Makita XCU04PT1 Battery Chainsaw Observations

Great review.

Re: Makita XCU04PT1 Battery Chainsaw Observations

John Jardin

I've been following this guy since the days of Badger-Pond!

There is not a William Duffield post that I do not read and benefit by.

At an SAPFM weekend meeting in TN, and thanks to Bill Tindell, I finally had the pleasure to meet, dine, and spend the weekend in their company. Then at another SAPFM meeting in Sturbridge, William urged me to also buy the Brock Jobe book on the furniture of Nathan Lumbard. So, for the past 2 years I have been working on a pair of reproduction serpentine dressers all because of William Duffield's suggestion to buy a book.

I am grateful to WC and the wonderful, educational posts by William over the years. Thank You.

Surprised by chain pitch

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

Seems odd that the saw would use a 3/8" chain. Bigger the chain the more power it takes. Unless one goes to a fairly large gas saw the Stihl saws use 3/16" and smaller. I have 3/16 on the smallest professional saw it it cuts about +/-as fast as the 3/8" on the next large saw.

The lack of noise on an electric saw would be enjoyable.

Bar oil I use enough bar oil that its cost is not insignificant. I use the oil drained from the cars and trucks. If there is a down side I have yet to discover it in decades of using this oil.

Re: Surprised by chain pitch

John McGaw

The Oregon folks call out this chain as being a "narrow-kerf" design meant to reduce the amount of power required. My first guess when I saw the mention was that it might be some sort of skip-tooth design but that doesn't appear to be true.

Re: Surprised by chain pitch

Barry Irby

I too was wondering about the 3/8" and wondered if it applied to some other dimension and not the width of the cut.

My understanding is these saws have so much torque that Chaps may not be good enough. I would like to know more.

I don't have a battery saw, but I have two corded electric ones. It is a joy to not have to have fresh gas and they are quite enough that you don't disturb the neighbors or ruin your hearing and start at the pull of the trigger.

The downside to using the oil from the car comes from when you forget to put the fresh oil into the car.

Re: Surprised by chain pitch

Tom Dunlap

The ⅜ number is from rivet to rivet lengthwise. Nothing to do with width. Of the tooth

Yes...be even more careful with battery and electric saws. The materials in leg protection are catching up in their abilities

Used motor oil discussions will go off the road. I did for a while but the stink. Gets awful. Now I use the same oil that I use in my car. Tractor Supply has bar oil on sale now. $6/gallon.

what in the chain spec tells the width?

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

agree on the stink. But I am cheap.

Re: Surprised by chain pitch

William Duffield

This "arms race" is something I was not aware of, and neither was my wife, who is responsible for the safety of many people in her agency who make use of chain saws. If there are new recommendations for chaps materials for electric chainsaws, we would sure like to know about them. I asked her if she knows in her dept. or someone in the Dept. of Agriculture Forest Service who can provide more safety information on chain and torque specs vs. chaps material specs. She informed me that she probably knows as much about chain saw safety as anyone in the Survey, and that I should contact Makita to see what they have found out. I'm putting it on my To Do List for Monday.

I might actually get around to putting on the chaps and sawing up some wood with the Makita this afternoon.

learn something new every day

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

A 3/8 tooth is substantially larger than .325. So is the file; I have worn many out. So is the saw that drives it.

Without thinking (or measuring ) I presumed the .325 was proportionally smaller in every dimension. Confirming this flawed thinking I put a caliper to each and to my amazement the smaller tooth is the same size, in width.

Still wonder at the electric saw driving a 3/8" tooth. Seems the battery would last longer driving a .325 analogous to a smaller engine for the smaller tooth. Do the electrics not turn as fast so they need a bigger tooth to get cutting speed?

Decoding saw chain numbers *LINK*

Tom Dunlap

Oregon has been my go-to chain for most of my career.

This should help with understanding what the numbers and letters mean for saw chain


Saw chain decoded

Re: Decoding saw chain numbers

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

I think Stilh files and chain more durable. Am I dreaming?

Re: Surprised by chain pitch

TomD

I don't get the relationship of high torque to chap failure. The one time I rested a moving blade on my leg, the saw cut the cover fabric, but simply did not engage the underlying material. Torque would imply it wanted to cut, but could not muscle through. In the one case I experienced, the underlying material skidded the chain and did not cause it to stop rotating, it simply did not penetrate. If the material was designed to stop a saw through by tangling it, might be different. My chaps are decades old, and came from Lee Valley. So modern chaps might be different.

