How dangerous is a chainsaw to use?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

As has been noted, cutting down standing trees is a complicated activity that should be considered inherently dangerous. Dead standing trees are an additional complication, since the standard techniques depend for safety and control on the strength of the tree’s wood near its base, which may be compromised in a dead tree (and in some live ones as well). For an amusing (and instructive) hour, check out YouTube videos of tree-felling gone wrong.

The weight of a tree lying on the ground creates internals stresses that complicated cutting it up. Safety requires a chainsaw operator to be good at evaluating these and working with them. Some people have this sort of mechanical sense - and some never will. If you question your ability to devlope this, best to leave the chainsaw work to someone else.

42

I was a complete novice to chainsaws and tree felling when I moved to my current home in 2015. The property was/is full of dead ash trees. Thanks, Emerald Ash Borer! I bought a Stihl MS 270 right after I moved and contrary to the consensus here, I’ve had problems with it. I dropped a tree right across the path to my shed, sectioned it up a little, shut the saw off and it wouldn’t restart. I needed to get the tree off the path so I bought a Husqvarna Rancher 450. I finally figured out the Stihl had an intermittently bad ignition coil. It would start, run fine, shut it off and then wouldn’t restart. Replaced the coil and now I have two saws! I like the Stihl better for the most part but the Husqvarna is a more dependable starter.

Ash trees that have been dead a long time still have nice, solid wood but the roots rot underground and they fall over.

YouTube is your friend! I watched a lot of videos before I tackled dropping whole trees and it still doesn’t always work the way you expect. I bought the chaps, hard hat with screen face shield and hearing protection and gloves. I had a close call once. I try to preserve as much vegetation as I can and when a tree started falling in an unexpected direction, I started moving towards safety and the saw caught on some brush and pivoted the still rotating blade into my leg. This was before I got the chaps. Learn to use the blade brake!

One great purchase I made was a Timberline Chainsaw Sharpener. It’s pricey but if you are going to use your saw a lot it pays for itself pretty quick vs. paying to have it sharpened.
I have a 20V reciprocating saw and use it, with a pruning blade, to cut the small branches. A lot lighter and less fatiguing than the chainsaw.

43

Yeah, there is plenty of usable wood in downed trees; you can get a permit to harvest wood from downed trees on national forest property. Obviously, you don’t want a rotting tree, but there are a few downed trees on my property that have good firewood. Harvesting wood is the only reason I would buy a chainsaw, I’m certainly not going to try and landscape my property; I’ve got a fox living on it and last week two mallard ducks showed up and started building a nest. I plan on keeping it nice and wild. The previous owners had a big pile of firewood, but a lot of it has just rotted in place over the years, there was very little of use in there, but the copperheads love living in there. Now, as I try to clear that wood out (it’s taking up part of the driveway), I make sure I do it when it’s cold out so any serpents are nice and logy.

Thanks for all the advice. I definitely will look into classes and won’t skimp on the safety gear. I’m leaning towards a Dewalt cordless chainsaw, it should be more than enough for my needs and I won’t have to worry about finicky starts and mixing oil, etc. If I suddenly stop posting here, well, you know what happened.

44

You should make a point of posting 6 or 8 times a day - that way, we can notice your absence quickly and send help.

45

Well, during the week I live in DC, so if I stop posting mid-week, I was murdered. If I stop posting over the weekend, I’ve cut my leg off at the cabin.

46

Most of the larger Dewalt saws require oiling. The smaller ones do not.

47

Chainsaw is not nearly as dangerous as a worm drive circular saw. Those will mess you up. I’ve been careful, and have had no problems with either.

I’ll back up a bit, that when using a chain saw you are often on unlevel ground and such can make it quite dangerous.

48

Alright, why is the best type of circular saw a problem? Is it because you can see where you are cutting? Is it because the saw has the torque to move through heavy wood with ease? Please tell me.

49

That’ll be really convenient to have a cordless one. If you find the working time is too short, consider getting a second battery so you can keep going. Also, the working time of the battery will decrease with age, so a 2nd battery helps with that as well.

If you get other cordless tools, consider getting tools which use the same battery. It makes it easier so you don’t have several different kinds of batteries and chargers to deal with. Also, you can often save money by just buying the bare tool instead of the combo pack that has the tool/battery/charger.

50

Also, with a circular saw, the wood you’re cutting typically isn’t trying to kill you.

