Cutting my teeth on chainsaws (figuratively speaking of course).

What is the first image that comes to mind when you hear the word chainsaw?  It may be a scene from 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' with Leatherface hysterically attacking his next victim. For those with a broader cinematic knowledge, it may be the scene in Scarface where the Colombian drug dealers dismember Angel in front of Tony. Reaching a more lighthearted view of chainsaw cinema, consider the scene in Fargo where the bad guy has quartered his captive with a chainsaw and is struggling to cram a frozen leg into a wood chipper, presumably to dispose of a body he couldn't bury because the ground was frozen. In evil hands, the chainsaw is a perfectly horrific weapon. As the motor revs up to a screaming pitch, it announces with impending certainty the gory mutilation of arms and legs amputated with surgical precision as blood flies everywhere. Or perhaps closer to home, my brother's Halloween haunted barn amusement included a hayride for visitors where a volunteer fireman, dressed as a Samurai, would attack the wagon wildly, wielding a chainsaw with the motor fully revved. What the terrified riders did not know was that the chain had been removed from the bar.

Horror aside, most city folks associate chainsaws with noise, downed tree limbs, and professional crews cleaning up from a severe weather storm.  The closest outdoor motorized tools the average suburbanite owns are a lawnmower and a weed eater. By comparison to these domesticated cud chewers, the chainsaw is a ferocious predator, a kind of weaponized hedge trimmer, a commercial-grade armament that conservatives brandish in open carry states and liberals demand background checks before purchase. At least that was my opinion of chainsaws before I decided to buy the Riverland and tackle the job of managing a plantation of pine trees.   I confess my city-cum-country boy conversion is still in a nascent stage since I have not acquired a taste for hunting or eating venison and find -with a strangely 'low T' kind of self-consciousness- that my minivan sans rear seats holds a lot more than a 4 by 4.

However, I am now a proud owner of a shiny new BY GAWD CHAINSAW, along with a pair of steel-toed boots, deerskin work gloves, lumberjack chaps, and a hard hat with visor and ear muffs. Fully attired, I am quite a sight, W00-ha  Well, it would be a big Woo-ha if I could grow a beard, then the lumbersexual image would be complete.  Nevertheless, hold in your mind this imagine of a middle-aged and clean shaven city boy dressed up in his shiny new outfit looking for some adventure in a wild enchanted forest as I reflect on my newly minted experience with this deadly and compellingly useful tool, every bit 'country' as owning a hunting rifle or a pickup truck, with the gravitas of bar chain oil mixed with sawdust and the 'only-outside-city-limits'  exhilaration of felling trees and sawing them into small human-sized pieces -- a form of 'dressing' as engrossing as cleaning a fish or gutting a deer.

Judging one's city boy/country boy quotient is a practical matter when it comes to chainsaws.  Quite simply it depends less on who you are than on how much land you own. Rarely is there a need for a chainsaw to manage a tract of land described as a lawn rather than a field. The usual small town or suburban yard is a small postage stamp patch of grass that might have a few trees and border shrubs. Often those trees are small flowering ornamentals that can be managed with pruning shears or a buck saw, or they are large stately structures that dwarf any amateur's abilities.  Big town trees are at the mercy of the power line right of ways and the unpredictable pruning of freelance arborists who roam door to door warning homeowners of the dangers of limbs overhanging roofs. Those wealthy enough to live in a neighborhood with houses on a half acre or more, often contract all of their yard and tree care to lawn service professionals and consider this service as obligatory as water and sewer. Unless you are rich, if you own a property of an acre or more, it's in the country and you own or know a neighbor who owns a chainsaw. A principal lawyer in a large local firm avowed his country roots when he commented that he had been given a chainsaw when he was 16 years old and had occasion to use it every year since

City folks who do care for their own yards fall into three groups.  The green-,thumbers actually enjoy growing things and are usually spotted on weekends, mulching flowerbeds, or weeding small gardens or shopping at garden centers. The civic duty-minded citizens bump around on riding lawnmowers with the righteous spirit of real estate agents intent to uphold property values and comply with homeowner's association bylaws.  I find myself in the third group, the DIY-GDI (Do It Yourself-Goll Durn Independent) hybrid that refuses to pay $100+ each month for performing a chore as mundane as taking out the garbage. The occasional errant limb is an existential problem, but not a reason to have a chainsaw on stand-by, unless you got one of those muzzled super-light models with an extension cord as a well-intended but tragically off-the-mark Christmas gift. 'Wow. its not socks and ties this year! How thoughtful. Gee whiz, that is some chainsaw, and it doesn't even make a sound!'  Electric Harley-Davidson anyone?  Once, I borrowed an old light-duty chainsaw from a neighbor to remove a couple of upstart poplars that had invaded my back yard. I pulled on the starter cord long enough to pull my back as well.  I finally got the engine going and used it for about 20 minutes before it arrested and was declared DOA by the local ACE Hardware guy -- who promptly escorted me to the Mother-approved, electric models he had on display. Conspiracy!?

