Poulan vs. Stihl revisited

Here's an update on my original Poulan vs. Stihl story from ten years ago.

At the time I was heating with wood, which necessitated spending some serious time in the woods to make sure we didn't freeze. If your saw is going through several tanks of gas per day, the Stihl is the machine for you.

If, however, you only fire up your chainsaw a few times a year, for a half hour at a time, maybe not.

One of the things that's frustrating about my Stihl is that it can be mighty finicky about starting up, especially if it doesn't see regular use. It's not just me. My neighbour has a $1,600 "professional grade" Stihl, and he spends just as much time cursing it as I do my $500 not-quite-professional-grade model.

Last year I spent $150 on a carb rebuild, thinking that would help. It didn't. 

Today I was briefly feeling motivated. My Stihl weed-eater hasn't run since last October, and with only a half hour or so of dinking around I had it purring like a kitten. Only issue is that button in the centre of the cutting head that's supposed to feed out more line doesn't seem to work. Then you have to pry the end off it and feed out more line by hand. A pain in the ass, but at least I got it running.

That success prompted me to take a crack at the saw. After an hour of cursing and at least three dozen pulls on the rope, I was perusing the Home Depot website to see if they have any good deals on chainsaws. That's when I remembered I still have the Poulan Pro Classic. It's been sitting in the corner of the woodshed for ten years, neglected and forgotten.

Cleaned it up a bit, poured in some fresh gas, and that puppy fired up on the third pull! And I'd forgotten how much quieter it is than the Stihl. You can do an afternoon of small trim jobs around the yard and not suffer major hearing loss.

I'm reluctant to say that makes the Poulan a better machine. At the same time, there's a lot to be said for chainsaws that start!

It's not really spring till you've had a proper grass fire

It was a beautiful spring day here at Falling Downs. A little cool, but clear and lots of sunshine. It was the kind of day that makes you feel you'll be young forever.

I appreciate those days more than I used to. In fact, the older I get, I find I pretty much appreciate damned near everything more than I used to. Whoever it was that said "youth is wasted on the young" pretty much nailed it.

At thirty you tend to be anxious about shit like your job isn't working out, or your marriage isn't working out, or blah blah blah...

There's always something.

At sixty, if you can drag your ass out of bed in the morning without assistance, and eat and shit without assistance, well.... high five!

So I thought I'd take advantage of the fine weather and bring in a little wood for next winter. I've been going back and forth between the Poulan and the Stihl recently, mainly because I went through a spell where I incorrectly concluded the Stihl was pooched.

That was back in February, when I was desperately trying to keep ahead of the yawning appetite of the wood furnace, due to my showdown with the bitch at xxxx Fuel Supply Company who had insisted that I provide a current certificate of compliance for the oil furnace. By the way, I think I won that round. It's late April and we got through the worst winter in forever without a drop of furnace oil, and nobody froze to death.

But the experience did make us highly chain-saw dependant.

Therefore I pretty much had a panic attack the night I couldn't get the Stihl to fire up. Felt like there was no compression, and based on past experiences that generally means only one thing.

Time for a new chain-saw.

Or, time to fire up the Poulan.

I'm out in the garage in forty below rooting around for the Poulan, which hasn't been used for a couple years. Top her up with gas, prime that stupid little bulb five times (and it's amazing how they can make plastics that don't freeze solid at forty below) and by god if she didn't fire right up!

So the much maligned Poulan became the main saw around here for awhile, while at the back of my mind I toyed with the inevitability of taking the Stihl in for a professional diagnosis. I knew the news could only be bad, so I kept putting that off the way you put off taking a favourite hound to the vet when you know the diagnosis can only be bad.

Well, the day came when I felt I couldn't put it off any longer. Just before I put her in the truck for her last trip, I thought I'd give her one last try. On principle. Just to say I did everything I could.

Well, fuck me, she fired right up!

Due to the fact that the Poulan had filled in admirably in the absence of the Stihl, I didn't want to discard her entirely, so I've been going back and forth between the two recently. You want to avoid jealousy between the saws, after all.

Which is how I came to be clearing the south-west corner of the north-east woodlot this afternoon, right there above the bridge by Indian Creek. It's only good manners and good woodlot management to burn off the branches and whatnot that won't be firewood, so while I was falling and cutting and loading the truck I simultaneously had a good burn going.

Unlike in some years past, today's burn did not require the intervention of the township fire department, and I was thankful for that. I'm sure they were too.

There's something about spending a day in the fresh air that really makes you appreciate life. The day will come, all too soon, when I'll be warehoused in a "home."

There'll be no more walking the hounds.

No more dropping forty foot elms and hoping they don't land on the truck.

No more truck.

No more chainsaws.

Maybe I should be pro-active.

Maybe I should start up a "home" for folks who aren't ready to fade off quietly into that forever night.

Introducing the Gateway to Heavenly Downs.

Bring your hounds...

Our staff are specially trained in the care and maintenance of chainsaws.

We've got a garden plot round the back where you can grow what you will with the assistance of our highly trained Jamaican herbalists.

And if you and the 85 year old hottie in the next room want to spend some quality oinky-boinky time together, hey, that's your business, not ours.

And every April, we'll celebrate the turn of the seasons with a honkin' huge Heavenly Downs Fire-Department-invited-in-advance grass fire!