Re: bar oil

TomD

Do you find your reservoir empties at the same rate as when using bar oil? With my Stihl, it seems to work out perfectly. The gas is gone and there is a left over of about 1/8th inch. So long as the oil carries all the way around the bar, and you are getting good results, I don't see the problem. My uncle used to recycle his tractor oil on the chainsaw bar, but I don't bother.

On the mill, my Stilhl 090 has a hand oiler, and so I don't even have to worry about the viscosity all that much as one can just keep hitting the pump. Some guys have duel overhead reservoirs and could probably pre-finish the boards if they ran tung oil.

Stihl files/chain

Tom Dunlap

You're right...Stihl has a reputation for having tougher chain and files.

I bought a bunch of Pferd files as well as their two-file sharpener years ago. Great investment.

chaps

John K Jordan

The only time I touched a chain to my chaps (low on the loose leg) it cut through the outer layer then the chain got snagged on the kevlar inside. Seems that whether it the chain skidded or hung up it could prevent injury.

Re: chaps

William Duffield

I suspected that the chaps would have Kevlar in the middle, but both the old chaps I have and the Stihl Pro Mark chaps I am contemplating replacing them with, are 100% nylon, both outer layers and the inner protective layer.

https://www.stihlusa.com/products/protective-and-work-wear/chain-saw-protective-apparel/aprnchap/

Evidently, the philosophy is not to prevent the chain from cutting through the lining, but to have the lining very rapidly and massively tangle with the chain, bar and sprockets, effectively stopping the saw before it get through the inner liner. SWMBO CSP wants me to replace the old chaps because they have spent too many summers in a very poorly ventilated, and therefore hot shed, and she is afraid they may have broken down enough to significantly degrade their strength. What do you think?

Stihl chaps demonstrated by Mike (Outdoors with the Morgans):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llqSQRCkHTw

and by Cody (Wranglerstar):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDUVgQfbkBo&frags=pl%2Cwn

That demo is pretty impressive, plus

Keith Newton

If you have a mishap that shreds your chaps like that, after you clean out your shorts, you can take the spoils of nylon out fishing to help settle your nerves. You don't even need a hook to catch a big gar fish when you troll along with it tied on the end of your line, their teeth get tangled up in it. ;-)

Re: That demo is pretty impressive, plus

William Duffield

Naw! Garfish have had 100 million years of evolution to perfect their dentition, while we've only been working on the chainsaw for 240 years. No way a garfish is going to get tangled in something as simple as nylon or even kevlar.

I looked at lots of chaps reviews. I was a bit surprised that many were not recommended, by the manufacturer, for electric chainsaws, because of their high torque. I chose a pair of Husqvarna Technical Apron Wrap Chaps, which are very highly rated, and do not advertise the electric limitation. It's going to take a week for Amazon to deliver them (just in time for Paulette ). I am now debating whether to risk using the old chaps until the Huskys arrive.

no need to replace

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

I used to cut round hay bales into slices to feed sheep. Occasionally I would fail to remove all the twine. If I caught a piece of the fine twine used to wrap it would stall my midsized Stihl professional saw within a fraction of a second of engaging.

Absent full sunlight Nylon suffers insignificant loss of strength, and it is not strength of Nylon in the first place that stalls the saw. Any fiber that wraps the sprocket will stall.

Re: need to replace

William Duffield

Yes, there is a need to replace them. Se my more recent post on "…impressive…" which notes that electric chainsaws, and I think especially large ones with brushless motors, have more torque than gas saws and therefore can chew through more layers of nylon before completely jamming the chain. If not designed specifically for these newer saws, the chaps can be penetrated all the way through before coming to a stop. I also provided a link to a demonstration where even a gas powered chain saw did just that to an off brand of chaps. Since my old chaps do not even have a label specifying the manufacturer, I think I will reserve them for use with my Stihl MS271, if and when we need more help clearing the roads after the next hurricane. Note that they do reference safety standards to which they conform, but I have not looked up any of these yet.

Curiously, the price of a pair of quality chaps is in the same ballpark as a SawStop brake cartridge.

Re: need to replace

TomD

What kind of accidents lead to relentlessly sawing through one's chaps? Is it something like a trip and say falling on the hand in a way that would cause it to jam the trigger on? The only time I cut into my chaps it barely scored them, cutting only the surface ripstop. I suppose some timber could fall on one in a way that would jam a running saw against one...

Is this one of those things where the test involves simply sawing through the chaps until they jam up the saw? That would be interesting, but is it something that one would expect in practice?

My chaps are a sort of chap apron, they do not cover the more than about 40 percent of the front of the leg's circumference. Is that still the norm? Or are people using wrap around chaps?

I have not fully recovered from googling "machine tool accidents", and "grinder accidents", so I would prefer to get answers here, rather than provoking Google Images.