3 ms·

While the usefullness is debatable, I'm a little concerned about the tree friendliness. From what I can see on the pictures, the standoffs, including the side

While the usefullness is debatable, I'm a little concerned about the tree friendliness. From what I can see on the pictures, the standoffs, including the side stability lugs shown in one of the pictures might be too small to avoid risk of damage to the bark. For most trees, short mounting time, and light load it is probably fine as the page states, but someone walking into the table, or trying to sit on it, would likely damage at least some species of tree. Use on your own trees as you wish, but maybe avoid things like this on community/park trees, at least not without additional padding and some understanding of how robust the particular kind of tree is. Trees are very strong, but the bark isn't always. Padding for trees should almost always be smooth on the tree side to avoid abrasion when mounting, no harder than the tree outer and inner bark, and spread the load ... sufficiently. What is sufficient will vary from species to species, and to some extent by age, but considering some trees have a soft enough bark that you can at least superficially damage it with a fingernail, there are no obvious rules. Err on the side of caution.

boris1 6y ago
I tried it on about 20 trees, of all shapes I could find here in Vancouver, BC, coding on my laptop for 8 hours a day. No noticeable damage with a naked eye, using the prototype. The bark doesn't get damaged, because once everything is tightened, there's no movement or wiggling, only a compression. Most bark can handle the compression. So even if you bump into the tree, nothing's going to happen. The manufactured product will probably have some padding on the lugs, it may not be wood lugs, but maybe rubber lugs. Or metal or wood lugs, with rubber padding glued on. The way I set in in the prototype, is when the bolt of the lug rotates, the lug also rotates. So I have to set it right, and then just use it at that position. For the manufactured product, I'd like to set it, then tighten the belt a little, then allow to screw the lug bolt so that the mounting bar would become vertical. This means that the lug must have a bearing, that would make the rotating bolt (or shaft) rotate freely, without moving anything on the bark, so that the bark doesn't get damaged.

boris1 6y ago

I tried it on about 20 trees, of all shapes I could find here in Vancouver, BC, coding on my laptop for 8 hours a day. No noticeable damage with a naked eye, using the prototype. The bark doesn't get damaged, because once everything is tightened, there's no movement or wiggling, only a compression. Most bark can handle the compression. So even if you bump into the tree, nothing's going to happen. The manufactured product will probably have some padding on the lugs, it may not be wood lugs, but maybe rubber lugs. Or metal or wood lugs, with rubber padding glued on. The way I set in in the prototype, is when the bolt of the lug rotates, the lug also rotates. So I have to set it right, and then just use it at that position. For the manufactured product, I'd like to set it, then tighten the belt a little, then allow to screw the lug bolt so that the mounting bar would become vertical. This means that the lug must have a bearing, that would make the rotating bolt (or shaft) rotate freely, without moving anything on the bark, so that the bark doesn't get damaged.