51

Great saws, and have plenty of torque to go through wood or kick back worse than a chain saw. I know a few guys that run Circular Saws and Chain saws (myself included). The only ones with 9 fingers got that way from a circular saw.

Really, chainsaws aren’t that bad.

52

I’m just echoing training/safety courses especially if you didn’t grow up using them.

Though from what i remember of my youth, one of the biggest dangers was throwing out your shoulder pulling the cord a thousand times trying to get the damn thing started…

53

This thread has a good bit of useful information about using chain saws: What do I need to know about buying (and then using) a chainsaw?
My own contribution was:

54

Maybe ICE have improved. I do not take great care of my chainsaws, but usually two pulls with the choke on, then one pull with the choke off and they run beautifully.

As far as chain sharpening, I have a guy near me who sharpens chains for $7 a piece, as long as they are on the saw. I rotate my saws and have him do the sharpening.

55

Chainsaw chain/bar oil isn’t exactly, in oil terms, a high stress environment. It’s just there to keep everything moving smoothly, which is why it’s typically a super-cheap, solvent-refined oil with (sometimes) additives to make it more sticky so it stays put.

There’s no reason you can’t use other stuff- used motor oil, vegetable oil, that cheap stuff you find at dollar stores, etc… You probably want it to be a certain minimum viscosity, but other than that, I doubt there are any other performance standards.

56

I don’t get to see a worm drive that often, but haven’t experienced or seen a problem with them. The guys I know who lost a finger to a circular saw had usually sawn through things like tape measures, electric cords, benches and sawhorses beforehand moving on to their own body parts. So maybe it’s not the type of drive mechanism that makes the difference.

57

Most of the good advice has already been given. I’ll add two things:

  1. Gentle touch; powerful control. The primary mistake newbies make is by failing to re-define in their heads the verb “to saw.” They think they are supposed to be pressing down and moving around like they did with their hand saws. Nope. Then they figure out to be gentle, and relax their upper body muscles. Also nope. Your arms, shoulders, chest must always be tightened in the direction to which the saw is aimed. Touch the blade to what you want to cut and let it do the work. but make sure you are the one deciding which direction it goes in.

  2. Remember it’s all cutting surface. When newbies think of the cutting surface, they tend to liken it to a normal saw, which only cuts at the bottom of the blade. Then when they get in trouble, they hurt themselves with the blade top. Really picture in your head the omnidirectional cutting surface.
    And a few areas of agreement/emphasis:

With chainsaws and motorcycles, if you want to live, take a safety course, buy the safety gear.

This can not be overstated. You should never be using a chainsaw after you get tired. Large jobs are long-term jobs. An hour a day over a few weekends will do you fine.

Another point for the electric saw: Your neighbors are less likely to start hating you. Gas saws are incredibly noisy, and can be heard a long, long way away.

58

To add to the chorus of “Be careful”, ObAnecdote:
Last year, I noticed that a tree behind our house had died. It was about 10" in diameter, maybe 40’ tall, and leaning away from the house. Our neighbor (the manly one, with the dogs, 4x4, hunting lodge, boat, etc.) is a good guy, and I’d actually given him an old chainsaw once I realized it was going to sit in my garage basically forever, so I wandered over and asked if I could borrow one. I did a bunch of tree-felling with my dad and grandfather in my youth, so I had some idea how to do it.

As I’d hoped, he said “Sure”, asked why, and offered to help.

When he saw the tree, he said “You know, that one branch is pretty big, we better put a rope on it”, so we did. And sure enough, when he cut the tree, it wanted to go TOWARD the house! With me on the rope, it came down the way we wanted. (He then insisted on cutting it up and, when I said I didn’t want the wood, taking it away himself for his use! Full-service neighbor!)

So we’ll never know whether, had he not offered to help, sanity would have prevailed, or whether I would have had to explain to my wife why I dropped a tree on our house…

Meanwhile, if you do decide to get a chainsaw, here’s one way to do so:

Wanted: Man Who Stole Chainsaw By Sticking It In His Pants

Leading, of course, to that time-worn question, “Is that a chainsaw in your pants, or…”

59

While everyone is focusing on the chainsaw, he may not have enough desirable wood to cut. He needs a short course in identifying which trees produce the most heat, and which gum up chimneys. Basically stick with the hard woods and leave the pines alone.

60

Speaking of felling trees near houses, I’m always amazed at this one:

It's a video of a huge pine tree growing through the deck with a 20" trunk that falls perfectly in a 4' gap between a house and a shed.