I've been truning a while and live up in the northeast. The recent spate of storms has blown down quite a bit of lumber -- in addition to all the hardwood th tree surgeons normally take away. Some of them don't mind shaving me off a few slices, but most often I get there after they've left. The property owners don't mind me taking a bit, but they nevr have any tools.
What I need is a decently sized chainsaw with which to slice off my own lumber. Something I can carry in the Jeep, that's sized and powered well enough to cut through the average tree.
I saw that Ryobi has an electric one, but that looked a mite small. Any advice or recommendations would be appreciated.
Whereabouts in the Northeast (I'm assuming NE USA)? SW VT myself.
First advice - invest in top quality chaps and either a "saw-helmet" or separate earmuffs, safety glasses, and hardhat before you start after the saw. Even with lots of experience I don't pick up the saw without the gear. It's very cheap, quick and easy to have safety gear and always use it, when you consider even one trip to the emergency room as what you might save.
Make sure that the saw has an effective chain brake. Inertial brakes are better than those which rely on your hand being in the right place to activate them (nothing very fancy or expensive about that - the "paddle" has enough weight that it will trip the brake if the saw suddenly rotates, whether or not your hand is there to hit it).
As for the saw, there's a segment that are happy with the $100 Poulans from Walmart. My dad is delighted with his Sears Craftsman.
My advice is to find your local professional saw shop, and see what they carry (generally Stihl or Husquvarna, or both). Explain your needs and an honest shop will recommend something that should work well for you. They might also guide you into using it correctly. You almost certainly don't need a full-on professional $600-800 saw (though you could get one if you're trying to do something with your lottery winnings), but $100 saws are essentially disposable, and waste money you could spend on a saw that will last.
Don't forget to get spare chain, saw file(s), file guide(s), gas can, mix oil, chain oil. You can take a chain (or two, or three) that needs excessive work in to be sharpened at the shop if you have a spare chain (or two, or three). Touch the chain up every time it needs gas, or sooner if the cut gets difficult.
At present I use a Stihl MS290 with an 18" bar. Works for me, cost about $300. It's got vibration isolation, which makes a large difference in how my hands feel at the end of a sawing session. I don't meet a lot of trees it won't cut in one pass here, and I've never met one I needed to cut that it wouldn't do in two passes, so I have not bothered with a bigger bar; I might go to 20" if I wear this bar out, but probably not much more than that for a general purpose saw. When the chain is sharp, it rips blanks quite well, even though it's not ripping chain.
If you live in the secret valley of the old growth and often meet 3 foot and larger diameter trees, you'll probably want one of the pro saws after all, as they have more motor to go with bigger bars. Start with a
20" or smaller bar until you get the hang of using it, though - a 36" bar is considerably more than twice as dangerous, and it's also a pig to use when cutting smaller logs. Swapping bars is typically a 5 minutes or less operation.
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