LittleLebowski's big inspirational chainsaw thread

[Whiskey_Bravo]

I loaned my Makita 36V saw and Stihl 36V saw to our dive team a couple of weeks ago for ice rescue training. They absolutely fell in love with the Makita. Cut through 8" thick ice like it was nothing. They did not care for the Stihl. Said it bogged down easily and was more of a pain.

I found this to be very interesting. The Makita goes off of the super high chain speed methodology similar to Husky gas saws. The Stihl is a slower chain speed, but more felt torque. I prefer the battery Stihl in 8"-10" wood to the Makita. It surprised me how much better the Makita did on ice.

[Welder]

I’ve been lusting after one of these since they came out. Same as you, tons of batteries already on hand. I missed a Black Friday deal on them last year. Where’d you get your reconditioned?

I’m anxious to hear your experience with it. In my case I’d be coming from a corded electric POS that i basically use once a year to cut up Xmas trees,haha. But I have an old cedar playground that’s rotting and needs to (a) come down and (f) be choooed up into burning wood for next season...

I finally got to use this saw enough to have an opinion. I used it to fell, limb, and then cut to firewood length a white oak that was probably 14" DBH tapering to 7" at 60' up. A long, skinny forest tree that was in my yard and doing nothing. It was 18" at the felling cut, leaving a stump that swelled to 30" diameter at the flush cut. I used a 9.0Ah battery to fell it, limb it, and cut the trunk into 3 sections. That left the battery showing 2 of 4 bars left.

Then today I cut all of the wood to firewood length, 17" long. I started with a 12.0Ah battery, cut up both of the upper logs and made it halfway through the lower log which probably averaged 14" diameter until the battery ran out. I used a 9.0Ah battery to finish the lower log and then cut up the miscellaneous small stuff that didn't need splitting, ~4" and down in size. The 9.0 was showing 3 bars when I started and 2 when I finished.

I made the flush cut with my MS360.

The saw runs well. The chain brake is also a kill switch. There are dual bar lockdown studs and the chain tightener is on the side as well. The bar nuts are 1/2" or probably 13mm also. You can stall the saw out with excess force on the sizes of wood I was cutting so you have to be gentle and let it eat at it's own pace. It probably took 1/3 longer compared to using something like my MS360. I feel like this saw would do better with a 14" bar; the 16" is a marketing thing but it really doesn't have the guts for a 16".

The bar is thin and whippy; the cut isn't straight unless you're very careful. The bar flexes left to right easily requiring you to use two hands (yeah, I know....) The bar doesn't have a dedicated oiling hole; instead it uses the upper of the two chain tightening eyes as an oiler. So automatically I know that Stihl bars won't fit and function. Maybe there are other good quality brands that work like this? I'd like to see this saw with a 14" bar running a .050 gauge non safety chain instead of the .043. The bar does have a roller tip.

The provided chain stayed sharp the whole time; I never touched dirt and it never tried to lead off or do anything silly other than coming off one time when I was cutting a small branch off of the trunk. That's just the .043 talking. It didn't stretch much, all things considered. A slight tightening before the second use is all it needed. I used the same Stihl chain oil that I use in my gas saws. There's no warning that you're going to run out of oil, and it does oil well with no adjustment that I could see, so you keep an eye on the oil. Fill it with each battery change.

All in all, if you're an M18 owner, I'd recommend the saw, at least at the $199 I paid for this reconditioned one at the local Ace Hardware. It's good to have in an emergency and is truly functional if a slight bit underpowered for the included bar length. I'd like to see a top handle version, but am positive that Milwaukee isn't wanting that liability.

[AKDoug]

Sold our last Stihl chainsaw in inventory today. We've had saws on order since January. Not sure WTF is up, but I'm not happy.

[OlongJohnson]

I finally got a chance to use my Silky Pocket Boy last week. It is awesome for the size.

[LittleLebowski]

Big (over 130’) hickory went down from soaked soil and winds. It took almost three weeks to get it cleaned up, nearly all of the labor aside from piling up the top growth I cut, was done solely by me. The Mastermind Husky 550XP II did nearly all of the heavy cutting and it just kept going and going and going, tank after tank. I sharpened the chain every other tank. The 020T was invaluable for limbing and also never quit. The 020T punches way above its weight class. I can’t emphasize enough how much it matters to have saws that run, cut, and to keep your chains maintained (cutters and rakers). Every time cutting was going slow, ten minutes with the Pferd chain sharpener made the chips fly again and greatly reduced my cutting time.

I’m still tired, sore, and have several cuts and bruises. The split and stacked firewood is two rows, plus there’s two other smaller stacks around the house. Renting a 36 ton, vertical log splitter was $85 well spent.

[Cookie Monster]

@AKDoug

We gotta revive this thread.

I'll get some pictures up soon. Had some good opportunities to run saw the last few weeks. Fell about 100 trees opening up holes along a road so we could get eyes into a fire and where it was.

Damn if I didn't mess a few up but overall B- performance for a middle aged man running a crew of newbie kids.

So hopefully AKDoug shows up and tells me how to fix my favorite MS362 mtronic saw. Running 28 inch bar with full skip and a West Coast Saw Barkbox. So in moments in idling while swamping or doing whatever, it stalls. I pull on it to start it back up and it pulls like it is flooded. I lock the chain brake and place the bar on a log, grab the throttle and press it to full, and then pull it and it fires right up and works for 5 to 10 more minutes then stalls. And we play that dance.

I kept using it because it has the West Coast Saw Felling Dawgs and it was the first time where consistently my face cuts were falling out. I attribute it to the dawgs helping with lining stuff up.

