Basic Debarking Concepts Nicholson was one of the very first companies to design a working ring debarker. Previously debarking had been done with debarking spuds (a hand tool like a small adze) and other very slow and uneconomical methods. When debarking was too slow, square cants were made by cutting full-chord slabs from the raw logs and these slabs were generally burned. The ring debarker changed all that and has been an important part in maximizing wood resource recovery worldwide. The ring debarker removes the bark at the fluid filled Cambium layer were the bond between the wood fiber and bark is weakest. As the debarker ring rotates, the log is precisely advanced through the ring and up to six small knife tips remove the bark in a helical pattern. A slight overlap is provided to make sure that all the bark is removed. The ring debarker lets you debark with the log in motion so very high processing speeds are commonplace. This is very important with smaller diameter logs since they have more bark coverage per cubic unit of useable wood fiber, and more logs must be processed to reach production targets. The ring debarker is also far more accurate in its removal of only the bark than any other method. The substantial damage to valuable wood fiber that rosserhead, flail and drum debarkers create is avoided with ring debarkers. Nicholson has been making some of the world’s finest debarkers since the very beginning, and we always want to be the ‘first with the best’.