When I decided to buy a chainsaw, I eschewed the big box hardware stores in Winston-Salem where the sales force parroted the promotional literature I found while perusing the internet on my cellphone. Instead,  I went to the Rural Hall Feed and Seed, hoping to find an expert.  There I met Clay, a paragon of country manhood:  handsome, confident, and supremely knowledgeable about all things mechanical. He quickly sized me up in my khakis and dress shirt and asked how he could help.  I told him that I just bought 30 acres of Loblollys, trying to impress him that I was a new member of the 'country boy' club.  He kindly asked why Husqvarna, presumably thinking me to be a Homelite or Black and Decker man in need of an extension cord.  I replied as a true poseur that my brother, who owned an orchard in upstate New York, recommended the Swedish brand.

He went to the Husqvarna display where a half dozen models were suspended from hooks in the pegboard wall and handed me the top-of-the-line professional model to see if it was the 'right weight'.  I took hold of it like a guitar, impressed that it seemed heavier than I imagined -- and twice as expensive. Not wanting to come across as a Goldilocks, I quickly pointed to the next biggest model.  The Husqvarna 550 was a beauty, made of alloyed steel and orange high-impact plastic.  He showed me the bells and whistles: the gas and chain oil reservoir caps with safety catches, the chain bar tightening nuts tethered to the bolts, the kick back safety bar, the computer-monitored carburetor, and the antivibration chassis. With no time for me to demur, he ran through the 5 steps to start the engine - easy as pie -and called into the stock room to have his counterpart assemble the 22-inch bar to the engine, thread the chain, and gas up my new machine. Clay threw in a second 'chisel' chain and gave me a four-year warranty if I bought a gallon of premixed ethanol-free  Husqvarna-certified fuel. He gave me a pat on the back after I signed the credit card charge for seven hundred dollars and reminded me that I could come by anytime for him to sharpen my chain. I was now a proud owner of what I reverently considered a key to the 'club', one that was necessarily dangerous and powerful but without a trigger, a hitch, or a PTO.  I drove home strangely empowered but apprehensive, knowing that I had a lot to learn about the safe operation of a chainsaw. Patients would likely balk at any recommendations from a surgeon with less than ten fingers.

When I got the 550 home, I set out to start it up and revel in its power as a Samurai might initiate his new sword by slicing up a few peasants.  However, my fingers had real skin in this game and knew better.  Somehow, they purged my memory of the five-step sequence. With sullen revelation, I knew I would have to open the owner's manual at the very beginning of the project and actually read the directions starting at page one. How unintuitive, how flawed any design that requires methodical study of rigorously sequential step-by-step instruction!  What, must I be a mechanical engineer?    Is it not enough that I can somehow figure out how to change the ink cartridge in the office printer?  Robert Pirsig wrote about this problem in 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'. He called it a 'gumption trap'. I watched as my hands put the saw in the garage.  They told me to wait for Saturday so I could have all afternoon to focus on this problem. Perhaps my digits felt some affinity for those poor peasants.

trials and tribulations on Saturday with directions and ignorance and dumb head against the wall perseverance.

Picture the Saturday scene on the kitchen island, bath towel draped out over black Amazon granite, paper towels littering the floor, and two hands in shredded surgeon's gloves and page 13 of the owner's manual covered with blue lubricating oil.  The cowling to the chain spindle would not fit back onto its two retaining bolts.   I had been trying for the better part of an hour to make it fit,  first channeling the calmness of mechanical zen master Pirsig, then offering prayers of supplication to the creator of the universe or anyone else that might be in earshot, and finally cursing the devil in this machine, who I am sure was having a good laugh.  Tell 9 true statements to lend veracity to the tenth false statement.  Let the first 9 steps go smoothly before bewitching the last step. I had performed the first 9 procedures with such devoted precision I felt I could apply for a scholarship to Virginia Tech or NC state or Clemson. This is the final maneuver before initiating the 5 step sequence and starting my career as a lumberjack. 

I could go back to the guy at the seed and feed to help you for you but then you would be totally exposed -- a city boy pretending.  like 95 percent of city folk who insist on having all wheel drive SUV's in this part of the country for the two days of the year there is snow but no school or work or those who drive around town in pickup trucks to haul kids but only of the two-legged variety and traverse parking lots not wood lots.

not so much that we are Yankees but rather that I have chosen to live so far away from him.  country folk have less need to move if they have inherited their parents land holdings.

by middle age I should have been expert about that as well as many other technically specific things like PTO driven implements,  etc

disengage safety bar release, press the start button, press gas bubble button several times, engage the starter switch, and pull the starter rope until the engine catches on.

then a breaktrough...humility more than triumph.reasoning that...  maybe there was hope for me yet.