My local Stihl dealer told me on the last saw I brought them that my chain was extremely dull so they had to put a new chain on. I remember the chain being a razor - I asked them to bring me the old chain, it was a good filing all the corners sharp and looking really good. But it was filed close to the witness line on most of the chain so they were scared.

[AKDoug]

@AKDoug

We gotta revive this thread.

I'll get some pictures up soon. Had some good opportunities to run saw the last few weeks. Fell about 100 trees opening up holes along a road so we could get eyes into a fire and where it was.

Damn if I didn't mess a few up but overall B- performance for a middle aged man running a crew of newbie kids.

So hopefully AKDoug shows up and tells me how to fix my favorite MS362 mtronic saw. Running 28 inch bar with full skip and a West Coast Saw Barkbox. So in moments in idling while swamping or doing whatever, it stalls. I pull on it to start it back up and it pulls like it is flooded. I lock the chain brake and place the bar on a log, grab the throttle and press it to full, and then pull it and it fires right up and works for 5 to 10 more minutes then stalls. And we play that dance.

I kept using it because it has the West Coast Saw Felling Dawgs and it was the first time where consistently my face cuts were falling out. I attribute it to the dawgs helping with lining stuff up.

My local Stihl dealer told me on the last saw I brought them that my chain was extremely dull so they had to put a new chain on. I remember the chain being a razor - I asked them to bring me the old chain, it was a good filing all the corners sharp and looking really good. But it was filed close to the witness line on most of the chain so they were scared.

Not what you want to hear, but have you tried it without the Bark Box? I am wondering if it causes some sort of lean condition at idle because of the better breathing.

The M-Tronic saws still use carb parts. You might take off the covers on the carb and make sure there's no dust on top of the pump side.

And finally, changing out the fuel control solenoid on the side of the carb might solve the issue.

[Cookie Monster]

I am still working on my understanding of small engines.

Thanks so much to AKDoug. So basically the saw stalls because of a lean condition most likely - so not enough gas. The getting it started by holding down the throttle adds the gas it needs. I was running it 2-3000 feet above were it lives. I’ll run a reset on the mtronic and then try swapping back to a stock muffler. And then move to the other suggestions from there.



One of my crew using the saw to buck a tree out of the road. Making sure our escape route was good.

[Jakus]

I am just about done blocking firewood for the season and my MS 461 continues to work very well.

My hand filing is just not good enough to keep up with my use this time of year. I’m pretty sure I’m putting to much downward pressure and not enough back pressure into the tooth. My lazy fix for this was to go down to the lumber yard and see what they had. I can home with a Dremel sharpening kit.



Since I already own a Dremel it was a no brainer for me. The guide has enough contact and visual reference to make it simple to properly position the bit, and I find taking the file draw motion out of the equation let’s me focus more on proper alignment and grinding direction. I was able to bring two blade up to very sharp with around 5 minutes per chain. I was throwing chips for far longer than was typical on my hand filed chains. I’m certainly removing more material and thereby wearing the chains down faster, but I’d rather go through chains faster vs cutting with less sharp chains.

Time to bust out the splitter…

[Welder]

Not sure if this belongs here or in the cordless tools thread. Maybe I'll double-post.

I recently spent some time clearing out a section of my woods (not a lot, maybe 20' x 20'), and since I didn't have any 2-stroke mixed gas around, I used the M18 chainsaw. Here are a few more thoughts about it. First, it oils plenty. Secondly, for small whippy-type brush, it's a pain. I think a lot of this is caused by the thin .043 chain it uses in an effort to conserve energy, but regardless, it likes to throw the chain. Meaning I had to use loppers for stuff that was under an inch or risk losing the chain.

The way I was taught to tension a chain was to hold the bar nose up, then draw the chain up to the bar eliminating any gaps, and tighten the locking nuts. When you're done, it'll pull down away from the bar but will spring back to it. It's possible that this small chain needs to be tighter than that, but I hate to do that, especially when it's hot. I have a possible fix on the way for this.

The Oregon chain shipped with the saw is OK, but it's a safety chain and is impossible to bore (plunge-cut) with. It also dulls relatively easily compared to Stihl chain which is the only chain I've used up until now. I have a possible fix on the way for this, too.

So after a lot of searching, I found two mentions online of people who'd swapped different bars onto the M18 saw. This is good news, because: 1) I think the bar is too long, 14" would be better, and 2) I don't care for the .043 chain and if I could switch to 3/8LP in .050 gauge, I'd have a slightly wider chain with non-safety options as well.

I had to do my own research to figure out what bars would fit the Milwaukee, because if you use Oregon's Bar and Chain Selector Guide and input the M18 saw, you only get the single 16" 3/8LP .043 56DL bar offered. However. Since two people on the interwebz said that the M18 sprocket would accept .050 gauge, I'm assuming they're right and after going to that bar's listing (it's P/N 164MLEA041 if you want to see for yourself), I used the Fit Guide and Cross Reference to identify the other saws that would accept that bar (Oregon calls the tail mount of that bar A041...it's popular in a lot of cheaper saws like Poulans, Craftsmans, etc).

Having never bought non-Stihl bars before, I had to learn what the good brands are. Some of them don't offer any bars with this tail mount because these were generally cheap throw-away saws. But I did find that TsuMura offers one, and the 14" one that I ordered off Amazon for $28 was P/N 013ML3. The tip profile looks at least a little less safety-conscious - more rounded and less pointy, which will be better for bore cuts. This bar uses a 52 driving link chain.

Stihl doesn't offer 3/8LP (also called Picco) chains in that count; their saws with the 14" bars use 50DL. So a little more research and I ordered a Carlton semi-chisel non safety chain P/N N1C-052E off ebay for about $16/free shipping.

All of this info is here so that in case this actually works, part numbers are documented for other M18 saw owners who might want a little better-cutting saw. I'll let you know how the experiment turns out.