My stock, Husqvarna 16″ has been very good to me, but it was never intended as a carving saw, and it owes me nothing in that regard. Its purpose was to deal with a sudden influx of dead Ash trees and the ongoing problem of cleaning out flood debris. I bought it long before I had the slightest thought of carving, and to be fair, it does a good job (nice size and power to weight ratio). I have since learned that regular chainsaws are blunt instruments at best, and there’s such a thing as a “carving saw”.
From the picture you’ll notice that this is not a “carving saw”, at least, not yet. For that, I am still waiting on a 12″ dime-tip bar, which is on back order. Still, there are some advantages to this saw in it’s current configuration:
- It’s lighter compared to gas. I’m getting older, and this works for me.
- It’s quieter compared to gas. Better for the family and the neighbors.
- It uses no gas. This is not a trivial expense when carving, and honestly, I spend a lot of time thinking between each cut. Now I don’t have to worry about that.
- It produces no fumes. I can work in an enclosed space.
- It uses A/C power, so I don’t have to worry about battery life. I have a whole rant about power tools with batteries, when portability is not necessary, but I won’t go into it here (inkjet cartridges are another pet peeve of mine!).
So, why do I still need the dime-tip bar? In carving there is a tradeoff between “blocking” and “finishing” work. “Blocking” is what you do with the chainsaw, to remove material and get to the basic form. “Finishing” (in my vernacular) is all the extra work you need to do with power and hand tools to arrive at the final form. For me, it’s a LOT of effort to finalize a carving after my crude blocking phase. The dime-tip bar will allow for finer detail in the chain saw phase, and removing material with a chainsaw is much more efficient than my angle or die grinders.
Here’s a word of advice if you want to order something similar. If you are knowledgeable, you may be confident ordering your own saw, bar, sprocket, and chain, for yourself, but instead I believe you should work with a dealer you trust. I tried this at first, but was eventually overwhelmed by the options and conflicting information I was seeing. For example, I learned that some of the Pro’s resort to modifying the oiler hole so a certain brand bar can fit a certain brand saw, and I wanted nothing to do with this. Package deals don’t seem to be available for carving saws, forcing you to buy the components separately, and this can be a challenge even for dealers (sometimes they’ll just say, no, you can’t do that, so it pays to do some homework and know what is possible). In my case, finding a A/C electric carving saw was like looking for a unicorn, but I will credit my local dealer (Horseheads Do-It Center) for working with me to order the right things.
It’s a nice weekend so I’ll do some more carving with the stock configuration today. I’ll write more reviews after the carving bar arrives!