First outing  pure nirvana I felt the machine so responsive i could have bisected my minivan with it.

A great machine needing constant attention more like a father changing his first newborn or remembering how to use a clutch

the first 4 outings didn't think to check the chain oil, assuming it needed to be changed as infrequently as the engine oil in my push lawnmower.  Maybe Clay assumed I knew better or perhaps wanted to see if I would bring it back wth the motor fried. On the last of these outings the saw seemed edentulous barely able to gum a limb in two. 

Saved by my brother buying him a ticket to come down and give me a lesson on chainsaw maintenance and usage. which only cost less than half the price of a new 550 but also may have prevented an unplanned trip to the emergency room as a patient rather than a provider.

I admit that I am new to the concept of routine maintenance: the closest analogy is getting the Valvoline boys to change my synthetic oil every year.

Dan  began his instruction with the gas.   He had never seen premixed before was shocked at the 25$/gallon price.  He suggested I mix my own and find a source of ethanol free gas by inquiring at the local hardware.  Second he frowned when he saw the chain oil reservoir was as dry as a bone.  third he explained the process of sharpening the saw blade with a round and a flat metal file.  He sharpens frequently.  explaining the exact angle and technique.  As he worked I flipped again through the direction booklet and confirmed what I had feared, I had not learned anything in my initial perusal of the manual aside from the pictures showing the 5 steps to start the saw.

He sharpened one side, and I the other.  He demonstrated methodical and exacting technique like a violinist bowing a chord.  for best results, but not complicated. It started fine, so I hadn't burned the saw up after all. relief,  No trip would be needed to see Clay with my burned out motor in hand and a submissive look of a girly-man compensating for not having a  'big bar' saw with an overly long 'extension cord'. Dan was impressed at my official orange chainsaw chaps with the reflector stripes at the bottom of the pant legs and pocket  for the felling wedge (explained in detail in directions) and the lumberjack's hat, a hard orange hat with full screen visor and attached ear hoods for noise reduction.

We went out to my building site to clear the land   He fired up the saw and we began clearing a building site for a future Morton Barn.  Kelly and I could barely keep up with handling the wood, stacking it parallel into a big pile for a future bonfire.  Dan's accuracy in felling trees by the way he notched his cuts was impressive.  I tried to imagine how long it would have taken to accomplish the same task with a hand saw and a two-man buck saw, and then how long it would take to sharpen those saws. we were all tired after two full tanks of gas had been used, roughly an hour each.

The next time on my own I noticed that the chain oil had to be filled as often as the gas. Also, I lubricated the bar with oil and sharpened the chain before each use.  Sharpening is a meditative endeavor, imagining a Japanese sword maker meticulously working metal with his hands to accomplish the perfectly sharp edge.   A much better experience this time around felling a few bigger trees of my own and avoiding the dulling dirt with my blade. I now have a balanced sense of power, a need for respect of the saw's capacity and a constant eye for safety as I continue to monitor its performance and strive to use the best technique.

Everyone who uses a chainsaw can quickly recount at least one admonitory horror story. 'My buddy cut his face just missing his eye.'  A rare occasion being a patient I consulted in the emergency room who sustained a chainsaw injury to his tibia bone creating a nice linear notch as if the bone was oak.  Fascinating in a professional way not unlike the unwary construction worker who embedded a nail in his femur with a nail gun, tacking down jeans to and puckering his skin. I was not able to pull out the nail in the ER but had to bring him to the operating room and extract the missle with pliers once he was under general anesthesia.

So once the decision was made to clear out the perimeter for the barn and the access road, my view of the trees, those life-giving oxygen producing huggable living huge plants was exchanged for a strange exhilaration for cutting them down and chopping them up, now a property of man not a member of nature. the trees huddle together in abject fear as the demon slasher stalks through their midst ready to strike at random. And then, what to do with all the wood.  Where would the stumps ultimately go?  Did I know someone who needed firewood? How would I transport it if the road was not finished?

After a time  during a rest, I gave thanks to the trees telling them I was sorry I felt it necessary to kill them. at least I was being more personable about tree 'sacrifice'.  Hand labor with chainsaw is more personal than knocking whole trees over with a bull dozer or grinding them up with a big forest mulcher like using a saber rather than a machine gun.rationalizing that my presence here with a limited footprint would ensure that their family of adjacent trees would be better taken care of and in less danger with my management.  I am not sure they believe me but at least they pondered my logic in studious silence.

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