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CHAINSAW COMMENTARY Since we'll eventually want one of our own instead of always borrowing from other folks (thanks, guys!), I elicited commentary about chainsaws from the folks dismembering our tree. Both major brands, Stihl and Husqvarna, have been used in the process. The monster Husq. deployed today (to cut up the trunk) was really impressive, and it isn't even the largest model. There is (minor) dissention in the ranks of Muise tree service. The boss likes Stihl, since some of the internal parts of Husqvarnas are plastic, and he's had problems with that. One of the employees we talked to prefers Husqvarnas: "He (pointing to boss) likes Stihl, but they call 'em Stihl 'cause he's still cutting when I'm done." We're still (pun intended) undecided as to which brand we should get. If there really is no major difference in quality, it'll probably come down to price, though Husqvarna has a cooler-sounding name and is featured in a Conga Se Menne (Finnish Reggae) song. If folks have better reasons for prefering one brand over the other, let us know. I don't expect we'll be doing much in the felling huge trees department, but we'll be looking to be able to cut up our own firewood (safely -- a sensitive chain-brake is a must) for many years to come. And yes, if a tree falls in your back yard while you're watching, it does make a noise; "earth-shattering kaboom" is not too far off. --T.B. What sort of parts are plastic? I remember someone (Jim? Crash?) saying that some manufacturers will deliberately make one of the gears out of plastic so that if the device jams (in this case they were talking about a Kitchenaid Mixer) the plastic gear will break, but it's positioned so it's easy to replace. ---Ben That was my first thought, but apparently it was the oil pump drive gear, whose failure caused a lot of damage to the saw. --andrew Well, since you've already narrowed the choices to Stihl and Husqvarna, my comments probably won't be that helpful. I had a Poulan and then a Husqvarna. The Husqvarna was much better in all ways. The Poulan would stall out easily, took forever to cut, the chain tensioning mechanisms were more fiddly, etc. I never had any problems with the Husqvarna, and I always thought it cut plenty quickly. I only used it for about 2 years, though, so I don't know abou the longevity of the plastic parts. The most important thing is to keep the chain sharp and properly tensioned! Some people who cut lots of wood say that for just cutting firewood near your house, a cheap electric is the best thing to get. They are psuedo-disposable, you miss a whole lot of fuss from the gas engine, you don't have the excessive contributions to air pollution from two-stroke engines, and they are probably safer. (Electric saws tend to have an accelerometer-based cutoff swich that shuts off the chain whenever the saw is jerked hard in any direction, in addition to the . Gas powered ones only shutdown when the chain-brake hits your wrist. That mechanism is completely circumvented if you hold the saw sideways to saw a vertical piece.) I met several people who had a big fat Husqy or Stihl for felling out in the woods, but once they got the logs back home, they'd pull out a cheap electric saw to save wear and tear on their good saw. --scott > What sort of parts are plastic? I remember someone (Jim? Crash?) saying that some manufacturers will deliberately make one of the gears out of plastic so that if the device jams (in this case they were talking about a Kitchenaid Mixer) the plastic gear will break, but it's positioned so it's easy to replace. Our previous food processor (La Machine?) had a plastic drive gear that wore out. It might have been well designed in the sense that the plastic gear saved the rest of the transmission when the chopper got stuck. However, when I went to buy a replacement, they would only sell me the entire transmission, which was about 40% of the cost of a new unit. The plastic gear in the new transmission got munged a few months later. Now we have a Kitchen Aid, and like it very much. --scott OIL PUMP DRIVE GEAR??? HA HA HA!!! They were pulling your leg. Chain saws have two-cycle engines, and as such, the oil is MIXED into the gasoline. There is no engine oil pump, and so there also isn't any such thing as a chainsaw "oil pump drive gear" unless it's an engine with built-in oil metering, which I've heard of on motorcycles but never ever on a chain saw. -Crash Engine oil? Who said engine oil? BTW, the truck just came by to fetch the two main trunk sections; watching The Claw swing through the air and casually lift many-tonned tree sections was really impressive. Sadly, no pictures. --andrew The chain oil pump on every chainsaw I've ever seen was driven by two things: - a shot of oil whenever you blipped the throttle... - a shot of oil whenever you pressed the "oil" button. Not to say it wouldn't make sense to have auto oil feed to the bar, but I've never seen it. -Crash > What sort of parts are plastic? I remember someone (Jim? Crash?) saying that some manufacturers will deliberately make one of the gears out of plastic so that if the device jams (in this case they were talking about a Kitchenaid Mixer) the plastic gear will break, but it's positioned so it's easy to replace. I mentioned that. When I was a kid one of the guys in the print shop had a press torn down and explained to me the concept of a "fiber gear". He'd stripped one and was replacing it. Of course, this guy stripped a lot of them. He wasn't the most careful person in the world, to say the least... I experienced it for myself when I stripped the fiber gear in my KitchenAid mixer. I walked into the repair shop, showed the gear to the guy, and without even looking up the part number reaches under the counter and hands me a new one 8-) Of course, I have no idea whether these are the "plastic parts" that the fellow was referring to... In any case, Tam and I have gotten by fairly well with a little-old $150 14-inch McCullough (sp?) that we picked up at Spag's. The idea is that any trees bigger than this thing can handle are probably best left to the pros anyway. The only reason I might consider upgrading would be to get a saw with a long enough bar to use on an "Alaskan"-style sawmill... --Jim Paradis |
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