Earlier this year, I had planned on submitting an article to CJOW for the December issue. Having created 20 trees in 20 years, gives me a catchy 20/20 hindsight theme for this story. As I do not subscribe to CJOW and do not receive Icon, I was unaware that it was becoming a quarterly publication. As I expected, there was more content provided for the December issue than could be accommodated. December 2018 is 20 years from when I shared a photo of my first insulator tree here, on Bill's homepage. So by the time April or more likely July or September rolls around, a story printed then seems like an after thought. https://www.insulators.info/oldhome/199812.htm

A 20 year span with 20 different insulator trees, from 3 foot to towering 30 foot designs being created. Glass, porcelain, uniparts, multiparts, domestic, foreign and even suspensions; nothing except spools escaped my attention. Recently married, this tree, # 20, was created specifically to be our Christmas tree. Not a full tree of 360 degrees, it is 220 degrees. This allows it to tuck up against the wall but still gives the full tree effect. This year it is adorned with GIFONA from countries one or both of us have or want to visit. Next Christmas the theme can be anything, all it requires is 50 insulators . It looks better with lights but in a picture the wiring becomes too much of a distraction.

That first tree in 1998 was a poor design overall. After the first month of winter winds it had a decided lean to it necessitating the removal of more than half of the insulators. The next tree was on a much larger scale using a utility pole with just common, locally found insulators to start. A select few were replaced as sufficient numbers in colours became available. https://www.insulators.info/pictures/?id=95515537

The next seven trees were a totally new approach; each used sixty, 4 pin tramp brackets . https://www.insulators.info/pictures/?id=330128717 I walked a hundred mile section of track to gather enough brackets. Each one weighs 13 lb. You do the math and logistics. Remember, I am naturally lazy and there has to be an easy way to get me involved. I made two trees with porcelain in mind. For those I tried a different design simply to use up a few of the crossarm braces that had followed me home over the years. https://www.insulators.info/pictures/?id=397662915 Some of the trees use glass, some porcelain; one is all modern RT insulators, about as boring an insulator as you can find. https://www.insulators.info/pictures/?id=376582306 During one of my frequent shopping trips to the local metal scrap yard, I came home with several metal utility type poles of different lengths. Over the years these poles became six suspension tree sculptures. The first tree was for the collection was a short pole displaying the discs at eye level. https://www.insulators.info/pictures/?id=328564787 Some 360 different discs it was vandalized early on resulting in the loss of nearly 100, one of, suspensions. (A future Hunts and fails episode you do not want to miss.) In the next 3 designs, anger prevailed and no discs were closer than 10 ft to the ground. https://www.insulators.info/pictures/?id=502475607 The design of each depending somewhat on the length of the available pole.

On a routine trip to a dumpster I discovered a mother load of common multipart's complete with kingpins. After a morning of grunt work I had enough pins to do a display. In just two years I acquired over 100 different big porcelains - enough to replace the common brown OB that came with the pins. https://www.insulators.info/pictures/?id=427731051 This tree is special in that despite all that weight the design is easy to spin to present a different view. The project itself cost me a total of about $10 - The price of the pole. The pins were free, and the 'branches' are nothing more than metal T fence stakes left over from my farming days.

The smallest tree is last one, the Christmas tree which holds 50 smaller pin types . Strangely enough, the largest tree of the 20, was the one before which has over 1600 suspensions.

Other tree pictures you may enjoy. https://www.insulators.info/pictures/?id=486654044

https://www.insulators.info/pictures/?id=449614247

https://www.insulators.info/pictures/?id=441060898

https://www.insulators.info/pictures/?id=91546518