"Tim+" wrote in message
...
After I posted last night I suddenly thought €œWhen did I actually top up
the oil tank?€�. Some time ago actually but Ive just checked it and its
half full despite quite a lot of recent chainsaw action.

I think I need to investigate the oiling issue as according to the manual,
some €œsplatter€� should be evident in use and Ive never seen this.

My chainsaw (one with a rechargeable battery) has a little "window" in the
plastic oil reservoir, but it is very difficult to tell where the line of
the oil is if the tank is completely full or completely empty. Only if the
tank is partly full can you see a line to work out the level.

The filler of mine is a real *******, because there is a very small cup
above a plastic mesh filter, and you need to "pour boldly" to make sure the
oil goes downwards rather than running down the bottle, so there is a
tendency to fill the cup to overflowing, then have to wait for it to drain
slowly through the mesh so more can be poured - repeat until the cup doesn't
drain. Or else get someone else to look at the level in the visibility
window and say when the oil line is getting near to "full", because this is
not possible to do while you are looking from above at the filler cap.


I bought a reciprocating saw for pruning trees, thinking that this would be
better for thinner branches which a chainsaw may tend to snatch and get
caught in. But the coarsest blade is still relatively fine and it takes a
long time to get through a branch. My handsaw with a similar coarseness of
teeth seems to cut far more quickly - as long as its blade doesn't bind in
the wood. Similarly I was cutting a notch out of a length of 4x2 to make a
clothes prop (notch to take the washing line) and it took a lot longer with
the electric reciprocating saw than with the hand saw. I get the impression
that the blades that the saw is provided with are very soft and go blunt
quickly. I wanted to saw off the end of a screw, and the fine metal-cutting
blade has much shorter teeth in the middle where it touched the screw - and
that was after about 30 seconds use from being unused. Not what I'd expect
from a household-name maker of appliances...

In contrast, the chainsaw goes through branches very quickly - and can even
attack small branches without getting caught up, though it does tend to rip
them off! Doesn't matter if it's a tree I'm cutting down, and I'm just
trimming off the side branches before felling the trunk, but if it's a live
tree, I'd probably use the hand saw or the electric recip saw to finish off
any side branches that I pruned.