See ya soon!

Wilderness adventures

Unless it's an especially severe winter, which I don't see happening, I've probably got enough wood in the basement and the woodshed to see us through.

Be that as it may, I continue to make forays into the woodlot. Today I had my eye on that Maple that's been taunting me from the back woodlot for at least the last couple of years.

Two or three years ago a big trunk came off one of my Maples in a wind storm. Came apart about twenty feet up, just where the main trunk splits up into three. At the tree end she's still attached, and then she arcs across a bit of a ravine and has her top branches holding her off the ground towards the top.

I took away a good part of that top a couple of years ago, so all that's left is what you might call the weight-bearing branches. I headed back there with a ladder, an ax, and the trusty Stihl.

Leaned the ladder against the top-most branch and up I went. I was cutting four to six foot lengths, stuff I could carry out to where the truck was parked. Eventually that became two foot lengths as the diameter of the trunk got bigger. Then one foot lengths.

Finally I had to take a shot at those support branches that were holding up the works. I knew that was going to be tricky. They're holding up a good thirty or forty feet of trunk that must weigh in at a couple of ton.

Sure enough, even though I made my first cut bottom to top, the bar of the Stihl got pinched. There I was, saw stuck, wondering what to do next.

Luckily I had the ax. Started chopping away just above where the saw was caught. Built up quite a sweat if you don't mind me saying so, till suddenly with a great crack the limb gave way and the entire trunk did a quarter turn and came to earth.

When a big old branch like that is doing a quarter turn, the outer extremities can move rather quickly, so I was lucky to get out of the way.

The Stihl was not so lucky. Instead of being freed up, she had the entire weight of the the trunk drive the bar into the ground. It was stuck good. And twisted too. By God, here's another trip to the shop, I thought.

Well, after a lengthy survey of the situation, I came to the conclusion that the only way to solve this was to drive home, get the other saw, and cut up enough of the trunk into small enough pieces so I could get it off the Stihl.

Unfortunately I hadn't fired up the Poulan since the last time the Stihl was in the shop, and it took a fair bit of effort to convince her to start up. As luck would have it, first cut I made was about a two foot length that took a sudden snap before I was through. The snap let the main trunk roll. Right onto my foot.

So I'm standing there, two ton tree trunk pinning me to the ground, and I'm considering my options. The options are mightily circumscribed by the fact that I can't move.

The hounds are standing there looking at me. I know they're thinking if the old bastard doesn't get himself out of this we've got a really good meal happening.

Luckily, I've still got the Poulan in hand. Managed to make a cut just to the left of where my foot was trapped.

Got my foot out. Then I got the Stihl out. That twist in the bar? Straightened out like you wouldn't believe. I scraped the mud off her, fired her up, and it was like nothing had happened.

So it was a day of mixed results. Wood harvested? Zero.

My ankle feels much better after a hot bath and twenty feet of tensor bandage wrapped around it.

But the Stihl still works and the hounds didn't eat me.

All's well at Falling Downs.

Poulan vs. Stihl : part II

I have to admit, I only use the Poulan when the Stihl is in the shop.

And all things considered, it's not in the shop that often. Had to drop it off for a new bar and chain not too long ago. The guy behind the counter went all out trying to sell me a thousand dollar "professional grade" Stihl.

My unprofessional $500 Stihl has been doing yeomans's work. I'm taking down twenty and twenty-four inch stuff with that 18" bar all the time. You just have to be smart in how you go about it.

Not that I'm all that smart. Everybody here at Falling Downs has a story about their narrow escape when the sixty foot elm just missed the spot they were standing on.

My main quibble with the Poulan is that it doesn't let the fuel flow properly. You'll be half way through a 24" trunk and it'll starve out for fuel, not because the tank is empty, but because the fuel tank isn't vented properly. That's a design flaw. They're a global brand and it shouldn't take a back-woods hillbilly like me to point out the flaws that their highly educated and way over-paid design team built into the machine.

So I'm thumbs up for the Stihl all the way, but I do have to mention it does seem to like the shop. I've only had it for a couple years so I don't know if that's a characteristic of the machine or of me. I know there was the big trip for major surgery after Junior ran over it with the truck.

Wasn't really Junior's fault. Had a bit of a grass fire going on, and if panic wasn't in the air, it was just over the hill. We were trying to move things out fast.

The fire had spread to where the truck was parked, and I was too busy beating back the flames to move it, so I yell at Junior MOVE THE FUCKING TRUCK!

Didn't have time to specify move it forward or move it backward. In my mind, over-busy as I was, I figured it was obvious I meant move it forward. After all, I'm right behind the truck, the Stihl is right behind the truck, the biggest flames are right behind the truck, so the only possible thing you could ever do is move the truck forward out of the impending disaster.

So Junior gets behind the wheel and backs up the truck.

Runs over the Stihl. That repair pretty much cost the price of a new one.

Keeps coming at me. I run for my life. Barely made it.

Keeps backing up right to the fence-line.

Junior gets the truck jammed up against the trees. The flames are heading for him. Oh my God the little shithead's gonna get immolated right there in front of my eyes... his mother's gonna kill me!

I run for the truck, grab the wheel, race through the flames, running over the Stihl a second time, and we make it to safety.

So like I said, the Stihl being in the shop more often than the Poulan might not entirely be the fault of the saw.