A Voyageur Country ATV Innovation.

Voyageur Country ATV wanted to add some overlooks to an existing bridge, and get the job done by fall. The club wanted to use Douglas fir timbers to handle the load anticipated on the viewing platforms. But the market was volatile; lumber companies couldn’t guarantee price or delivery. On top of that, no one in the area had an incising tool to cut slits in the dense wood prior to treating it with preservative.

Problem solvers

The incised and treated timbers were put into place on an existing bridge on the Vermilion Falls trail.So the club did what many ATV clubs do in tough situations: they designed and built the tool themselves.

“It looks like some kind of torture device,” said Steve Koch, trail administrator. “We wanted to get the timbers to Land O’Lakes in Tenstrike, Minn, so we could build two 4 ft. by 16 ft. cantilevered overlooks at the wood bridge on the Vermilion Falls trail. But they had to be treated first.”

Steve turned to Tom Baumchen, who also made the club’s gates and dump trailer.

“Tom is a good builder and problem solver,” Koch said. “I asked him to build an incising tool, and he said ‘what’s that?’ We talked. Two days later he had done the research, and taken pictures of incising marks on the original structure. We got a roller from an old sawmill. A week later he showed up with the tool.”

“Steve told me what he needed, so we drew it up and agreed we needed to make it,” said Baumchen.

The roller of the homemade incising tool is 9 inches in diameter and 24 inches long.

Standing on the completed platform are (L to R) Marshall Egge, Danny Koch and Steve Koch.“It’s basically pipe, steel and tubing,” adds Baumchen. “We laid out the engineering specs, and laser cut some of the parts. There’s some pretty neat stuff we had to do to make it work. There’s all kinds of internal welding that you can’t see but every one of those pieces is welded in.

The finished roller was mounted inside of a framework with some guides to attach it to a front-end loader with forks. Said Baumchen, “That was our power source to create down pressure. We just drove over the top of the timbers. It’s actually pretty simple and it turned out great.

The club incised the Douglas fir timbers, then brought them to Land O Lakes Wood Preserving Company, Inc. A month later, they picked them up and went to work on the bridge. Koch admits they overlooked adding overlooks when they built the bridge, but with the help of their homemade incising tool, they got the job done on schedule and on budget. “By building our own incising tool, we kept the job local and on our time frame,” said Koch. “The more custom work we do, it give us that much more flexibility on our trail and bridge projects.”

Steve and Tom are very active members of Voyageur Country ATV, and Northeast Regional Directors of ATV Minnesota. The incising tool is available for use by other ATV club