it seems that pruning could have been mentioned. It was also disappointing to read the author’s opinions that synthetic ropes are “ugly”, while “a steel cabling system …is not visible to most people”.
Steel cables are easy to see, so one wonders whether the author’s aesthetic bias indicates a deeper prejudice against dynamic cabling. Maybe it’s just the blinding glare off the snow in Massachusetts. Anyway, what place does this degree of subjectivity have in a scientific or even a technical article?